I want to talk to you about extremely elementary processes.

Now let's talk a little bit about how your preclear might possibly recover from the state which he conceives himself to be in.

In view of the various factors in Scientology, we can discover that some extremely elementary processes could be designed if we would look at these upper-echelon factors.

We consider now that the pattern of existence through which he has been is a very definite track. It is a track which starts in with as-isness. And this, of course, includes space.

Now, let's look, first and foremost, at this thing called isness – reality. How much in the way of processing could you get just out of this concept: that there is such a thing as isness – an existence? How many processes could you possibly do? Well, actually, you could do a very great many.

You might possibly completely miss a case if you didn't realize that as-isness has to start with space. You see? You yourself could get so concentrated on objects and on energy, and you yourself get frantic along these lines, you might overlook this fact of space. You see, because a thetan can more or less communicate with space with great ease. You see? The body has gone too far on this track to do this easily. The body gets sick when it communicates with space. But a thetan can communicate with space rather easily.

But let me call your attention, very quickly and abruptly and immediately, to a very singular fact – if I have not mentioned it before – and that fact is simply this: that to give a thetan exercise in getting ideas is minimal. A thetan can always shift around his considerations one way or the other, but it depends upon the scope he is willing to shift them around on.

And the as-isness begins with space. And then it gets into, of course, simultaneously, energy and mass. Now, space-energy-mass, the consideration of it, are all simultaneous. There is no consideration here related to time. Now we have to move the anchor points of the space in order to get a continuance of the space and move the energy itself in the space and change them in some fashion or another in order to get a continuance of that energy.

Now, an individual on one point – that is to say, a receipt point of the communications formula – an individual standing on this receipt point would feel himself limited to the degree that he had to be on receipt point. So he would then feel that the consideration that he was on receipt point, or was being the effect of existence, would monitor his ability to make considerations. That is to say, he would not feel, then, that he was free to make any other consideration above the level of the fact that he was on receipt point. Now, all of his other considerations, then, would fall below this level.

And it's the first moment, then, we have a simultaneous action, because we have not yet postulated time. Well, a thetan doing this would, theoretically, pass immediately from asisness into alter-isness – just immediately. He'd have to or he would have no continuation of any kind. In other words, it wouldn't exist unless he intended to change it. You see, he'd have to make the intention of change simultaneous with the action of creation. And if he did not, he would get a disappearance immediately of that mass.

Now, let's take somebody who considers himself to be on cause point and solely and entirely and completely on source point – source point, cause point; receipt point, effect point. (Formula of communication: cause, distance, effect – the most elementary statement of it – involving attention and duplication.) And we would discover that if an individual was monitoring himself with one basic consideration, his consideration would then fall below, and his ability to change his mind would then fall below, that basic consideration.

All right. He passes, then, into alter-isness, which is a simultaneous action with asisness (at first), and then of course immediately becomes an action of continuation. And we get isness, which is this reality that we talk about: space, energy, objects. Just exactly why we consider this combination to be a reality, that reality is isness and so on, is a little bit dull. Because the fact of the matter is reality itself, to continue as a reality, would not be an isness at all but a continuous alter-isness. So we get isness, actually, as a hypothetical state.

Basic consideration could be "I am on an effect point"; that is, "I am being the effect of many flows and messages and that sort of thing, and this is very bad." Now his considerations are various.

Now, the fact that the thetan is a static, that's not hypothetical or theoretical. That's a fact. The fact that he is a static that can consider and can produce space and energy and objects – now, that's not hypothetical; that's a fact too. We have facts, facts, facts all the way along here until we get to this thing called reality, and we suddenly discover that isness is hypothetical. What we call reality is hypothetical. Therefore, we'd better just keep calling this thing reality, and "everybody knows" what reality is.

Let's take this most basic consideration: "I must get off this point." You see, "I am on this effect point and I do not like this." Therefore, he makes the consideration that he must get off of this point.

The basic goal, by the way, of a barbaric cult known as psychology, which is practiced in some American universities, this stressed enormously the whole subject of reality. I mean, you talk about the amount of learnedness which has been pressed up against the cheek of reality, the tremendous quantity of discourse on the subject of: "Let's see. If there was a wood and a tree fell and there was nobody to hear it, why, therefore… And then, of course, there wouldn't be a sound, would there, if there was nobody to hear the sound. Because, you see, trees aren't alive."

Well, what is monitoring the consideration that he must get off the point? The fact that he's on it, of course. You see?

Well anyhow, this short-circuitedness and complete confusion on the subject of reality stems from the fact that in the whole field of as-isness, the creation of space, energy, objects, alter-isness, isness, not-isness and more alter-isness, there is only one hypothetical state. Just one state is hypothetical and that's isness. And that's completely hypothetical. It never exists. It can't ever exist. It has to be alter-isness or as-isness.

All right. Now let's take it reverse-end-to, and let's get an individual who finds himself on source point. This individual is on source point and there he sits on source point and he's being cause: he's being the source of the impulses or particles which are going across the distance and hitting effect points. Well, this individual is saying, "Now I mustn't cause anything bad. I must cause only good things. And I must do this and that for people," or "I must do this and that for this or for that," or something of this sort, you see?

And, of course, as-isness can exist. As-isness can exist. It really would have to be able to exist if you can repeat it. You see? It must be in existence if you can repeat it and cause a vanishment of mock-ups or objects or spaces. So it obviously exists.

And what is this host of considerations being monitored by? Of course, that he is on a cause point; he's on a source point of a communication – synonymous here: cause and source, effect and receipt – naturally.

But this is not true of isness. Reality does not exist, because it precludes a stop. You see, it precludes that there's a stop right there – zoom. There just isn't any such stop. It is continuous alter-isness.

All right. Now, if he discovers himself suddenly on the receipt point of something, this fellow is really dismayed. You get the dismay? His basic consideration is that he's being cause point, and yet all of a sudden he receives something – oooh! Now, that would be a breakdown – basically and primarily – would be a breakdown of his isness; his reality, a breakdown of his isness.

When people stop altering the positions of things and stop altering anchor points and stop pushing things around one way or the other – whether they say they're doing it or they say it's being done on an other-determinism, or however – the moment that they just relax on this whole thing, they get the condition which your preclear quite commonly is found in, of no longer postulating time.

He can then have a break of reality only to the degree that other-determinism brings into question the postulate on which he is operating. See, he can have a break of reality only to the degree that other-determined hammer-pound brings about an invalidation of the postulate on which he's basically running. He says, "I'm cause and I'm being a good fellow and I'm doing this and doing that," and all of a sudden he gets jailed. My, this is upsetting! But what is his basic consideration? That he is occupying a cause point.

See, the mechanism of saying "It will continue because I'm saying somebody else is responsible" is of limited use. It's a very limited use.

Now, let's take this in a very minor fashion and let's take somebody who has superparalysis of the medulla oblongata or some very, very serious ill, such as entire closure of the pocketbook. And we find him trying to change this condition. Now we've entered into another field. See? We've entered into not-isness and then we've entered into alter-isness, you see? Now, he has this terrible ill. He has this mental difficulty. He has some other difficulty or other and he now says, "It mustn't exist." That's his statement there. "It mustn't exist." And his next statement after that: he said, "All right, don't exist!" Grrrr.

You set up a machine – let's go into that a little closer – you set up this machine or something to go on and shift and change the anchor points of the space, manufacture the energy involved and take care of the objects. And you set up this machine, you say, "I'm no longer responsible for this. I have no further responsibility for this now, and therefore it's others' space and it will go on happening, and therefore I can continue to have this space because somebody else is making it." See, we could get into that rather shifty bypass. And so we could, then, have – not over too long a time – but we could have a consistent alter-isness.

Well, what do you know? It keeps on existing. Well, "All right," he says, "I'll change it on a gradient scale. I'll chip away at the corners of it," and so forth. Well, he'll at length decide he can't do anything about it.

And this alteration would continue to take place and continue to take place as long as we at least kept one tiny little fingernail on the machine over here. We weren't looking to see, you see, that we had the fingernail on. But as long as we had that fingernail just touching that machine we were all right. See, we said, "Just that much of it is ours." You see?

One of the actions that he would finally do would be to draw a black curtain over the thing – that's one of the basic actions on this. He says," Now, look. I can't change it at all." He's trying to affect not-isness by using alter-isness. See? Not-isness would not take place by a postulate, he discovered – or thought he discovered – so the basic thing he must do immediately then is to start changing it on a gradient scale, which is to say, alter-isness. And it just stays right there. And he is already running on a failed postulate of not-isness.

And he says, "I have everything all set up; it's beautifully set up and it'll all run automatically and I don't have to worry about it anymore. After all, a fellow created this universe, other people are the ones who caused time to take place – they tell me when to get up and when to go to bed, and I've just got everything all set, and it's totally other-determined now." It becomes just that: totally other-determined. But it also, for the individual, passes by the boards. He's no longer postulating a persistence, he's no longer changing any objects in space, and so he will simply sit still. Everything gets very dim; everything gets very thin and so on.

So what's his activity of change?

Well, the funny part of it is, in that state, he couldn't even keep an aberration going. But his alter-isness has been practiced so long after the fact of not-isness, that even though he sits still, he'll keep on changing something. And that condition is known as figuring, thinking – thinking as we call figuring. He'll try to change something and he feels, "Well, I will just sit there and think and that will keep the universe moving, it'll keep time going," and so on. There's only one trouble with this: he is dealing basically with the root stuff of what makes universes. But now that he has sunk into that category where he's doing nothing but "consider" again – he is not creating or moving anything – he is going to have a very difficult time of it. In fact, everything is just going to get dimmer and dimmer and less real and less real.

His activity of change is then proceeding from the basic postulate that it must not be, which is proceeding from another basic postulate that it is, which is proceeding from the basic postulate that he's there in the first place (you see that?), which is proceeding from the basic postulate that there must be a "there" for him to be at.

Well, what will persist there is that which he is still changing, which is his worry about his aberration. In other words, the only thing – this is not esoteric or difficult – the only thing which goes on persisting is that which a person is actively working to change. Now, that's a horrible thing, isn't it? But that's all that goes on persisting.

So we trace back these basic postulates and we discover a little rule here. And this little rule is that an individual has a condition and the condition continues to exist as long as the individual has a condition.

Now, it is not true, then, that you get into a static, completely fixed state by changing something. You can pass up or down on the line of not-isness and alter-isness. You could actually alter conditions. Things can get better because you work at it. If you don't believe this, go out sometime and sit down in the middle of a field out on some mountainside. You just sit there, you see? And you make no provision whatsoever for work of any kind. You don't try to make a camp – you don't do anything like that. And you could make it much better for yourself and much more interesting simply if you'd go out and start dragging in some brush and make yourself a lean-to and fix yourself up a fireplace and bank your lean-to in such a way as the water won't run into it. It doesn't matter what you do. As long as you're moving pieces of mass around, you would then get up to a point, however – you think you're working toward that point, usually – where you wouldn't have to do anything else. And of course the moment when you get to the point where you don't have to do anything else, (quote)"time hangs heavy on your hands,"(unquote). Why does it hang heavy on your hands? Hangs heavy? It isn't even moving.

Now, that sounds like an idiotic little rule, but it's a very, very true little rule. It'll continue as long as he has a condition.

No, time is going to move as long as you go and move pieces of bark and trees and dig little ditches and scramble for a living, and so on, go out and fish and so forth. You're going to get time. And you can sit there for a number of years and just have a busy time of it and be quite interested in existence and so forth and go right along happily. And then all of a sudden you win – they got a carrier pigeon to you, or something of this sort – and you found out that you won the Irish Sweepstakes. And now you can hire twelve men to keep this camp. And this camp turns into a mountain lodge and you get all the machinery you possibly can from the city. And boy, while you're doing this, this is tremendous, you see? So you finally wind up with a swimming pool and a beautiful hot-water heater and you wind up with everything nicely appointed, and what do you know? You've got everything done, you see – it's all finished – and you sit back and you are just exactly in the same position, as far as time is concerned, of you sitting on a mountainside moving no masses of any kind whatsoever. (Quote)"Time is hanging heavy again on your hands."

Well, why does he have a condition? He must have a postulate about the condition before he has the condition. Right? So there's a more basic postulate every time you find such a condition.

You can only have those things which you handle; you can only have those things which you move around.

In order to get over something, you have to have postulated that you have it. In order to recover, you must postulate that you have something from which to recover. In order to go through the actions of emptying a pocketbook, you must have had to have postulated that it was full and that it should be emptied.

But an individual gets into a tremendous protest against mass. He has decided that continuous survival of things is very bad. In other words, he starts to fight survival itself with not-isness.

Now, you're all too prone to look at existence and say," Well, there's existence there, and now we'll make some postulates." No, this is not quite the direction that we're drifting. You'd have to make the postulates to have existence there so that you could make some postulates to recover from having the existence there.

Now, as you know, not-isness is a highly specialized activity. It is the activity, actually, of causing something to vanish or dull down or become less, simply because it is too much. See? There's too much isness, the fellow considers, you know. He's gotten too much persistency, too much survival: Joe Jinks that got him across the barrel in a bank, you see, and took all his money away from him, and – well, there was just too much isness, you know? And the best way [thing] to do about that is to cause a not-isness, you see, and let's just fight everything.

Let's get back to this isness. A condition has to be postulated before it can be unpostulated. That's right, isn't it? Well, so that any condition to have any existence or persistence must be based on time of some sort. Well, therefore, there must be a time postulate. And we find out that an individual doesn't have any time unless he continues to postulate it. An individual ceases to have time to the degree that he ceases to postulate it.

Now, let's examine a war, for instance. A war is just simply each side saying the other side must cease to exist. And they are doing it with shot, shell, lead, dynamite, spears, arrows, deadfalls, and they're using energy, you see, to make other things cease to exist. Well, it was perfectly all right as long as you were building your camp, you see? But if you suddenly started to fight a war with somebody on the other side of the mountain, whereby you were saying he must cease to exist, you are fighting persistence by causing persistence. Now, get that: you are fighting persistence by causing persistence.

Now, when I say "cease to postulate time," I don't want you for a moment to get the idea that there's any witchcraft involved, that you have to go out with spider webs and mix them up with four quarts of morning sunlight and stir them all up with a whisper. There's no witchcraft involved in making this postulate. It's simply this kind of a postulate: "Continue." Just get the notion of continuing something and you will have a time continuum.

You want to know why a war, which shouldn't ever take more than a couple of days, goes always on and on and on and on and on. They got so bad a few centuries ago that they had a hundred years of nothing but war, and everybody was saying everybody else mustn't exist. And they kept moving objects around to cause existence to cease. Now, you get how these postulates could become completely tangled?

Now, you could get that notion right now. Just sort of get an idea of a little piece of space out in front of you there and you have the notion "Continue" about this little piece of space. All right. That's making time. You've made time. That's all the postulate there is. There isn't even the words "Now I am going to make some time and I am going to cause the time to persist and continue." No, it's just urn-mmm. You see, you can do anything.

And the thetan does this because he so loves a problem. And that is the most problem there is. A thetan loves a problem. And that is the basic of problems. You move masses around – which, basically, you see, causes persistence – in order to cause persistence to cease. In other words, a hundred-percent paradox: cannot exist, can't ever happen, never has happened, and yet he will do this. But he is never happy doing it. There is no serenity involved in this. It becomes nothing but a complete chaos after a while.

All right. Now this time continuum is a tremendously interesting thing, particularly in view of the fact that so many people have agreed upon it. But their apparent agreement with it leads them to depend upon other people finally to carry on the agreement while they just sit there. And what do you know? Eventually they just sit there!

Probably the only joy any soldier ever gets out of a war – and don't, for heaven's sakes, don't spread this around because the society doesn't believe you should do this – the only joy anybody ever gets out of a war is by kidding himself that he has made absolutely nothing of something. You know, whether it's enemy troops or tanks or ships or something like that, there's a big whee in this, a big thrill. (Combat troops know about this.) It's only when they cease to make nothing at will, apparently, that they become very downhearted.

Now, you'll find many a boy who's having a bad time simply sitting at home in his bedroom – just sitting there. What's he stopped doing? Well, he couldn't have any motion, he says.

Hardly anybody would be able to comprehend what is known as a military rout whereby a body of troops suddenly is instantly and immediately disheartened and just completely quits. It's a strange phenomenon, a phenomenon which has been rather incomprehensible: how fast troops will go into a complete, headlong retreat.

Well, motion consists of this: consecutive positions in a space. Now, he'd have to conceive that he had some space and that he'd have to have some consecutive motions in it.

Well, let's say they keep shooting at a castle on a hill. And they just keep shooting at this castle and shooting at this castle, and the castle keeps shooting back, and they keep firing at the castle and the castle keeps shooting back. Well, just about that time they start to go to pieces in morale. They can't make nothing out of something, observably; the castle continues to live.

If you could just ask such a person to go out and trim the hedge – just no more, no less – just tell him to go out and trim the hedge; if you ask him to go out and put a piece of chalk on the sidewalk all the way around the block, every five feet, you would see considerable recovery in his case.

They bog down on that rather badly. They get to be rather 1.5. (And, actually, that is the manifestation of 1.5: people using force to make nothing of something which continues to exist in spite of it.) And they'll suddenly drop. It isn't a slow curve. They enter it rather slowly and then they'll just suddenly go to pieces – their morale will go to pieces and so forth. Because the only compensation they have for war is the fact that as thetans, you see, they can observe that they are at least going through the motions of, and have the manifestation of, making nothing of form. And the sadness underlying it, to them, is the fact that they don't make nothing of it, really.

Why? Well, he knows that he'd have to go all the way around the block or he knows that he would have to finish trimming the hedge. See? Or he would have to come around to his door again, you see, on the block, or come around to the other side of the yard. In other words, he can continue to postulate a time continuum against the objects which are already there.

Beyond this point there's still all kinds of suffering takes place, and sadness, and it goes on and on. But you start moving that many particles with that much velocity, such as a German 88, and you'll get persistence. I mean, that shell bursts. We don't find the fellow on the ground is still there – the fellow that it hit in the vicinity of – but there's persistence. Somebody has to go through his effects, and then somebody's got to write a letter home and say he died a hero, and then somebody else has got to carry the news through. And then there's people at home. And he's left a hole in the society one way or the other. And this goes on and on and on. And then years later, why, they dig up what's left of him and ship him back over and put him into a cemetery. You know. I mean, there's persistence occasioning here.

Now, you could just say to this fellow, "All right. Now get the idea of moving this dish. Now move it." Now get the idea of moving this dish again. Get the position you're going to move it to, now. Now move it." "Now get the idea of moving this dish. Now get the place you're going to move it to, and move it."

And what's persisting here? Well, there was that particle, it sure was moving fast. And any time we get a particle moving with this much velocity, we get some persistence. And in a war all they can think of is terms of more and more and more particles moving with more and more velocity to cause less and less persistence on the part of the enemy.

Hard as it might seem for some people to conceive, an individual can be made violently ill with this. Why? What's kicking back there? The thetan can't get that sick, certainly. Well, this individual's agreement with the body – he is the body, the body is himself, therefore, everything that happens to the body is what happens to himself and everything that happens to himself is what happens to the body. In other words, he's in a superidentification.

You want to know why the German nation keeps fighting and keeps overrunning its borders. Well, it can't do anything else by this time. I mean, from legion times forward, people have been going in there saying, "You mustn't persist. And these fast-moving particles which we're making you handle will make it so."

What postulate is this individual already riding with?

Oh yeah? This can't be, you see?

Now, let's take a look at isness. He has to conceive that he has a body before he can recover from one.

So we lead into anything about which we find man extremely puzzled. We lead into that one little formula there of: "We're going to take particles" – which is the mechanism of making things persist – "we're going to take particles and make things not persist." And any time you find anybody in (quote) "difficulty" or in the middle of a problem, just look at the basic anatomy of a problem, which is that anatomy. It's "We're going to cause a nonpersistence by the use of the mechanisms which cause persistence." You see that?

Let's get this salient and horrible fact, that this whole thing is monitored by isness, no matter how much not-isness. You see, not-isness is always pursuant to isness. No matter how much alter-isness that takes place… You see, you've got an as-isness, then alter-isness has to take place to get an isness. Well, if you have any isness persisting on a continuum – and that is our basic definition of isness. Isness is something that is persisting. As-isness is something that is just postulated or just being duplicated, you see?

You're going to get a game. There's undoubtedly going to be a game occur here. Going to be lots of problems.

As-isness, that's just no alteration taking place, and as-isness contains no life continuum, no time continuum, nothing! See? It'll just go anytime you postulate a perfect duplicate for anything – same space, same object, same time-boom! If you postulated it all the way through without any limiter postulate hanging around at all, it would just be gone, and that's all there is to it. It'd be gone for everybody else too.

Now, you want to know how to take apart a problem: Just look where the person is using the particles which, you know, by changing them, will cause persistence in order to make a nonpersistence. In other words, in order to create a not-isness. Where is he using alter-isness to create not-isness? He'll be using alter-isness to create a not-isness, and of course will be getting, consistently and continually, an isness, which is a continuous state.

This isness is your monitoring postulate.

I say it's a hypothetical state. It's hypothetical because you can never stop it, you can never arrest it and you can never take a look at it. You know? Any time that you really recognized an isness and so forth that was not in a state of change, why, it'll disappear. It'll vanish or it'll dim down. Something will happen with relationship to it. So you always have to look at the change. This is the fellow living up the time track; this is the fellow living in the past, and so forth. He's looking at the changes, he's looking at the changes, and he isn't looking at the reality.

An individual couldn't possibly get into trouble with as-isness, except if you consider losing everything trouble. But it would be things that he was losing which he either didn't want or had just postulated into existence. In other words, as-isness is an exact duplication or an exact creation. All as-isness is doing is merely accepting the responsibility for having created it, and anybody can accept the responsibility for anything. That's all as-isness is when it operates as a perfect duplicate.

Actually, that's a very healthy state of mind. You talk about healthy mind states – that's a fine, healthy mind state: The fellow is looking at the changes, he's looking at what will be, he's very cheerful about how many particles he can move around and cause something to come into existence or persist, or he knows the proper modus operandi for knocking things out that he wants to destroy: just as-isness. And that would destroy it perfectly adequately and he could start in again.

There's two kinds of as-isness: there's the as-isness, you postulate it in the space and time; you know, you postulate it right there where it exists. And the other one is, the as-isness where you re-postulate it; you see, you just postulate it again. The object already exists. There is an isness being approximated as an as-isness and it becomes an "as-is-that-isn't"; it becomes, then, a not-isness.

Well, if you, as I say, want to look at the basic mechanics of any problem which is causing any trouble, why, you just find the matter of the particle motion – the alter-isness, in other words – which is aimed with the goal of not-isness. And of course that's impossible. Your preclear who is hanging fire in processing, by the way, he's doing this. He's using particles to knock down ridges, something on this order. Actually, he'd feel a lot better if he'd simply go out and trim the hedge. You know, let him move around something that is not quite as damaging, with the same goal. Because if he's all messed up with his engram bank, and he's all messed up with tremendous ridges and black ridges and that sort of thing, and he sits there as a thetan creating particles and bombarding these ridges, what are you going to get? You're going to get a persistence of ridges, aren't you? So that kind of processing won't do him a bit of good – actually, it won't do him a bit of good.

If you just created it as an as-isness, unless you altered it rapidly, you would get a notisness. And if you exactly approximated an isness as an as-isness, you would again get the same result. You got the same result both times – not-isness.

That's why we never use flows in processing. You can process objects if you want to, and you process space if you want to, but we'll just stay away, as a general principle, from flows. Why? This is a flood of particles moving this way or that, so we just won't bother with flows in processing. And, therefore, running of concepts attended by the running of flows is just something we won't have much to do with.

As-isness, perfectly done, if not followed by alter-isness becomes a not-isness, quickly and immediately – but right now.

Now, your thetan has a great objection – because of this communication formula as used in this universe – a great objection to somethingnesses. He looks across a distance and he sees a somethingness, and this begins to tell him after a while that he has to be a something too. And he doesn't like this. He doesn't enjoy this, really, because it's an other-determined something that he has to be. It's by looking at a wall he has to be a wall, you see? And that's what this universe is dictating to him.

Now, you've had that experience in knocking out engrams, facsimiles and so forth. It hasn't occurred to anybody yet, fortunately, to simply exactly approximate the body. Treat the body as an as-isness and go your way. Well, you say, well, it's got a lot of facsimiles and so forth. All right. Treat them as the same as-isness, all in one operation – boom.

Well, actually, because it's all a consideration in the first place, he doesn't have to fall into that little grave. He doesn't have to fall into that one; he doesn't have to do that kind of a shift at all. He can simply say," I'm looking at the wall," and see the wall. You see? But after a while, he gets into the mechanics of perception, the mechanics of communication, he's using energy in order to communicate with energy.

But of course you had to assume you had a body before you could possibly treat it with an as-isness.

There's nothing wrong with that except to the degree that he loses his fluidity on it. As long as he could maintain the idea that he was simply communicating by postulate, that he was communicating, he's doing all right. Well, when he drops below that level and you get enforced communication – when he's made to stand still and be talked to, you know; when he's made to stand to and hold that ridge, you know, and when he's made to sit there and absorb that textbook (you know, any one of these things; he gets under this bombardment) – and he starts fighting the communication formula. And of course we get a persistence, then, of this universe's communication formula.

Now, existence goes this way: there is an isness. And then the individual – and this is the only error you could make, and this is another method, slightly, of getting a continuation, because it is an alter-isness. You see? There is an alter-isness right there between isness and not-isness. The second you say, "There it is. Now I don't want it and it doesn't exist," you see, you've postulated that you're changing it. But it is a very abrupt and particular kind of isness, is not-isness.

Remember, this universe has got a communication formula. And that formula is based on the fact that two things can't occupy the same space. So, immediately, we fall away from "cause, effect and no-distance." You see? Well that, actually, is a bottom scale. But bottomscale cause and effect occupying the same space, is almost occupying the same space. They're not a complete identification of source point and receipt point. There's still a slight distance, no matter how downscale you go. It's only way upscale that you can get a perfect identification between cause point and effect point. These two points can be coincident way upscale. Well, all right, if they can be coincident way upscale, an individual could put a distance on them or anything. But to the degree that he began to agree with this universe, he would have to have a distance across which to look. Because he can't occupy the same space as the object at which he's looking. See, that is this universe's formula.

And instead of following isnesses with not-isnesses, we followed them with asisnesses, nobody could ever possibly get into any trouble. The way you get into trouble is to follow an isness with a blunt, thud, not-isness. You say," There it is. I don't want it. It isn't." Oh-oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!

And that's, by the way, native to a lot of universes. It's how you keep everything stretched apart. You say, "Two things can't occupy the same space. Therefore, we've got to have a lot of spaces and things more or less fixed in these spaces, and we've got to keep them all apart. And therefore they are separate objects…"And we go into a lot of stuff like that, but we also go into the communication formula. And it says, then, that cause point can't occupy the same spot as effect point. So we've got cause, distance, effect as this universe's communication formula.

Now, what's the difference between these two operations? Very interesting difference. You've got an isness. Here's an ashtray. You don't want the ashtray anymore. One operation – a correct one, as far as you're concerned, if you just really didn't want it anymore – would be simply do an as-isness. You know, as-isness, perfect duplicate. Boom! – gone. See, you haven't got an ashtray anymore. Certainly you haven't got one.

Now, as the individual agrees that two things can't occupy the same space, and as he agrees with this communication formula, he then gets into a situation where he says, "Now, look at all these somethings around here. And I am actually basically a nothing, and therefore if I have to duplicate these by becoming a something, I don't like that. I can't retain my own native form and so forth. I'm in bad shape here. I can't fly around and be a spirit. I've got to be pinned down here, I've got to be an energy mass in order to look at these energy masses."

This baffles people when you're running perfect duplication on Opening Procedure by Duplication, and you include in it the step "Make a perfect duplicate of it." The thing disappears if they're going real good. Then they're asked to come back to it and pick it up, and this seems to be an invalidation. It isn't invalidation, because they're in agreement with the auditor and the auditor has repostulated it into existence. So they actually, by just saying, "All right" and walking back to it again, they have to postulate it into existence to pick it back up again, and they miss that step.

And he doesn't like this. He objects to this.

So in running Opening Procedure by Duplication, you would have to say, "All right. Now, consider a book is over there." "Now walk over to it." "Now pick it up," and so forth – weight, color and get a description. "All right. Now make a perfect duplicate of it" or "Put it down. Make a perfect duplicate of it." "Now walk away from it."

So we get to the other manifestation on the track: The only objection the thetan has to anything, if he's having a big objection, is to something – just any something.

Well, you tell an individual to walk away from it, he's just as-isness'd it. See? It's gone.

Then this, of course, will invert. And having objected to a something hard enough, you see, he'll turn around after a while and start objecting to a nothing.

You'd say instead, "Walk over to the other book." Now, when he finished that, when it comes to this first book, "Now consider there is a book over there." "Now walk over to it and pick it up and make a perfect duplicate." Of course, it's gone again.

Now, how is it then that we get any change at all if not-isness doesn't work? Well, there is the system known as valences. One ceases to become himself and becomes something else as his sole method of change. See that? He's causing a persistence by saying, "Things mustn't persist." And he keeps saying, "Mustn't persist, mustn't persist," and it goes on persisting. And he uses more particles and more particles and more particles, and pretty soon the United States Army is wearing coal-scuttle helmets. See? Just like that. The government says, "Down with Karl Marx. Down with Karl Marx. Down with Karl Marx. And everybody is now going to be taxed according to his ability to pay…"See that?

This invalidative factor of agreement is that for you it's gone and for somebody else it's still there, finds agreement. Your willingness to be a good fellow, which postulate you are also running on, lets the other fellow put it back there again. So an individual can get upset about as-isness. Now, this just isn't auditing, this is in living. You say that car isn't there anymore and then your wife keeps bawling you out because that car is still sitting out there – mass of junk. Well, you've decided it wasn't there anymore. To heck with it. And she wants it moved! Well, you listen to this for awhile and you finally come off the postulate, and postulate that there is an isness out there and go do something about it, you see? Then you have to use action. Well, if you could just ask her to just look at it, make a perfect duplicate of it, then you'd both be happy. Then maybe the neighbors would complain. Well, instead of going into terrific agreement with these neighbors, and so forth, you just have them come over and make an as-isness of the thing. They wouldn't see the car anymore either.

So we get another type of change. If two things can't occupy the same space, therefore, we are an identity persisting. Therefore, the best way to get a change and get an utter change is simply to be somebody else. In other words, completely shift valence. And because we want to win all the time, why, naturally shift to winning valences compared to oneself.

In other words, we would keep this up until anybody who had a basic vested interest in agreeing with the car had finally seen – and actually this would be the long way around. These individuals that are doing this, by the way, all consider themselves to be occupying a finite point of individuality and existence, you see? And they won't take the responsibility for every other person's consideration. To make a thing really disappear, you just have to take the responsibility for every viewpoint in the whole universe and say "As-is" – different operation.

Well, if one thinks one is losing, then anything can start looking like a winning valence. A beggar, utterly penniless and about to die, would look like a winning valence to some people.

But to follow an isness with an as-isness brings you into an actual not-isness – thing doesn't exist; an actual not-isness. But if you just postulate against this thing that it doesn't exist – and you've said a not-isness right here, you know; you didn't do an as-isness – you've done what? You have refused the responsibility for having created it and you have said, "Somebody else creates it and I don't want it." You've said "somebody else." You've postulated the existence of somebody else with regard to this thing, and you've said, "Another determinism is placing this thing before me and therefore I don't want it, so therefore I'm going to say that it isn't but it really belongs to somebody else."

And we get this valence-shifting going right along with "two things can't occupy the same space." So an individual goes out of this spot and over onto another spot. And when he is running a lot of not-isness, you can expect him to do a lot of valence shifting. He can't continue to be himself because he's in communication with nothing.

We have to postulate another determinism, which is to say, refute the responsibility for having created the object, before you can get such an appearance as a not-isness.

Well, at that time he will start to believe that he must have nothingnesses. And he goes from there into having to have somethingnesses. And he goes from there into having to have nothingnesses by change of valence. And, actually, no other deep significance to it.

Now, an individual can fail utterly. There's the Empire State Building, and he says," It isn't architecturally sound. It doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned." He's trying to postulate a not-isness; he's trying to make it unreal. He has to postulate right along with this that somebody else created the Empire State Building to get what we consider unreality or the manifestation of unreality. See? And the case which gets these unrealities is handling life on this basis: "Everybody else put it there and created it, and I really don't dare interfere with any determinism on their part, so I'll just kind of dim it down a little bit. I'll say it's not there."

Okay? Got it?

He goes rushing down a mountainside in a car that has the brakes burned out on [it], and there's a big boulder right down at the bottom of the hill, and he runs right straight into this big boulder – crash! – and just before he hits, you can always find him postulating this: "It's not there and I'm not here." Crush!

Only, you see, he doesn't do an as-isness. He doesn't say "I'm in a car rushing down the mountainside. I have the responsibility…" – you know, just this feeling; you wouldn't say all these words: "In a car rushing down a mountainside and all these people are in this car, and I'm in this car too; and there's a boulder there and the car is going to hit the boulder." Asis! – bing! No car, no boulder, no mountainside, no people. It would happen, even before he hit the boulder. See? Something would happen at this point.

This is a very curious lot of phenomena that we're fooling around with here, and of course, we have no serious intent with this phenomena, which is a fortunate thing. Otherwise, somebody realizing exactly how this is done would sooner or later, maybe, unmock the Republican Party or Russia – leave a hole. And of course to do that you would have to accept the viewpoint of two hundred million Russians or something like that. You see? And you could unmock Russia if you did that. But you'd have to take full responsibility.

Now, what's this full responsibility? Full responsibility merely says this: "I created it." When you ask somebody to make a perfect duplicate of it, he's going through the mechanics of creating it. Therefore, it disappears. He knows, unless he throws some other-determinism in on the thing – in other words, practices some alter-ism on its creator – that it's not going to exist at all.

Now, the physical universe, as we look at it right around us here, is an isness for one reason only: we all agree that somebody else created it. Whether that is God or Mubjub or Bill, we agree that somebody else brought these conditions into existence. And as long as we are totally agreed upon this, boy, have we got everything solid. And the moment when we agree otherwise and we say, "Well, we made it," then it starts to get thin. Now, this will worry a preclear. It's just as if he feels he could never make another one. It'll get thin for him.

In the processing of reality, if you just handled isness all by itself, you would just have an individual start to look at what he considers to exist. And we would take the most solid manifestation of that and that would be the space in the vicinity, the walls in the vicinity, so on. That would be the most elementary process that we could do. We just start spotting spaces and walls – just that, no more. And we just keep spotting them and spotting them and spotting them. And let what happens happen. That's all – just let what happens happen. Just ask the individual to keep on spotting things. Very permissive, you see?

Now, supposing he kept on looking at them with his physical vision. We find out that he would get up to a certain level and then he'd start to have body somatics. Because making the body do this continually and so forth is actually processing a reality vaguely in the direction of an as-isness. See, it's not bluntly or sharply in the direction of as-isness, it's just asking him to process it a little bit in that direction. "Let's just take these walls as you find them." You know? "Let's take the spaces around here just as you see them." In other words, "Let's look at another spot and let's look at another spot and let's look at another spot. Let's just take these things as you see them." And of course after a while the walls are going to get brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter and bri… and duller and duller and duller and duller and duller and then gone.

Well, when they get bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, that's all right: the body will still feel pretty good. But when it starts getting dull, dull, dull, du… thin, thin, thin, the body doesn't like this; it does not think this is the best thing to do. It would not recommend this as subject matter for an article in Bernarr MacFadden's magazines. Because it knows it'll fall if it stands in space.

So therefore this very, very simple process would not necessarily have to be completed simply by remedying havingness, but just by getting the fellow to close his eyes and spot anything he could see, no matter how vaguely, as a thetan. Just spot anything he sees. If he sees a nothingness, okay; if he sees a somethingness, okay. Just get him to spot it. We don't care what he sees. We might indicate various directions, but we would make a very bad mistake if we indicated them as body directions – on your right, on your left, above your head. Oh, no. No, no. We just ask him to look around, and what he sees, "Spot a couple of spots on it." "Now, did you do that? "Now, something else: "Spot a couple of more spots on that."

Well, we know already, if we've run it permissively in the environment, he's had to point them out and walk around to them, he will obey orders. Now that we've got him to a point where he will obey orders on this subject, we can trust him to close his eyes and spot spots or spot spaces or spot anything he wants to spot with his eyes closed. And we just simply keep on spotting them.

And that would be the most elementary process there is in Scientology.