Okay. Now we have these various conditions of existence – four various conditions of existence.

I want to cover with you this morning a little more about the various states of existence.

These four conditions of existence which we are studying are actually variations of existence itself. They are certain attitudes about existence and they are the basic attitudes about existence.

Now, all we need to know about existence is that it is, you see? Whatever complexityit has, it still is. Now, it isn't ever was, which is the most interesting part of this particular nomenclature. There isn't any will-be-ness and there's no was-ness; there's simply isness.

Now, we could make many more attitudes and we would find that we were all deriving them from these four. But we could make these four and find out that we were all deriving them from one: isness, or reality.

Now, if we talk about existence, people spontaneously add to it will-be-ness and wasness. See? So existence is not the word we want. We want the word isness. We want just the word we're using. We want that state which is.

There has to be an isness before you can do an alter-isness; there has to be an isness before you can do a not-isness. Isn't that right?

Now, the Dhyana makes the error of "beginningless and endless time." But that is not really an error. It's an error as far as the symbols involved are concerned. Now, we don't know that the symbols that were used by Gautama to describe this manifestation added up into English as "beginningless and endless time" – you see, we've already crossed one language jump – and so we don't quite know what he was talking about. It was an interesting thing that you could represent this by a continuous line which joined itself. Any kind of a complexity of circle, in other words, would represent the fact that we had a beginning-less and endless somethingness.

Okay. There has to be an isness before you can do a not-isness. Unless, of course, you want to postulate it in reverse. But we are talking, now, about this particular universe and how it got here.

Now, that is too complicated an explanation. In view of the fact that time depends upon a postulate, you could say, "Yes, it is beginningless and endless." You could say as well that it's linear; you could say as well that it is continuous; you could say as well that it's Eastern Standard or sidereal. It doesn't matter now how you qualify it. Having once made the postulate, you can then go on making further postulates. Nobody is going to limit anybody in making postulates.

And we discover as we look along the track that these four conditions of existence presuppose the existence of a postulate known as time. In other words, all existence presupposes the postulate time.

But there happens to be, strangely enough, a truth lying back of time-there is a truth lying back of time. Time is a postulate.

Now, time is just a plain, ordinary postulate which says out of a nonconsecutive beingness, which doesn't exist forever – there's no forever, see? It would just be there, see? No forever involved, no instant involved, it just hasn't any consecutive existence at all. And out of this we would have to make a postulate "there would now be a consecutive existence" – consecutive existences. Or there'd have to be a consecutive series of states. And out of this consecutive series of states, we would get, then, a parade of time; a time continuum.

Now, it doesn't even have to be agreed on. You could have a time span all by yourself. You could shut your eyes and say, "Now I've sat here for a million years." In the next two seconds, you could say, "I'm going to sit here for a million years." Nothing about this – that's real time. Don't be so baffled if you dream for five seconds about a five-hour time span. You've just repostulated some time, that's all.Unless you continue to postulate time, you haven't got any. And that's the first and foremost thing you can know about time – unless you continue to postulate it, you haven't got any.

Now, an individual who is simply occupying space without any energy involved whatsoever has the same feeling, but a bad one – he doesn't have a good feeling about it. Without any space, he could have a good feeling about it – no space, no energy, no continuum; he could have a fairly good feeling about this. But when he gets into the matter of a space, now he has this feeling of forever-ness unmocked. He makes that uncomfortable for himself, so he will now go on creating consecutive states of existence and have a game. Space is necessary to start this game, but when you've just got space and you've got nothing else, it's rather unbearable. Do you see that? You're already occupying, so there is an existence there, but it isn't an existence which has any consecutive difference of state. And that's real poor. You get this feeling every once in a while in space opera, if you're ever fooling around with that.

Now, that fellow who depends on a clock up there to move time for him is going to get in trouble sooner or later. He's going to get (quote)"stuck on the track"(unquote) and (quote)"out of pace with his fellow man"(unquote) because he's depending upon their agreement on time to give him time. And the only way he can have time is to continue to postulate time.

All right. Now, here we have, then, existence in one state being conditional upon a time postulate which would include a space-energy manifestation. We have to have space, we have to have energy, and now we don't necessarily have a consecutive existence, do you see? But this would be a simultaneousness. There would be no question about whether you made the postulate for space and energy before you made the postulate of time, or the postulate of time after you made the space-energy manifestation. Be no question of any postulate before or after, because you have not postulated the postulate which causes a before or after. And that postulate would be time.

One of the roughest things you will discover with anybody who is having trouble with his case is to have him put something on the future time track. And he'll say, "Oh, no!"

So, actually, to have a game, it's a simultaneous action whereby you postulate space, energy, time – space, energy, continuous existence – which is an as-isness, space, altered; energy, as-isness altered; time, as-isness altered. Your three items there have to have the time postulate with alter-isness in them in order to get a persistence. That's how it's done in this universe. You don't just have to do this all the time, but when those three consecutive postulates are made simultaneously, why, we then have a continuum of existence demarked by differences of position of the particle in the space, and we have time being marked out for us very neatly.

Now, one of the ways to do this: You say, "Can I have an appointment with you? Let's make it at 2:05 this afternoon."

We have to alter position in order to get a continuousness. We have to say, "It is here.

"Hell, no!"

Now it's here. Now it's here. Now it's here."

See? I mean, that's upsetting.

Now, there's another way of making time come true. We say "Space-no space, spaceno space, space-no space, space-no space, space-no space." You're postulating, however, that you can do this before you can say" Space-no space, space-no space."

That's why, when you pick somebody up off the street, you don't tell them to come around to see you later at your office. You've undoubtedly picked up somebody who has attention on the subject of postulating time. The thing for you to do is to take him right over to your office, if you possibly can. You see that? Don't put something on the future time track for him any more than you can help, because the person who is really in difficulty, who has psychosomatic ills and so forth, has stopped postulating time. And the moment he stops postulating time, he doesn't have any.

Well now, this postulate is so easy for a thetan to make, it might be considered a native part of his mock-up. So here we have, however, before this, an ideal state – that is to say, an idealized or just a theoretical state – we have this theoretical state whereby we merely have a static which has no space, no mass, no wavelength, no motion, no time, which has the ability to consider. And we are dealing with the basic stuff of life, just by definition.

Now, how much time has a fellow got and how much time is he rushing and how much time is he sitting still with? And all of this is all very interesting, except it depends on just this one fact: Your individual is or is not postulating time for himself.

Now, it is very peculiar that we, mixed up in all of this energy, and so forth, and way on down the track from the time this postulate was made – you see anything specious in the way my remarks are hanging together? – very difficult and very strange that we could even discuss this higher state of existence which was made trillions of years ago. No. You see, it must have been concurrent with this, right here. And so we never say – we don't use the word existence, we use the word is. We don't use the word then or will be. See, we don't go back into the past or go into the future for this continuousness at all; it's just is.

Looking over a very busy career, I can see definitely the speed factor of composition as derived from strictly one postulate. I used to write about a hundred thousand words a month by writing three hours a day, three days a week. Now, that's a lot of words, but it never occurred to me that it was a lot of words. In other words, you simply postulate that that much action can fit in that much time. You postulated the time. There's nobody sitting there agreeing with you or disagreeing with. Actually, you're just walking free. Well, I might as well have postulated eight million words in one hour per month. I was just saying how much physical-universe time can be allocated to the time span which I am using in which to compose. You see that? You get that as a difference.

Now, in past ages it was only necessary to say," Well, reality is reality and you'll just have to accept it, you know. It's just reality. Nothing more you could know about it than that."

Now, let's take anybody out there doing a job of work, and we'll find something very, very peculiar. We'll find somebody who is just working like mad-he's just working, working, working, and he's just got to get it all done, he's got to get it all done. And the end of the day comes and he has nothing done. You know? It's all in a confusion. And he was awfully busy all day but nothing happened. Did you ever run into anybody like this, huh?

Oh, yes! There's a lot more you could know about reality than simply it is.

And the next day he goes on and – oh, he's just so busy – he's just got to do this and he's got to do that. And he finally is sitting still, presenting a very funny and silly picture. He's sitting still, not even moving, not even talking, not even writing – accomplishing absolutely nothing – telling you how awfully busy he is and how he hasn't got any time. And he'll eventually collapse down to the point where he has no time of any kind whatsoever to employ on anything and that's why he's sitting there. But that's perfectly reasonable to him; that's perfectly reasonable.

So, is, is not a complete and embracive definition of reality. It's not complete and embracive. Because reality has a certain mechanical structure, and that structure is composed of these four states of existence. And it'd actually take all these four states of existence to make the kind of an existence which we are now living, and that is to say, we would have to have isness, then not-isness and alter-isness. And did it strike you before that we might have forgotten and might never have known about, and it might not have been called to our attention directly, this other state? We've always had these three states: alter-isness, not-isness and, of course, isness.

He'll get so he can't start anything. Why? He has no time in which to start it, much less to finish it. So he starts in originally by saying, "Well, I haven't got time to finish it," then "I haven't got time to do it well," then "I haven't got time to do it. I haven't got even time to start it." And then, finally, "I can't think about doing it."

Alter-isness and not-isness, of course, are variations of isness and depend upon isness. But there was a fourth one, and that's as-isness, and that is a perfect duplicate. As-isness. And that condition natively exists at an instant of creation. It exists at this instant of creation. And it also can be made to exist again anytime anybody wants to make it exist again simply by saying, "As is."

And that's what happens to a person's doingness. It's his ability to postulate the amount of time. And the only confusion that you would get into about this is the fact that we have an agreed-upon time span. But you might recognize that the time for an entire nation or an entire earth could thereby go awry.

If anybody had truly and actually sat down and accepted reality and had got all of his fellow beings to simply accept reality, we wouldn't have any. That's all.

How much can you do in an hour? In an hour? What's an hour? An hour is the length of time it takes the sun to move fifteen degrees in the sky. The sun isn't doing anything. What's this coordination?

So I think it must have been a half-hearted thing or acceptance of reality in the past must have been defined as "Let's see, now. I think everybody should be unhappy, miserable, oooh, three-quarters dead, enslaved under very thorough control. Now, that is reality and I want you to accept it."

Well, you'll find out that when a country can still postulate time or a world can still postulate time, then, an hour would be a tremendous amount of doing-ness. They would have a festival at sunrise and a couple of games, you know? And then along about noon, why, have a feast. And that leaves them all afternoon – that leaves them all afternoon completely empty – and so that would be a good time to go boating so that they would have time in order to practice up for the dance they were giving that night. And then they'd finish up about midnight and say, "My, what an idle day!" This is the amount of time they could postulate in terms of doingness. Do we have time to do it or don't we? is the question.

That's what the psychiatrist does, you know? "You'll just have to accept the fact that you're a homosexual."

This is very simple to understand if you understand that time itself is merely a postulate. It's a postulate.

The fellow has made it plain many times that he wasn't a homosexual, he's a heterosexual.

Now, what is the – if it's a postulate, does it have an anatomy as such? Well, yes, it's a complexity of postulates, the way you look at it in this particular universe at this time, but not very complex.

"Well, you're really a… You're really a… a paleontological uh… aphrodisiac. That is exactly uh… the psychiatric classification that we got out of a Latin book and you'll just have to accept this reality or we won't have any more to do with you as a patient. We'll kick you the hell out of here." You know. Good, solid treatment. I'm afraid this was the way reality was being classified all along the track.

Time depends on change. In order to have time, you have to alter things, because isness has a condition there – alter-isness. In order to get an isness to persist, you of course have to have something there about persist, which would consist of the time postulate. The way the postulates have gone together which make up this universe – not the theoretical way in which they could go together to make up a universe… Get this as a different thing. You see, you could go about this just all out in an entirely different fashion and postulate time and still have time, but it would not necessarily be the postulates which were made and are made and are in this universe right here and now. See? It wouldn't necessarily be the same set of postulates if we suddenly dreamed it up.

"I'm going to dream something up and I'm going to hold a gun on you." "And the trouble with you is you won't face reality." But whose reality? Whose reality in each case? Somebody else's! So this reality was actually another condition: other-determined as-isness, hm? Other-determined, which is not-isness.

So we have to subject the postulates of time to a little subjective truth-proof, you know – and get ourselves a test on it. And we find out that we can make things persist by changing them. If we keep on changing something and change it and change it and change it and change it, we're getting persistence. But actually, what we're doing is postulating the time for it to persist in.

The way you get not-isness is to say, "As is created by you." Aw, that's an awful one! That's a big curve. And that is not-isness. It's an as-isness created by somebody else, which of course isn't an as-isness at all. It's a very specious as-isness. And, naturally, the world would sort of look unreal to everybody if Joe Blow and Doctor Stinkwater and the Heavily Laden Order of Pyramids all said, "This is reality and this is as it is, and you'd better accept it." We've got a not-isness. Isn't it?

And when an individual has stopped postulating time, he's stopped perceiving. So perception and the postulate of time are identical phenomena. You see? Perception and postulation are the same thing.

So if everything starts to sort of dim down on you and you kind of find things going out, you know, and getting sort of resistively thin… Do you know what I mean? Resistively thin; they're all sort of transparent, but they're there? Or they're all hung with black sheets. You must assume at that time that you have faced up to too many as-isnesses which somebody else created.

You should recognize, very clearly, that time is a postulate. Because when you're working with a preclear who is having difficulty perceiving, you know that there is something wrong with the time postulate, therefore there is something wrong with change. See?

In other words, somebody else says, "This is the way things are and you said it." You get that operation in conversation. "And yesterday you said to me – just when I got up, you said to me, 'You never work, you are a dirty loafer.' You remember that, don't you?" I think every familial unit of thetans when they get all together, and so on, should always have, not a bible, but so-and-so's "Rules of Evidence" lying right there to be resorted to at any time. And there ought to be a court in every neighborhood to which you could repair and decide whether or not this was an as-isness or a not-isness.

Alter-isness is that part of the time postulate which we can most evenly and closely observe. And we find out that changing things brings time into being. It causes a persistence; we get a continuance of time by alter-isness. The mechanism of alter-isness gives us a perception of time.

Now, what is a not-isness? A not-isness comes about from that exact manifestation, or simply by the separate postulate "Well, it is and I regret it – it isn't." You know, you could have made it and then said it wasn't.

We find out somebody who is in a state where he believes he is about to perish will then try to change everything in his vicinity, right up to the point where he knows completely that he is perishing, at which moment he will simply succumb – bang! – and he will cease to exist or persist, you know, as that particular individuality. And he as himself without that individuality will proceed on and pick up another body.

Now, the funny part of it is that if you made it and you know you made it, you can always say," It doesn't exist now." By saying what? By saying "I made it." It as-isness'd, see? You accept the responsibility for having created it and you get a not-isness.

All right. We'll get the tremendous amount of change or accomplishment which has to take place immediately before death. Here we have people all around the place who aren't doing anything, their affairs are in horrible condition, they're out on the street or in businesses and so on.

So there are really two conditions of not-isness: there's just vanishment or the other one, which is what we mean, which is an isness which somebody is trying to postulate out of existence by simply saying "It isn't."

Now, if we were to go up to these people, one after the other – you know, I mean, let's put on a – oh, carry a little black bag (I'd forgotten what galaxy I was in for the moment). That's the badge of office – a little black bag and a stethoscope. One doesn't quite know what one does with a stethoscope but it's interesting. A stethoscope won't detect whether or not a person is dead or not, you know, really – they often miss. It's not a reliable instrument, but it's a badge of office.

A not-isness in our terminology would be this specialized case of an individual trying to banish something without taking responsibility for creating it. Definite, positive and precise definition: trying to vanish something without taking the responsibility for creating it.

A stethoscope is the dramatization of the serpent, of the caduceus. That's right. I'll have to write a paper on that. (Most acceptable thing I could possibly write for the AMA.)

And the only result of doing this is to make it all unreal, to make it forgotten, to make it back of the black screen, to make it transparent, to make it dull down, to give it over to a machine, to wear glasses – anything that you could possibly do to get a dim-down of an isness. And that is done by saying – just this, just this precise operation; no other operation: "I didn't make it. It isn't." See? "I didn't do it, so it doesn't exist."

Anyway, we have the little black bag and we go up to this fellow and we say to this fellow, "My dear fellow, I must inform you," having tapped the stethoscope against his chest, so he knows he's being hit by a snake (I think that's about it – yes, I'll have to write that paper). Anyway, we tap him and we say, "Oh! We have just learned through this diagnosis that you only have three months to live."

And that will always bring about this other condition of not-isness.

The funny part of it is you'll see a busy man, promptly. He'll really get busy. Well, he'll sit down in a slump, you know, for a moment or two – that's just the impact. And then he'll say, "Let's see. Time. Time. Oh! Alter-isness, alter-isness, alter-isness, alter-isness, alterisness, alter-isness, alter-isness," you know, change – "I've got to get my will straight, I've got to get this straight, I got to get that straight and I got to get Mary moved out of that house into the other house which I've been building. Gotta have this and that." And the months go by and the months go by and the years go by, and he's still alive.

See? "I didn't create it, I have nothing to do with it, I have no responsibility for this at all, so it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned." "Nhrrn-nrrn-nrrn-nrrn."

"Well," you say, "the doctor was wrong." No, the doctor wasn't wrong. As of that moment, the experience of the doctor demonstrated to him that people who had this illness (who had not been told that they had only three months to live) died in three months. What he's left out of it is the factor on people who have been told they only have three months to live. You tell somebody that he only has three months to live, and he will, of course, throw into gear – or not to necessarily say that he would throw into gear, but he could throw into gear – the only mechanism available to him to cause persistence in this universe, and that is alter-isness. And he would change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change.

Now, built into the woof and warp of the track, the very composite on which an individual is running – he doesn't have to run on these postulates at all, you see, but he is running on this makeup of postulates… He of course, then, will trigger into all the rest of his postulates and they'll cross-reference into sticking him right there with it. He's got it.

He right away has got to change his condition; that is the first thing he thinks of. You think that this is just natural that he would do that. No. We're talking on a higher echelon of philosophy. You tell him he's only got three months to live. "This is an unacceptable fact to him," you say, "and so therefore he's got to change his condition." No, worse than that – worse than that. He's got to change his condition. If he has no time persistence, he has got to change his condition. The one thing with which he can gain persistence is alter-isness. If he would simply change the furniture around in his office he'd live better. I mean, he'd live a little longer – the amount of change – because he can do that successfully.

Now, the only way he can get rid of it now is just to dim it down, dim it down.

It's unsuccessful changes which fix a person and cause a not-isness to occur.

Now, the funny part of it is that an individual can run a gradient scale of change on something if the gradient scale is back toward his acceptance of responsibility for having created it.

Now, unsuccessful and successful are themselves postulates. You know, "I am this individual, and this individual is supposed to persist." You could just as well say, "I am this individual and therefore this individual is not supposed to persist." I mean, you could make up your postulate that way just as well as the other way.

It would not be far enough to go, in Dianetics, simply to find out that your mother did it. That was what your mother said. That wouldn't be far enough to go. You'd have to go back this far: Mother said it – you know, you'd have to postulate that the time was now – Mother said it, and that keyed in the fact that here on the track, whether a million, two billion, eight billion, sixteen trillion years ago, "I said it."

But the accepted chain of considerations which go in to make up art criticism, appreciation, win-lose and so on – we just have a set of considerations. And we say, "Well, they are successful changes as long as the individual is doing it, and the changes are unsuccessful as long as somebody else is doing it." And that's very much a part of the win-lose factor and of the time factor, too. That's self-determinism. One merely has made the postulate that as long as one does it one is successful. You know, as long as one is able to accomplish the postulate, this makes up win. "I am now going to pick up my right finger. I won!" You see? "Picked up my right finger; I made the postulate good."

Every time somebody else can put one of your machines or one of your engrams into restimulation, it is only because he can work on something which was natively created by yourself. All things carry the germ of their own destruction. And you have postulated the germ of your own destruction. And then later on people come along and because you're in communication with them, and so forth, they can give you a key-in.

Well now, what's happened to the preclear is, he has made the postulate and then something has contraried the postulate to such a degree that he is fixed; he is fixed, he cannot change. You see?

So any engram, as we were operating with it in Dianetics, was a key-in. When I discovered that the whole track ran back-back-back-back-back – back. "No! No! No!" Backback-back. "No! My golly!" Back-back. "Where the heck are we now? Oh? Oh!"

When he makes the postulate, it just works out – in this universe; not necessarily the most theoretical or most optimum setup you could make, but in this universe it just happens to work out that this is the way it was. When you made a postulate and then didn't accomplish the goal postulated in that postulate (remember you were postulating time to postulate a goal), when you were unable to reach that particular attainment, then, of course, you hadn't changed anything.

We're back to where the guy did it in the first place. Well, that's very interesting. And the result of that was the essay on responsibility in Advanced Procedure and Axioms – the essay on full responsibility.

Well, the way you could make time was by changing the position of something, and that's the way time is made in this universe: change the position of something in space. Time is made by changing the position of something in space. And so we get all of the neutrons and the morons vibrating at a vast rate of speed, but a uniform rate of speed, changing their position in space. And then we can look around at several of these particles, such as the sun, Earth and other things, see that they're changing their relationships to each other in space at a uniform rate, and having perceived this, why, then, of course, we are looking at a change in time. Change of position brings about time.

Well, a fellow did. He created the condition from which he is now suffering. And he didn't even create it in other wise than he is now suffering it. But it has been keyed in and he has consented even to it being keyed in.

There is no such commodity as time. It isn't anything that can be poured from one bucket to the other. But then this happens to be true of matter too. You can't pour matter from one bucket to another, actually, unless you first made a postulate that you could. And in such a wise, time cannot take place until a postulate is made concerning it, and in this universe the postulate had to do with change of location in space. And when change of location in space occurred, then time occurred.

Nothing really is sneaking up on anybody. That's a horrible thing, isn't it? People haven't even made it worse. But we're having a good game. If that game is a game called psychosomatic illness, bereft lover, neglected baby, it's still a game. And as such, the individual is still playing all roles.

Well now, you could change something's location in space simply by lying about it, and you'd get a persistence. You'd come off as-isness. Now, the moment you change something's location in space, you come away from as-isness, and it doesn't unmock, so you get persistence.

Now, what happens is that as an individual goes along the line, he starts identifying himself with the source point and receipt point of the communication line. As a little child, he's the one who identifies himself as the one who is talked to. Very seldom do you ever discover a little child giving Mother a good lecture. You seldom discover this. But if you do remember it, you probably remember it with great satisfaction of the good lecture you gave your mother.

Now, an individual is as well off as he can change things in location in space. Let's take up the Prelogics and we find out the Prelogics – those that precede the Logics and Axioms – have to do with "a thetan is an energy-space production unit and that a thetan can change objects in location in space." And right next door to that, we have the fact that a thetan can create objects to change in space of his own creation. In other words, he can do all of these things, and we get that, in this universe – and this is pretty common to most universes – we get those postulates as the conditional postulates upon the universe.

Here is a condition: the individual has identified himself with a continuous-effect point or a continuous-cause point. And having said "I am now on this point," he now makes his considerations below the level of that point. See, he's considered he's on the point. Now all further considerations are monitored by this consideration that he's on the point, as long as he's on the point. Now, he'd have to recognize that he was on the point (an as-isness) before he'd come off the point. You see that?

Now, he makes another postulate and that other postulate, of course, is that something can persist and that there is a time stream, that there is a persistence and so on. And this postulate is represented as time. So when we locate something in space, we are actually working with the time postulate: persistence.

A process immediately occurs on such a level. If you just simply ask an individual, Straightwire, this question over and over and over and over and over: "Where could you be where you would be willing to recognize and realize that you were?" "Where could you be that you would be willing to recognize that you were?" And you just run the gradient scale all the way back up the line to the point where the individual recognizes, finally, "You know, I'm sitting right here!" There wouldn't be any mysticism involved in this.

If you see somebody who has failed often, what do you mean by failed? He has decided to move something in space and then hasn't. Total anatomy of failure: He has decided to move something in space and then hasn't. The way it's recognized in this universe, that's the total anatomy of failure.

All right. Now, these conditions of existence could be composited up. They are interdependent, one upon another, you see?

Of course, he could simply postulate that he'd failed. So that's another anatomy of failure. He's always free to do that. You can, yourself, do that, not to run out anything or anything of the sort, just simply say to yourself that you failed, not for any cause, reason or anything else. "I failed and therefore I have to feel a certain way," and so forth, and then feel that way. You could. Or you could simply postulate, "I've won." Not won anything, you understand, you just postulate that you've won now, and the conditions of winning are feeling good, which is part of the woof and warp of postulates, and therefore "I feel good"– having given you a reason to feel good.

An isness exists only because of as-isness – as-isness took place in the first place; it got created, then we had to alter it slightly to get an isness; we had to give up some responsibility for it and we had to shift it around. A not-isness, then, exists in order to provide a game.

Or why don't you just postulate that you feel good? It doesn't matter where you enter into this. There is no sensible concatenation here. We are only talking about an agreed-upon concatenation.

A game is an isness which is being handled by a couple of not-isnesses, or an isness being handled by a not-isness, any way you want to look at it.

This universe and the postulates which formed it is not necessarily the best universe that could be made. It just happens to be the universe we're sitting in and it happens to be the universe in which our postulates are being made and unmade, and it just happens that it went together on these four conditions of as-isness, alter-isness, not-isness and isness. So we've got these four conditions, and those four conditions, of course, woven together, make this universe act like it does and behave like it does and gives you the ideas of what a win is and what a lose is and so on. It's on a postulate basis.

A football game can be added up in terms of existence, see? Here we have one side and it's got the ball, and so the other side must not-is the side that's got the ball. The side that's got the ball has to win – in other words, to arrive at a receipt point someplace along the line.

But the most curious manifestation of all of this is the manifestation of time. And that is our main interest here this morning. And we have this matter of time occupying a considerable space in the field of aberration. And that is because of this: It is the one postulate where an individual begins to depend on other-determinisms more than any other way.

We get the communication formula itself as being lower than the conditions of existence. And we get affinity, reality and communication as simply being the methods by which existence is conducted. It is not the interplay of existences – so we're dealing with a higher echelon than ARC right now.

You see, we see the sun moving and we take the cue from the sun as to how much time we have. We see clocks moving and we take the cue from them as to how much time we have. That tells us how much persistence we have. Oh, so we're being told by these objects whether we can live or not, aren't we? That's just the most curious of things in this universe, that one would take his clue as to whether or not he was going to persist on whether or not the sun moved a certain direction or distance. That's idiotic. So the sun did figure eights. If I'm not dependent upon the sunlight, I'm certainly not going to die just because of that.

All right. Affinity really is merely the consideration of how well it's going. Agreement or reality itself, we're talking about isness. And there is where we enter the corner of the triangle. And we just slide into that triangle on that isness point and then it is modified by A and

And a thetan is not dependent on sunlight. Quite the contrary, a thetan is dependent for his good health on manufacturing his own jolly old energy; he's not dependent on the sun manufacturing his energy for him. That's just an intricate hook-together. And that, again, depends on postulates.

C. They, of course, come in simultaneously with it.

Well, now, the postulate of time could be simply, cleanly made in some universe, and say," Well, there will now be a continuance for one and all," and that would be that. But that wasn't the way it was made in this universe. It was made on the basis that when as-isness is postulated, in order to get a persistence we have to practice alter-isness. We'll have to change the thing in location, one way or another, in order to get a persistence.

But those are just a way we play the game, such as some people use drop kicks and some people use punts. This doesn't matter much. We could also add other ways to play this game, but that happens to be the way the game is being played.

Now, people get inverted on this in this universe, so they take an isness and they change it in location; it starts disappearing.

All right. And we discover, then, that all of these conditions of existence then would add up to all kinds of manifestations of behavior. They would add up to all kinds of manifestations of behavior. Oh, there'd just be lots of them. There'd be a finite number, however; it would be the number of possible combinations, singly, doubly, trebly or quadruply of these four conditions of existence.

Did you ever have somebody move a postulate with a mass of energy around? He starts moving it around and the energy mass starts disappearing.

And if you want a little exercise sometime in geometry, you ought to do that. How many combinations can we get out of any set of four? Well, we can basically get any one of the four, can't we? But we found these four were somewhat interrelated, so it'd be hard to get just one of the four. But we could recognize one of the four as being its own state. We could isolate it. So there could be any one of these four.

But what started disappearing? It was the energy mass, wasn't it? Hm? It was not the postulate, particularly. He just got used to that postulate and he finally took it over as his own postulate. So what!

Now, there could be any two of these four in combination with the other two, and then any three of these four in combination with the other three, and any four of these four all acting and all in combination, and then all of these things in various degrees of action.

Now, therefore, a person can invert in this universe, and we run into isness followed by not-isness. A person can finally say, "Well, if I move something around, it'll disappear." He's made it a counter-postulate.

We get this individual: only seventy-five percent of his life he's trying to say not-is to; another ten percent of his life he's giving an alter-is; one one-hundredth of one percent he's giving an as-is, or trying to give an as-is to, and the remainder is reality, acceptable reality. And that would be just one makeup of a personality.

Well, he's perfectly at liberty to make a counter-postulate, but it isn't the postulate on which this universe is made. This universe is rigged so that that postulate will avail not to an individual. You know, that's part of the considerations that make it up: that if you've got something and then you say it doesn't exist, you're stuck with it. That's this universe.

If we said that there was a gradient scale of isness, a gradient scale of alter-isness, a gradient scale of as-isness (which there isn't), a gradient scale of not-isness, why, we would see, then, that you could take these gradient scales and at one grade or another have a character composited from them. You see? And then we would have a characterization.

Now, alter-isness produces two types of persistence: we get persistence as isness and we get a persistence as not-isness. See? The fellow is persisting, but he doesn't want to be there. Well, he's persisting because he doesn't want to be there. This, too, is a change, although he's fixed in a locale. Now, there's the fellow who is persisting because he wants to be there and he's persisting because of change.

What is the basic character of anybody? The basic character of anybody must be made up in some degree horn – must be made up from (in conditions of existence) – some space, some energy and his considerations of isness, not-isness and alter-isness. It's not necessarily true that any part of his considerations are made up of as-isness. Because if they were, they wouldn't be there. In other words, he also has been trained to believe that loss is bad. This is just a reverse postulate, just to keep life interesting. Loss is bad. So therefore, he has a tendency to avoid as-isness. So therefore, he'll avoid duplication, he'll avoid all kinds of things. He's afraid he'll unmock. There he is, stuck in eighteen feet thick, you couldn't get him out with a pneumatic drill, all scheduled to go back to the between-lives area and pick up another baby, and he's afraid he'll unmock. Silly, isn't it?

They're both alter-isnesses. An individual's desire to change continues his persistence in the spot he's in, if he cannot move. But he had to postulate that he couldn't move before this could happen. So we get the dwindling spiral.

But it doesn't matter too much. Any life or continuance to him has begun to be better than no life at all.

Now, we also get the manifestation of accumulating energy on a preclear. Every time a preclear has said, "Now I am going to move," and hasn't moved, or he says, "Now I am moving and I'm going to continue moving," and he's stopped – you know, such as you're walking down the street and you walk into a lamppost – any time this has occurred, he has lost, which is to say, he's got a counter-postulate. So he adds up loss as stationary.

You say, "Well, then why are you processing somebody?"

This universe, you see, brands everything which isn't moving as innocent, and the things that are moving are guilty – always. So he's lost.

Well, let me tell you something about that. ARC Straightwire is listed in the first issue of The Auditor's Handbook as the third step of Intensive Procedure. In order to accomplish all three goals of getting into a two-way communication and so forth, just after the basic and most rudimentary chitterchat, I would start asking somebody why he was being processed. And you know, I'm just wicked enough to start asking a person why he's being processed for hours until he can at least find one reason why he's being processed. I would merely substitute, then, "Why are you being processed?" – or "Toward what goal are you being processed?" would be a much politer way to say it and maybe a better communication – "Toward what goal are you being processed?" as step three instead of ARC Straightwire. It's a very interesting process!

Well, how do you lose then? By getting fixed in a place. That's how you lose.

Most preclears come in, they say, "Process me." "Why?"

Now, an individual who is unable to move objects out of a certain location, eventually gets to a position where, when he's trying to move these objects out of this location, he recognizes a failure, and so he goes into apathy. He says, "I don't have enough energy to do this."

You would say immediately, and you have always supposed that they must have a good idea why they want to be processed. They don't have. They don't have any idea at all why they want to be processed. Because they want to be an exterior thetan? No, they might not even know about this. They just know there's something wrong with them.

What nonsense! He doesn't have energy enough to move energy? Why doesn't he just postulate it someplace else? (But that's another thing.) He could say it is as it is and it would disappear, and then he postulates existence someplace else and then change that around so it couldn't be disappeared again, and he'd be all set. What's he doing picking things up?

The most horrible technique you could run on anybody in terms of producing results, tearing off their heads and everything else, would be "What wrong-ness or what wrong thing would you find other people would accept from you?" "What could you do that was wrong that other people would accept?" See? "Now, what wrongness could you accept from other people?" Back and forth and back and forth. Here goes the guy's manners. His social pattern, his behavior pattern and everything else will just go by the boards running that process.

Now, a drill, however, in moving things and putting them back in the same place again will run out this consistent, continuous failure, and so you get Opening Procedure by Duplication and its tremendous effectiveness. If it's done with a little bit heavier object than is ordinary, an individual recognizes he can even pick up and put back into place the same object and win, not fail: you've changed the basic postulate by which he's working in this universe, which is to say, if he can't move he's failed.

But he won't be able to tell you, first and foremost, why he's being processed. He won't be able to tell that he wants to feel freer and so forth. He won't articulate any of these things. He'll just sit there and want to be processed.

All right. However that may be, we have these various conditions. And the point we want to drive home, immediately and right this minute, is that time depends, in this universe, on alter-isness – at least the desire to change. So anybody who is desiring to change is persisting in time. And people who do not want to change, and so forth, do not persist in time.

Well, what toward? Until you've gotten him to put a little time on the track, he will use forever in processing because he's sitting in forever. He isn't moving on the time continuum. He's off the time continuum. Well, if you can't get him processing toward some goal or other, or in some direction, he just makes processing, of course, the end-all of everything, and he'll just go on being processed forever. But of course if he's going to be processed forever, he'll have to hold on to his aberrations forever, otherwise he couldn't be processed forever, could he? It's actually as elementary as that why cases stay a long time in processing.

The whole universe is rigged around these postulates.

So I've been sorely tempted to alter that step three to just this: "Well now, give me some goals you have in processing." And just keep it up.

Okay?