I suppose during this last week, though, your pcs ran into some subjective reality on what I've just been talking about: that you did have a freedom to communicate and freedom to communicate to.

And this is the twenty-seventh of January 1958 — I should say AD 8.

You recognize, there is one — there is one little spot, here, that's kind of hot. And that is that there is a state above cause and effect, you know? And to come into control of cause and effect, you've already assumed an estate which is higher than cause and effect, you know? So, cause and effect all by itself isn't a final answer. You're aware of that, aren't you? Because the thetan gets into a state higher than cause and effect.

You know why we say "AD 8," don't you? That's "After Dianetics," in case you're a little slow this morning.

I don't know how a thetan can be an effect in the first place. It's one of the wildest things. There are a whole bunch of particles flying around. You have to identify and associate yourself with one of the particles and then get it hit, that is the favorite method of doing so. And then you get it hit and then you can be an effect. Remarkable. No mechanism needed to be cause. But there is a mechanism needed to be an effect. It's obviously much harder to be an effect than a cause.

Now, you're on a clearing project. An old auditor, outside, just said to me, he said, "Congratulations, for getting it up to where somebody else could do it." So I'll take your congratulations, too. Thank you.

Okay. What questions do you have about your processing? Yes.

Now, in this lecture series I have been answering questions of one kind or another that were put to me, but I haven't been answering them specifically off of the pile, here. I could do one of two things: I could give you a series of talks concerning just how you clear somebody or I could simply answer these questions. Which would you like?

Male voice: On this creative processing, I noticed that sometimes this unsettling back to null may be a matter of just three or four commands. Now, would you consider that sufficient? In other words, you start on the object that is null, and it unsettles, say, on the second command and is unsettled for the third, fourth, maybe fifth command and then by the sixth command, it's back to a null again.

Audience: Series. Clear somebody.

Yeah. Well, if you kept running it, you would probably find it'd unsettle again.

You would rather have that? Well, all right. Till the end of this week, then, I will just put it in on a one-two-three basis. Okay?

Male voice: Yeah. But the thing is, how many nulls and how many unsettlings do you want?

Audience: Yes.

We really don't want an unsettling. What we really want — or a settling or an unsettling — what we really want is a confidence, a renewed confidence. And you get that by two-way comm, to some degree. This fellow is feeling real cocky. He can do it; he isn't feeling uneasy or insecure about it at all, why, that's the time to leave it.

All right. Then this would be the first one, the first of the series. And it would be, obviously: What you're trying to clear.

Male voice: Okay.

We already know about the parts of man. Some of us don't know this too well in that we think there's something else. Parts of man are covered in Scientology: Fundamentals of Thought. But let's cover them, now, in terms of spheres of familiarity. I've already said something about this, but when I say a sphere of familiarity I mean that class of material, data or concern that the preclear must be able to view. Now, when we say "Clear" we mean nothing interposed. Nothing interposed is a better classification than saying, "Well, he just ain't."

Yes?

I'll give you a wonderful example of this "He just ain't." Would you like a nice example of "He just ain't"? You can probably make yourself or your preclear quite ill by running this. It is the one thing that you can do. Now, obviously this would be the point on the gradient scale where you would start: You would start at this point on the gradient scale, obviously — joke.

Male voice: What do you do when the preclear says, "Well, my mock-ups are solid, they're staying right there and not going away, and I don't have to hold them," and it just keeps going that way, and you might ask . . .

The one thing a thetan can keep from going away is nothing. You never saw the ease with which a thetan can put up a nothing in front of him and keep it from going away; a nothing behind him and keep it from going away; a nothing above him and keep it from going away; a nothing below him, a nothing to the right, a nothing to the left, and keep these things from going away. It's the one thing he can do beautifully.

I'd keep saying, "You do it."

Now, a thetan thinks of himself in terms of somethingness for his own peace of somethingness. He'd rather think of himself as being something than being nothing.

Male voice: Yeah.

Now, there are two ways we can make a something: One is by mass and the other is by significance. Now, in this particular civilization at this time, "nothing" is normally significant in the derogatory sense: "You're nothing, you're nobody," you get the idea? "Oh, that's nothing," meaning "unimportant." In other words, a nothingness is a contempt or a derogatory. This, as much as anything else, makes him avoid this particular significance.

I'd keep saying, "Well, you do it."

But what thing can he communicate with most ably? The first Axiom tells us, and the communication formula added to it tells us that he could best communicate with a nothingness.

Male voice: Well, okay.

And so when a nothingness in a society is contempt — for instance, nobody in this society at this time is writing any paean of praise to poverty. That's an interesting thing, because do you know that that makes this society singular? There's only one other society that was totally lacking for long periods of time in prophets of nothingness, and that was the Roman society. Well, now, this society, at this time, has nobody saying, "Hurrah, hurrah, let's be a tramp, let's have nothing," you know? Nobody is saying, "Well, three cheers, let's go nowhere," see? And, yet, do you know that nearly every other society in the history of the world has had these prophets?

"Are you the one — are you the one who is making it very solid?"

The French do remarkably well at this. The Chinese have an old proverb that I think I've told you before, if you hadn't heard it from other sources, about the fellow who — Emperor, had a sick daughter, and he was told by a sage that she could be cured by being covered with the shirt of a happy man. And though the messengers ride north and south and east and west and they search everywhere and the time goes on, and they all keep reporting back saying they couldn't find a happy man. Till one day a lathered messenger comes in and he says he has found a happy man. And the Emperor says, "Wonderful, wonderful! Then she can be cured." And the courier looks very, very sad about it, and when a little bit pressed, why, he says, "Well, I found a happy man, but he didn't have a shirt."

Male voice: Sure, and he says, "Yeah! I've been doing it." But you just keep on — you just keep on doing that, huh?

Now, these are complimentary nothingnesses, you see? That's the prophet of nothingness — would tell such stories. The thing to do is to give up everything you have, and you'll be all set.

Yeah. Yep. You're liable to find something remarkable happen like that, sometimes. Not with this preclear, particularly, that you're speaking of. But you're liable to find out all of a sudden that the mock-ups suddenly tear up their roots, and this was all automatic.

Now, it's quite interesting, it's quite interesting. This society doesn't believe in that, because it's probably what makes this society terribly sick. The one thing that a thetan can communicate with perfectly, of course, is nothing. It follows the duplication factor of the communication formula. Right?

Male voice: But yes, well, I was the preclear I was talking about, and so in order to get certain I was doing it, I found some energy, man, oh, out there a quarter of a mile or so, so I stuck some mock-ups in those energy masses and by golly, they'd move! I made them hold still.

Now, we get out of this, man's obsession to make nothing out of everything. It's odd that a thetan can become overwhelmed with his own identity. This is something like a cow being overwhelmed because it finds out it's a cow. It's the silliest thing you ever looked at in your life. Why this fellow should start to dramatize, unthinkingly, unknowingly and even unwillingly this section of the communication formula is fascinating. But a thetan does this.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course, you're going through the cycle of making it tougher so that you can prove it.

And if he has a bad run of it, if he gets a lot of losses, he will then turn around and do the one thing he can do easily, which is communicate with nothing. And man's obsession for cutting everything to ribbons, for building atom bombs, for chopping everything up is basically just this: It is the first gradient scale on keeping from going away — the first step. He never goes below it. He never goes below it. See, he can always communicate with nothing. Now, that tells you a great deal about man's character.

Male voice: Well, is that good or bad or indifferent?

And what are we trying to clear? We're trying to clear this thing that after a while can dramatize itself, as the lowest rung.

It's just a phase.

Well now, if we start out on a gradient scale of communicating with nothing, we get a no-body situation. No body would be the immediate result of the technique I gave you earlier, of putting nothing out in front of you and keeping it from going away and so forth. It would just cut the body to ribbons, and be nothing left of it at all.

Male voice: Oh, okay!

You say, "Well, then, what about an auditor sitting there auditing somebody?" Ah! Notice that when we embarked upon Clear, the old man reached into the shot locker way back when and pulled out E-Meters again. Notice that?

Just a phase. All pcs pass through this one: "How can I tell if I'm keeping it from going away, if it doesn't threaten to go away?" So they'll make it jump.

Audience: Uh-huh. Yep.

One fellow I ran into had developed an automaticity which he used, I think, for about four or five hours of processing. And the automaticity he developed was very cute. He developed it on a postulate, and then after a while he forgot that he developed it, so he complained about it. He'd put it up and keep it from going away. He'd keep it from going away, all right. But he made the postulate that it would try to get away, and then he would bring it back! And this proved that he had kept it from going away, which was quite remarkable. And so everything he put up bolted after a while, you see? And then, eventually he got up to a point where he ran out his own postulate and it didn't do it anymore, which is — shows you that a thetan sometimes outsmarts himself with these sort of things.

Well, so you don't have a nothing there; you at least have a needle. You don't even have the nothingness of the other guy's facsimiles, don't you see? So you don't make the body, you might say — although the body never looks at anything — you don't make the body look at nothing. Therefore, there's no liability to it. Looking at a total nothingness is — can be counted upon to make somebody quite ill — conceiving a static and so forth.

"Keep it from going away" is a double-entendre, you know? "Continue it," or "Keep it from flying out" — a preclear discovers this somewhere along the line that he can do either one and comply with the command. And if he mentions this to you, you, of course, immediately agree with him that this is a fact. Yes. It can mean either of two things. What does it mean to him? Get the idea? You don't keep him on snatching them back.

Well, we do not say this is the condition of the thetan all the way up to the top of the spectrum. Somewhere he can begin to look at nothing.

One person had an automaticity on some object, and this object was flying all over the room, but he was keeping it from going away simply because he was not letting it fade — chasing it around all over the place, not letting it fade. He still complied with the command. You got that? And after a while it settled down, and that was that.

When? Ah! When he is totally accustomed to looking at something. When he has turned the total of something off of an inversion. You get the idea? He must have gotten over his obsession to make nothing of everything before he can regard nothing. It's one of these things that is so fantastically elementary, so stupidly obvious that everybody could miss it.

Yes?

You're actually going toward an ability to make nothing and something. But when that ability is stuck at simply making nothing, you have a sick person who will make a sick body, who will make others around him quite ill. We have a colloquialism in Scientology: "Well, he made nothing out of it." You know, "He made nothing out of everything." Well, we recognize this for what it is: it's an illness.

Male voice: Well, on the preclear that got to the state where he could make it null or not at will, depending on what he did with it — and this is okay, except he was real cocky at this point. . .

It's quite a trick for something that is basically, on a mass level, nothing, to make something. That's quite a trick. The oddest thing about it is that he should make something in the first place. Don't you see? That's sort of an oddity. But because I suppose it's harder to do, why, he does this. And after a while loses his ability to make something, and then falls into an obsession to make nothing.

All right. This is fine. What's wrong with that?

Well now, I'm afraid that that thing which we are clearing may very often start into the activity of clearing simply in an effort to make nothing again. And you're going to find people, here and there, who are obsessively making nothing, to whom the goal of Clear is as clear as crystal. They know exactly what you're talking about: You're going to make nothing out of everything. Therefore, it's a very, very popular subject to one and all.

Male voice: That's fine?

The first ability which has to be recovered, however, is making something. Now, you have to get a Clear to make something. You have to take the whole somethingness scale and turn it right side to and get it in good order before you can go on with the project of clearing anybody. It's quite remarkable. It's quite remarkable. It's a little trap all by itself: A person is trapped into getting better. He embarks upon the goal of becoming Clear out of an obsession to make nothing out of everything. And he is led forward by the auditor into making something after all and is brought up to an ability to make something. And then one day recovers, of course, his ability to make nothing, knowingly and not obsessively.

Nothing, except your pc rose up and beyond E-Meters.

And when he is able to do this — make something or make nothing at will — we can say he is Clear. Because nothing — there is no interposition between his desire to bring about a something or a nothing condition and his doing it. The first thing a thetan recovers from is his obsession to make nothing. That is very, very easy to do.

Male voice: Yeah, this was with certain objects . . .

Now, if you understand that your preclear most of the time in the early part of clearing is working on the basis of making nothing out of everything, you will understand why you have to work hard on keeping it from going away, which is to say continuing a mock-up or a mass. It's an ability he has lost, and he has fallen back onto making nothing out of everything.

Certainly.

Now, you'll find somebody puts up a mental image picture, a mock-up, he puts up a mock-up and discovers that it goes away at once. As a matter of fact, it sometimes goes away so fast, so rapidly that he doesn't even know it's there and he will tell you that he didn't put it there. That's very, very funny because there is always, for a split instant, a mock-up. In other words, there's no such thing as a totally blank field. Get the idea? There's always a mock-up there. It flits so fast that it is not observed by him. His make-nothing-of-it impulses have taken care of it before it could bloom. He's torn his mock-up up and thrown it away, on automatic, before the mock-up could take place.

Male voice: . . . they worked with for a while.

Now, we get a case below this, oddly enough, that can only make something and can never make anything disappear — never make anything disappear. Then you'll find this case on a total automatic: obsessive copy of the physical universe and so forth. Well, this case doesn't put it up for a different reason and doesn't have a mock-up: If he put it up, it would go on forever. And this would be a terrible thing because, obviously, what he should do is to make nothing out of everything. But he can't make nothing out of it; therefore, he is not going to put it up. But in this particular case — in this particular case, he will also get an impulse toward a somethingness, which somehow or another he must conquer.

Well, he ought to be able to do them all that way — not to set up any particular goal of any kind or another.

And we get lack of mock-ups, then, from two sources: an obsessive somethingness cut off, an obsessive nothingness not cut off.

People have trouble with me on two things: IQ tests — have trouble with me on IQ tests because I always ask them what IQ they want, and then give it to them. Somebody gave me one, one time, I think she said . . .

Now, this whole contest of life is a something versus a nothing, a nothing versus a something. Continuance, forever-survival, is an effort to overcome, once and for all, the obsessions of nothingness. Fellow puts up something to last forever.

I said, "What IQ do you want?"

One can say the dream of Egypt was eternity: They wrapped up their dead to last forever, they built pyramids to last forever, they wrote a religion to last forever, and it darn near has. Every time I pick up, in a museum or someplace, an early Roman madonna, why, I am never surprised to turn it over and find out on its base, erased and obscured, the Egyptian ideographs for Isis. Oh, I'm not saying that Christianity was formed totally out of Egyptian; they had it from many sources. Anyway . . .

And she said, "Well," she says, "a hundred and sixty-seven." So I gave her a hundred and sixty-seven. Now, that is — that's just being a smarty and so forth. But as a matter of fact, the test in this particular case could have tested nothing, don't you see? So you had to make it test something and so on.

The dream of Egypt was eternity. And those people were so beaten down they could hardly struggle out of anywhere.

Now, you'll get up on E-Meters to the point of where the guy can throw the needle or not throw the needle. And he'll become very, very interested in throwing the needle or not throwing the needle, you know? And how far?

Now, you'll find almost any girl or any guy can have an Egyptian set of facsimiles restimulated like mad. Why? Because Egypt's dream was eternity. And most every life that was lived in Egypt was lived in the direction of having it live forever.

I can set up an E-Meter and hold its needle most anywhere. It's not that I'm very remarkable. I mean, I'm just used to the machinery. And I can hold it in the middle of the dial, or so forth. You saw it holding there the other day.

Now, those people had totally lost their ability to make nothing out of anything. They've lost their creativeness. They've lost their faith in any such activity. And so if they did manage to create something, if they did have something, then it had to last always because nobody would ever make another one.

What?

Now, you go up to the north of Egypt there, up across a few steppes and plains and some mountains and so forth, and you get into an area where nothingness is the thing. That's Russia — pronounced "Rossia." These people are heavy-weighted on the other side and have been for a very, very, very long time. They cannot come into an area, by their own history, without chopping it all up. Russian idea of a good battle is to knock down the army and then level the city. It was very interesting, the "Rossians" who came in and were messing up the Roman Empire in the vicinity of the Danube and so on, had several flourishing cities there under the sword, and they very carefully leveled them until a pony could be ridden across them at full gallop without stumbling. Now, that was their criteria of a conquest. It's quite amazing. Almost totally the reverse.

Male voice: At what point in this procedure do you get to the point where all objects are null on the meter?

I'm not condemning Russia simply because there is a current situation with regard to Russia. I'll clue you: You've had a current situation with regard to Russia for the last twenty-eight hundred years — always been a current situation. Should get tired of it after a while.

At what point?

The Chinese, by the way, were the only ones who ever really conquered Russia. They conquered the early Huns. The real Huns never got into the Roman Empire. Just some of the lesser tribes who had been licked by the real Huns were what conquered the Roman Empire. It's quite interesting. The Chinese conquered the real ones. And they sat up there above the north border of China for many, many years. And about the time they were singing Christmas carols down in Bethlehem, these Huns had — well, Russians, whatever you want to call them — Huns, all mixed up. The Huns got to be Germans in World War I; the truth of the matter is they're "Rossians." And they sat up there on the north border and they'd make forays down into China — periodic forays. They could not hold anything, they could not build anything, they could not construct anything stone on stone. The only thing they could do was haul around a felt yurt in the back of a wagon, you know? And yet they would rush down into China and destroy some cities and grab some loot, and then go back up, retire above the north of China.

Male voice: Yeah.

Eventually they built a great wall in order to restrain their continual forays. But a Chinese army about the year one, about the time of Julius Caesar, of a hundred and twenty-five thousand men, moved in on them. They had carefully capitalized — they had carefully capitalized on the obsessions of the Hun. They had carefully sent him tribute silk.

Well, that would be a very thorough Clear.

To this day you can still find in a — a very rare piece of cloth somewhere in one of the antique shops and so forth, and it'll have a big circle on it about four or five inches in diameter. It'll be the stamp of Imperial China; it's tribute silk — that is the tribute stamp. And that is the type of silk, with that stamp on it, that was sent north of the Great Wall — which became the Great Wall — to the Huns. Beautiful maidens, ivory pipes, beautiful saddles, harness, anything and everything the Chinese could think of that amounted to something was shipped north of that wall to the Huns. Tribute.

At what point? It would be after the point the fellow had attained the idea that he could postulate it. He didn't have to put any effort or energy into it. And you'd get the non — the insignificantness or nonsignificance of all objects. And all objects, then, could have been significant or nonsignificant. He would have to put the significance into the object in order for the object to have significance. And you're talking about a Clear.

And the fool Huns considered it their due. But the thing they did, and the only thing they could do in their racial pattern, was to make nothings. And these things were so beautiful and elegant, they didn't make nothing out of them. This went on for about a century. And they got so weak and so whipped, and their basic postulates were so overridden, about a hundred-and-twenty-five-thousand-man Chinese army went north of the wall, and although it lost all but thirty-five thousand men, licked the Huns hands down and made the Huns move west.

Male voice: Well, the reason I asked the question was because I have got an answer to that question — I got two answers to that question. One of them was that when you got through Step 7, well you were at that point. And the other answer I got was that when you got through Step 7 you weren't at that point!

And that was the beginning of the migrations. Because as the Huns moved west, deeper into Russia, the weaker tribes of Russia moved out. And it was these weaker tribes who were driven across the Danube and so on, and which conquered the Roman Empire. This was the beginning, by the way, of the exodus from Russia by these tribes, and the end of the Roman Empire. It's quite interesting. That influences you directly. Our culture and civilization is very much based on this particular incident.

Step 7 simply introduces an arbitrary. There are some people that won't get to that point until they've been through 5, 6 and 7 on your Intensive Procedure half a dozen times. And other people will get there the first time. You know, it's when — it's what Step 7? You get the idea? I'm not being smart — I mean, it just is.

These people could only make nothing. You see? They could only make nothing. They were crazy, they were imbalanced.

Male voice: Okay.

The Egyptian, on the other hand, could only make something. He was crazy, he was imbalanced.

Some fellows, it takes longer than others, that's all.

Now, there's no great praise for somebody who makes nothing or makes something. But please, let him make both. The ability to do just one of these things is, itself, aberration.

Now, there's another question that has come up here, and that is the matter of clearing fields. Should you totally clear a field? Shouldn't you totally clear a field? After that randomity we ran across the other day, I'm running experiments along this particular line. It may be, sooner or later, that you might have to come back and clear a whole field. Get the idea? You might have been able to proceed quite a distance on a partially cleared field, but then you might have to come back and clear the whole field, don't you see?

So clearing could be very badly misunderstood. You could think of it as making nothing of everything. You could think of it very easily this way. But it is only valid and only worthwhile where the ability to make something and the ability to make nothing are both recovered. And please note, then, in all clearing techniques both of these things are done. Both of these things are done.

It might not be possible for you to clear the whole field the first time you tried to clear the field, but after you had worked with a preclear for a few hours longer, why, it might then be possible for you to clear the whole field.

But the oddity about it is this: that you do not have to specialize on making nothingness. You don't have to specialize on it. Because an individual who can no longer vanquish one of his own mock-ups has lost in the realm of somethingness rather than nothingness. The individual is not, then, up against a proposition as he thinks, of being unable to make nothing. He is no longer able to make something. He has put somethingness on automatic, and his somethingnesses are being made, he feels, from elsewhere. He gets into all sorts of traps. He says, "A man called God built this universe. I had nothing to do with it." Boy, how irresponsible can you get! You mean he had nothing to do with it at all? Oh, that I doubt. I doubt that. But he's put the somethingness of the material universe, then, totally out of his own area, see? A rather fatal action which leaves him only one thing he can do with it, and that's make nothing of it.

You get the idea? But it seems apparent — it seems apparent that sooner or later you'll have to clear the field. The field will have to be cleared.

He retains his ability, don't you see, to make nothing, and disavows his ability to make something with regard to the material universe. And then he wonders, one day, why he feels so trapped in it.

There are some automaticities that hang on about the field, particularly in the field of blackness — the black field and the invisible field because these are the fields used to restrain things from coming in. And when you start somebody from keeping them from going away, all of the times he has restrained things from coming in with a black screen or an invisibility, then spring into view. So you can get a lot of randomity that way. You see, a black or invisible screen is used to restrain things from coming in. Now, you ask the preclear to keep something from going away. Actually, he has totally defeated himself the moment that he's told something not to come in. He's defeated himself the moment he says, "It must not approach any closer." "I must not be an effect" is the same postulate. Do you see that? So sooner or later — sooner or later this field will clean up, either on the processes themselves or the auditor sits down and cleans it up, and it's a question of what should he do? Well, the answer to that question is how much trouble is this causing? How much is it holding up the case? Don't you see? It's a matter of judgment.

To make something — to make nothing. Now, between an individual's ability, between himself and the somethingness which he could create or the nothingness which he could make, a great many things become interposed. Things stand between these things.

Yes, Burke?

Here's a very obvious one: "Johnny, don't touch anything in this room — you will break it!" The funniest one of these I saw was a cartoon, many years ago, of a little boy, all of about three, and he's standing alongside one of these big Mallet locomotives which is towering above him. And his mother is diving down on him, saying, "Johnny, come away from that at once, before you break something."

Male voice: That partially answered it. Since the field is a picture or a set of pictures, if by running Creative Processing you were bringing pictures in general under control, you would assume sooner or later the field itself would come under control, too.

Now, an individual is forbidden spheres. Do you see that? He is forbidden certain spheres. Now, here he's forbidden a sphere, a living room, in terms of nothingness. Do you see that? Now, he's out camping or something of the sort, and he and his friends are going to tear up the woods one way or the other — not to make nothing, but to make something. Maybe they're going to dam up the stream that they should leave alone, and maybe they're going to build a hut that they shouldn't have anything to do with, you know, and so on. So here's an area where they're forbidden a somethingness.

Theoretically. It's just a picture.

And so you find the checkerboard pattern of anyone's life. It consists of areas where he is forbidden nothings and areas where he's forbidden somethings. And he himself has lost all control of this. And having lost all control of it he is, then, incapable of communicating with it. If you're forbidden in the zone of something and forbidden in the zone of nothing, then you're forbidden totally in the zone of communication.

Male voice: Yeah.

Now, within your own reality you know what happens to somebody when he's totally pulled off communication: Under no circumstances must he look at that wall.

Now, there's something that argues against this which is interesting, and that is, should you ever touch a significant picture? The way we were running it at first is that after you've done nonsignificant things, should you then start doing significant things. And apparently — apparently, as experience has mounted up here, it is probably an error to handle any significant object because all objects will sooner or later sort out and become nonsignificant. . .

It reminds me of Medusa's head that appeared on the shield. You remember the shield? If anybody who looked at Medusa's head and so forth, would get all sorts of pains and aches . . . I've forgotten. I looked once and made nothing out of it and I've forgotten ever since. And somebody came along and looked at the head with his shield — and he looked on a via. And even looking on a via was able to look, and he didn't fly to pieces and turn to stone — a few other things that were supposed to happen to him.

Male voice: Yeah. . . . and that is the time to handle them, evidently.

Now, this is quite interesting, but here was a mythical zone of noncommunication. Well, you couldn't make nothing out of Medusa's head and you couldn't make something out of Medusa's head, right? So if you couldn't make nothing, you couldn't make something, you couldn't communicate, and if you did happen to look at it... Ah, we get the primary — the primary operation that can be worked upon a thetan.

Yes?

The primary operation that can be worked upon a thetan is to believe something dreadful will happen if he communicates! Do you understand that? This prevents him from making something and making nothing. And the answer to his interference is, of course, don't communicate at all. And so we get nearly everything based on just one thing: the superstition that something dreadful will happen if you communicate. Do you see that?

Male voice: If an object turns up null, what do you mean by significant or nonsignificant?

Now, a thetan, all by himself — no mass, no wavelength — would have to sit up day and night to figure out some way to be harmed. He can go straight through a buzz saw.

Null and nonsignificant — synonymous.

I used to run Route One, and used to have a — I had a buzz saw located somewhere down in the Carolinas. It used to be happily sawing up timber all the time. And until I found truck tires on the Camden bridge as just as good, I used to use this buzz saw: "Go on, get on the teeth of the buzz saw and ride."

Male voice: Okay.

The guy would say, "Hrump. Oh, no, no, no!"

It means how much is that object shuttled into the deck.

"Go on. Go on. Well, get in toward the hub and just touch it once. Put a beam on it." In a gingerly fashion he'd eventually get over here and ride on the teeth of a buzz saw, see? Didn't hurt him any. If he had a little mass connected with him, he said it'd tickle.

Male voice: Yeah.

Now, somebody else could get on a tire going across the Camden bridge, a truck tire, and just ride on the tread of the tire, see, bang, bang, bang, and be hit every couple of milliseconds. Pretty rigorous, but it doesn't hurt a thetan.

Female voice: Yes, I wanted to ask you about acknowledgments. It seems like I could acknowledge without using mass but I usually acknowledge — or I often do — sort of across a distance. You got me?

So he has to have — in order to work this operation on somebody else, he has to have a great deal of superstition. He has to believe in no communication.

Yeah.

Well, he proves it to himself. If you put a body, as they used to do in the comic strips — fellow with the long black mustache, and in more modern times, Fearless Fosdick, used to throw somebody into the teeth of a buzz saw, you know, or threaten to — if you put a body on a truck tire it certainly wouldn't last very long. See, he's proven it to himself that he cannot communicate — we mustn't have a total proximity, in other words, between these two things, a body and a truck tire.

Female voice: And I'm not always quite sure if this — it's not too easy a question to answer.

Well, he so easily associates himself with a body that he says, "7 cannot communicate with a truck tire," or "7 cannot communicate with a buzz saw," which is a lie. And we get this primary interposition, you see, between the thetan and the state of Clear. And the primary interposition is "mustn't communicate" — the primary one. And the end product of communication is something and nothing. So once you get him to communicate with something, then he is concerned with either make something out of it or make nothing out of it. And he'll figure one or the other of these is bad, and sometimes both.

Well, I just talked to you here in the former hour about communicate or not communicate as the case may be. Do you understand that? And this is the third universe — the universe of a body; whether to communicate to the body or not communicate to the body, don't you see?

Now, these interpositions between the being and, you might say, his own creations are the only things which deters him from making sensible decisions, from being able to enjoy life, to have a game, play a game or do anything. The interposition: there's something between him and life. He has to be careful, he has to be restrained. At no time must he fully live.

Now, we all have, to some slight degree, reservations.

Thetans teach each other the philosophy of restraint. They say some writer didn't write well because he wrote with insufficient restraint. They say some dancer was too abandoned — insufficient restraint. They say that man cannot live without artificial threats and restraints. In other words, we get the whole priesthood of restraint, when the fact of the matter is there's only one thing that permits you to fail. There's only one way you can fail — just one route to failure, actually — and that is "not to communicate enough." That doesn't even say restraint, does it?

Female voice: Well, my tendency is to do it in terms of mest.

I had a fellow explain to me once very, very carefully about his dog. It was up in Alaska, he was feeling very sad, and we were consoling ourselves and trying to get warm with some Hudson Bay 135 proof rum, which we were drinking like water because it was very cold. And he was telling me about his dog — - malamute. Of course, a malamute is insensible to almost anything. And he said, "I beat him, and I beat him, and I beat him, and he just won't mind, and he just won't do anything and he's just no good at all." He says, "He's wearing me out."

You'll get over it, or you'll go on doing it that way.

Well, it's all right to tell this fellow, "Well, you shouldn't have beaten him at all. You shouldn't have started on this line." But it wouldn't be very acceptable to him because the final answer is this: If you knew that you couldn't beat him enough, why did you start beating him in the first place?

Female voice: It's a choice, that's all.

Now, that's the whole morality of beating: If you're going to start beating somebody, be sure you can beat them enough. Otherwise, leave it alone. Because you'll decide after a while that you can't beat hard enough, and you'll decide, therefore, you have failed — that failure is your lot. If you could just have kept it up, just a little bit longer, if you could have done it a little more forcefully, you felt you could have won. But you didn't. Therefore, you failed. Now, that is actually a much more common source of failure, and is a much more general source of failure, than restraining yourself. Do you see that?

Why don't you just make up your mind?

As far as the overt act-motivator phenomena is concerned, talking about this as we talk about Clear is a waste of time. Overt act — motivator phenomena is a dramatization of Newton's law of interaction: For every action there's an equal contrary reaction. You reach over here and you move something, it resists slightly, therefore, you have a feeling like you should — the feeling that you were protested against. Do you understand? You felt you were protested against.

Female voice: Okay.

You take a four-gauge shotgun and fire it, and you'll feel that you were protested against. And you might get this all mixed up with the duck that got in the road of the shot. And as he falls, you are jolted and shaken considerably.

All right.

Now, where our world of — where our world of action and interaction takes place, we have innumerable games. And nearly all of these games are based on a morality: You shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't do something else. If you do this, then that will happen to you. You see? It's a game of consequences, it's a game of action and interaction. Every time you make a forward motion, you get some motion that kicks back at you. Do you see that? All right.

Male voice: Seems to be an interesting concept on this clear field or partially cleared field. You get a person who's got, let's say a completely nonclear field, he has a concept of he hasn't got any space because it's all something, you know — a field . . .

When you get these interactions of one sort or another, you feel you are being protested against, and you feel there are things you shouldn't do. And eventually, you get very moral about the whole thing and feel you were being punished for doing what you were doing. And you get all mixed up in this idea that for every forward motion you make there will be an equal kickback. And this gets down to that.

Yeah.

And now I'm giving you the mechanic — the mechanic of why this interposition of no communication gets so widespread. You see, you say, "no communication or a reserved communication in the direction of making something and making nothing . . ." you see? A reserved communication, a flinch, a holdback — and after a while you begin to believe in interaction or that there's a protest for your communication. Do you understand that? So if there's a protest for your communication, then you never communicate. And then you never find out whether or not you do turn to stone when you gaze on Medusa's head. If you just push against something, you'll feel it pushing back against you.

Male voice: You get a partially clear field, preclear can mock up a mock-up because he's got a concept now of what is partially clear and there is some space. You see, there he can work. But when you get a clear field, you don't give a damn whether you've got a space or not.

Actually, the truth of the matter is that no communication is anything but itself. There is never a back-flow communication from any communication. That is another communication. You see that? If you see that with considerable clarity, then you don't set up all of the blows you get in the jaw as your own cause.

Hmm.

Now, I'll let you in on something else. This is heresy; this is heresy of the first order. Punishment, the theory of punishment and all punishments are entirely inventions. The whole idea of punishment and the rationale connected with punishment is false. It is not native to this universe, it is simply invented. It's an invented thing. One has to work overnight, week after week and month after month, to figure out rationales of punishment, figure out why he is punished.

Male voice: It's no longer important.

Now, a thetan gets so bad off after a while that when he runs into a doorjamb he will then spend a great deal of time figuring out why he was being punished, and by whom. But it's his invention. And this is the whole subject of reasonability. This is the whole subject of being reasonable. One rationalizes and adds reason to punishment. Don't you understand that?

That's right.

Without any intervention by yourself, somebody, at this moment, could have dug a hole outside the front door. You walk out the front door, you fall in the hole. You bark your shins, you knock your forehead against the hole's edge, you bang yourself up something frightful. Well, that's certainly pain, isn't it? But the funny part of it is, it's not punishment. There is no reason for it at all.

Male voice: You can mock up the Sahara Desert here or fifty thousand miles away — so what!

So we get the basic significance of Clear. The basic significance is: there can be reasons, or not.

That's right.

Now, the basic something — nothingness rationale comes out of this thing about reasons. You have to be able to accept no reason at all. Do you understand that? When you can accept no reason at all, then the overt act-motivator sequence can become just what it is, which is a mechanical push-pull. And the outflow need not at all influence the inflow. Do you see this?

Male voice: Which is an interesting concept in Clear people.

And that punishment can exist or need not exist. In other words, here's something and nothing in the field of punishment.

Right. Right.

Now, the first postulate a thetan has to make in order to get very, very aberrated, the first postulate he has to make is this: that there's something harmful about life. Now, he can make other postulates that finally get him down to this, and there's other gradient scales by which he enters into this trap. But it is both the first and the last formidable postulate. And that is there is something harmful about life — the business of livingness can contain a consequence. He has to make up his mind to this before anything can harm him. He has to decide he can be killed before he can be killed. He has to decide he can be burned before he can be burned.

Come on, somebody else ask a question around here.

One of the most remarkable things, once you follow it down philosophically, one of the most remarkable things you will ever encounter: There is no injury preceded by this. But once one has made up his mind, goodly or badly, that he can be hurt, he can then be hurt; he can then hurt.

Yes?

Now, if one decides he should be punished, then the next time he barks his shins he has a reason for it, doesn't he? He has been punished. And so we get this idea of a collective, threatening, overwhelming and awe-inspiring Yahweh. The people who talked about Yahweh, I'm afraid, had never met him. If any of you had been Yahweh, I'm sure you would have been very upset at being so maligned. But we get collective world consciousness and all sorts of odd offshoots on this one basis: You decide that you can be hurt. You decide you should be punished. You get hurt. You decide you have been punished. This is totally irrational. There's no reason for this at all.

Male voice: Is the plan, after you've gone through what is supposed to be Clear Procedure now — is the plan to just carry on with this same procedure to finish out the time — there's some of us that will have, probably, about a whole week of processing on top of this. And, you're not ready to answer that question, are you?

And yet, it is the consequence of restrained communication. " I must not communicate with that" will wind up, sooner or later, in you deciding that you can be hurt. You see that?

Oh, no! I'll answer that question. You won't like it. You won't like it. The answer is this: is, yeah, he talked a moment ago about somebody getting cocky, you know, about the idea of yeah, he could do it, he could throw the needle around or he couldn't, you know? This sort of thing. Well, if you get a total series of nulls, that is to say, nothing reacts unless the preclear wants it to react, there's still one thing that isn't happening. You spoke as though, well, the whole week and we'll just have to fool around. But, let me tell you something — let me tell you something: Nobody else has seen one of those mock-ups you've put up yet! (laughter)

Now, when you ask somebody to handle an airplane, touch it and touch it and touch it and touch it and touch it, touch a wing, touch a strut, touch the stick, touch an instrument, touch the tail, touch the undercarriage, you see, you're actually running out, eventually, his idea that he can be hurt. Do you follow me?

Have they?

His fear of being hurt, which depends upon his first postulate in the first place, is what restrains him from being competent in flying the airplane. But being incompetent in flying the airplane is the only thing that could hurt him about the airplane. Because if he was competent, he could handle the airplane in any situation it got into. And if he was really competent, then he would know where the wire was missing and that the cylinders weren't being filled with pistons properly. You get the idea? So his unwillingness to touch the airplane is what hurts him. You get this? He has to decide that he can be smacked by an airplane before an airplane can smack him. Do you get this?

Audience: Ooh-ho!

Now, you can see this as totally true of a thetan without a body. Now, if you try to make sense in terms of a thetan with a body, we have the additional liability that we have innumerable postulates collected on the track which summate up to this point. So he's decided he could be hurt by so many vehicles, and he's proven it to himself so often, that he eventually becomes, again, superstitious — leaves it all up to chance and says, "If I am lucky."

Male voice: They damn nearly have.

You can have luck anytime you want to have luck. Just postulate you're going to have some luck. Say, "Well I haven't been lucky for a long time, haven't won any grand prizes or anything; I guess I'll win some grand prizes."

Huh? Have they seen any of those mock-ups?

But, wait a minute. You've already made the postulates that you could be hurt!

Male voice: No.

Beware of awards. They are the first gate broken on the road in at you. You've decided an inflow could exist, where you were concerned. All right, there's nothing wrong with deciding an inflow could exist. But there's a great deal wrong with when you eventually decide that the inflow can be bad, and you have made the postulate that you can be hurt.

No. Well, you see, it isn't solid. (laughter)

Now, until you get somebody to outflow again and inflow again, two-way comm with the airplane, or with life or with anything, you have these tremendous numbers of collected postulates about the harmfulness of it all, and this tremendous harm that can come to you if anything inflows toward you; the tremendous harm that can come to you if you outflow toward anything.

Now, that isn't an invalidation. That is simply this: The same processes go on up toward OT. And you're passing mest Clear. And if a few don't do that here, I'll be very disappointed. You're going on up toward OT.

Psychosis is a must-reach-can't-reach, must-withdraw-can't-withdraw. And I have just described to you some of the things that enter into this final state. You say, "I will hurt," or "I will be hurt." "If I communicate, I will hurt." "If I am communicated with, I will be hurt." Eventually, develops into the physical must-reach-can't-reach, must-withdraw-can't-withdraw. And somebody goes crazy.

Because one of my ambitions is to mock up a little herald with a little trumpet and a little sheet of parchment, and have him walk up the steps of the White House down here and read his proclamation, and it's "People of Earth we come in peace." And the secret service men say, "What are you doing here? Get out of here." And he won't move and they'll shoot him, see? And the next morning he walks up the steps. And he does this for about thirty days. That's an interesting idea, isn't it?

Clearing somebody does not consist of making nothing out of him and everything which he has. It consists only of this: of clearing his communication — outflow and inflow — of liability; clearing the idea of liability out of create or not-create. And I think that that is the total sphere.

Audience: Yes. (laughter)

Now, what he communicates with can be classified as I have classified it to you earlier. I've given you the four basic things that you can communicate with. You'll find somebody who is pretty nearly Clear can start to communicate with nothing with no liability, even though he is still in a body. Quite remarkable. But if he is not Clear and he starts to communicate with nothing, his body falls to pieces.

Male voice: The reason I asked that question is I have — not that I expected to get bored through the week, because I don't. I think there is sufficient objects to keep me busy.

So we have the thetan universe, the universe of the mental image picture of the mind, the universe of body or bodies, the universe of the physical universe — the physical universe totally.

Right.

And a person must have a freedom of communication. And when we say Clear, we just would say, well, the clearing of the blocks of communication, the restraints of communication, clearing up the inflow-outflow liabilities, bringing him to a realization that he can communicate one way or the other. And we find as we do this that an individual's communication becomes freer and freer.

Male voice: But what I had in mind was a little IQ processing on withholding, and that sort of thing. Thought maybe . . .

Now, there are two ways to perform this function. There's a long way and a short way. The long way we have in Objective Processes. And we have found that all of these things which debar him from communication are resident in his mind, and his mind is a curtain that lies between him and remaining universes. And to clear up the tangle in this mind, and to clear up the various postulates and so forth, that have been made, it is only necessary to address the mind and the sphere of the mind. And then we do get communication with the other three universes.

You'll get further — you'll get further with what we're doing. I mean, it's already been subjected to test.

But what do we clear up in the mind?

Male voice: Well, that's what I wanted to know.

Actually, we clear up the liability of restraint as a primary action, since this is the one thing that he is solidly hepped on; he is really — he is really ground into the dust on the subject of this. He doesn't think he can keep anything from going away. Well, let me assure you that you have to be able to position something before you can communicate with it. And we have the first criteria of communication. Now, he can communicate, no matter how shortly or longly, so long as it doesn't go any further away than he can communicate. So it is necessary for him to position something only to keep something from going away. He doesn't care how much closer it is to him, he can still communicate. So you have — merely have to restrain fartherness. Hence the total emphasis on Keep It from Going Away.

There's only one other process that has pay dirt in it after a person reaches that state, that has real pay dirt in it, and that's Rising Scale Processing from way back when — just giving him exercises in changing his mind. However, I think that these 5, 6 and 7 of your Intensive Procedure get more gain, you see, because we are not at a state where we are producing mest. And that is a possibility. I don't say it will happen, but it's a possibility. You'd have to be doing everything with a postulate and doing a something-nothing on anything, you see, no effort involved in the thing, for it to be a technical mest Clear. Beyond that point, now we have other influences. See, now we've got the fellow's mind straight for one universe, see. One thetan, one mind, one body, see — one universe.

Now, in order to communicate with something, you should be able to hold it still. Do you see that? And as far as the next one is concerned, Make It More Solid, this is quite obvious, if you have ever tried to communicate with a gauze veil. It's a very good thing to have a good backdrop to communicate against, don't you see? Now, in view of the fact that he has been restrained, held still and made more solid consistently so somebody could communicate with him, and he has taken no responsibility for this fact at all, and disliked it mightily most of the time, you've got to get him to take over the automaticity of having been kept from going away, held still and made more solid. Therefore, merely by forming a more basic echelon of communication in mental image pictures and knocking apart these basic mental convictions: that if he speaks to anything, it'll vanish; that everything is going to be in motion if he moves toward it; that there is no backdrop for anything he says or does — merely by making him recover from those things alone and their stacked-up pictures in the mind, we get a Clear.

Now, one of the first things that you bang into is the mest universe, see, because that is awfully singular, and it busts up rather easily. Then we move into this sphere of one body. For instance, the old lady who steps off the curb, you see that she's going to walk into traffic, you think she should step up on the curb; with postulate alone you simply step her back up on the curb. Now you get into two bodies, right? Scientologists have, before this, taken somebody who's walking across, along the street on crutches, something like that, and all of a sudden — this has happened several times, by the way, I've got some records of this. And all of a sudden said at this person, you know, "Straighten up." Pooh. See, and the guy wonders what the hell he's got a crutch for. Almost falls over on his face and has an awful time, because somebody by postulate wiped out a chronic somatic, don't you see?

And the only thing that's really remarkable about having brought about this state of Clear, the only thing that's really remarkable is the fact that it has been done.

This sort of thing starts into the realm of the improbable and the magical, you know? Well, how far does it go into that particular field? I can't tell you. I can't tell you at all. It's probably something "very damaging" we're doing here, I mean, we're probably . . . (laughter) But by doing the same processes, you get up toward the line.

Thank you.

Now, I've started to nag a case — a preclear. After the preclear was getting too complacent, I started to nag him. I said, "Come on, now I want a solidity of this order: that one spoonful of the mixture would weigh as much as Earth. One spoonful of the mock-up would weigh as much as Earth. Now, that's how solid I want this up." And he'd sweat and strain at it, and he'd finally get a solidity like that. I've seen them start doing this, you know? They're putting the mock-up on the floor and they expect the floor to cave in, you know? And we're just running out the additional restraints, you see? The fellow did have a restraint. He did feel he shouldn't make things so solid that he'd crack Earth in half, you get the idea? And he still had an idea that he was playing a game within finite limits. And I made it my business to blow up those finite limits wherever they might exist.

The fellow says, "If I made it more solid than that, it'd become radioactive and explode." And I said, "I expect you to make it more solid than that and hold it together." You just have to jack your sights up at how solid something can be or how visible it can be.

Yes?

Female voice: You couldn't go off the meter, so we got cocky easy.

You can go off the meter. One of my tests of Clears: is he on one?

Male voice: That's a good test, yeah.

That's a test for Theta Clear, not mest Clear.

Male voice: What's this?

"Does he register?" Well, if he registers the exact amount of a dead body, you know, if he registers the exact resistance of the meter, it'd mean he was totally out of contact with it, wouldn't he?

Audience: Yeah. Yeah.

But theoretically, he's off the meter.

You'll start to fall into and recover a tremendous amount of the phenomena we've gone over in the last many, many years. And there's lots of it. There's lots of it. It isn't that you have to take it all and review and examine all of it, but bits and pieces of it show up and blow and so on.

There's the phenomenon of invasion of privacy, is about the first thing that starts to blow up above Clear. A fellow says, "Why am I restraining myself to this degree?"

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

And he'll say, "Well, I'm just restraining myself and . . ."

"Well, what are you restraining yourself about?"

"Well, I don't know. It's awfully hard for me to sit here and not talk with your voice," or something of the sort, you see? Well, he must be awfully hard to locate and he must be having locational difficulties himself, you see, and he's run immediately into the world of bodies. Actually, it's very easy for him to restrain himself and not talk with your voice, see — nothing to it. There's so much "nothing to it" that he would have to decide to do it. You get the idea? It isn't a tendency that he cannot combat, or he's having difficulty combating. That lies in the field of aberration. That's doing something he doesn't want to do or doing something that he's having difficulty doing.

Another thing is fear of consequences. You do something because it is the thing to do, not because you will be punished because of it. And other mores that comes up.

Right.

Male voice: How long would you run a null object that didn't unstick or get a charge on it?

Several hours.

Male voice: Several hours.

Mm-hm.

I've run a null object several hours, that finally cleaned, mysteriously.

Male voice: It stayed null all that time, and then you got a charge on it and it nulled again?

No. Maybe I've got your question wrong.

Male voice: I mean, you pick up the object, say, the second time through on Make It More Solid, something of this sort, and there's no charge on it at all. You go around four or five times, there's still no charge on it. It's a null; it remained a null.

All right.

Male voice: How long do you keep it up? You don't.

You don't. I thought you meant that you were getting a reaction on it.

Male voice: Oh no, it remained null.

Well, I've gone several hours on an object I was getting a reaction on, before it nulled. And I have only taken three or four passes at an object that was null when I was getting the case — the case was in pretty good shape — was shaping up very nicely. An E-Meter can save you an awful lot of time that way. And you'll see at once why, why you can do it so fast with an E-Meter.

I'm sorry, I answered that backwards, see?

Male voice: I see. I got it.

Second male voice: Does the thetan keep mocking up all his bank all the time or just a part of it?

Does he keep mocking up ...

Male voice: . . . all his bank all the time, or just a part of it?

He does not mock up all the bank all the time. Not by a long shot.

Second male voice: Okay. Then he just knows it all, and then if he decides to mock up a picture to glom into, then he does it (snap) ?

Yeah, he keeps it mocked up.

Now, the difficulty a thetan has with the bank is a very simple difficulty: He's afraid that some scene that was mocked up that he couldn't unmock will mock up again and he won't be able to unmock it. And sure enough, he gets into it and he can't unmock it, and therefore feels trapped. And one of the great advantages of Dianetics, and that on which it based itself, is that you showed him how to unmock that picture that was chronic. Although he continued to mock it up, you could erase it at the same time, which is rather remarkable.

He just mocks up those things which are called to mind.

Male voice: Mm-hm.

That was one of the great discoveries which suddenly moved us out into a clearing activity, is that the bank was not stored anywhere. You should understand that. There is no stored bank. It is mocked up as he looks at it.

Male voice: That's what I thought.

It's mocked up and he doesn't look at it. He mocks it up against the body, you see, and doesn't even observe that he is doing it — quite remarkable.

Just got time for one more question. You haven't asked one.

Male voice: Well, I just wondered if there are any specific processes you'd use after you got a Clear, other than the ones we have now and Rising Scale Processing, to make an Operating Thetan.

That question is not germane to this agenda at this time.

Male voice: Oh, I see.

In the first place I would be talking beyond what I know, and I try not to do that.

Male voice: All right.

Even though it apparent sometimes makes me look stupid and look cautious and a lot of other things, I will not talk largely and roundly about things I don't know about yet. And I just turned out an HCO Bulletin here, which circulated to staff, on the subject that this is the zone of research. I know I've already overshot Clear on at least two cases — way overshot it, just with the processes of Clear.

Male voice: Okay.

And so I know that continues on for quite a distance.

Male voice: Well, that's all I wanted to know.

And I know that Rising Scale Processing happens anyway: A person goes untangling his postulates for weeks and weeks and weeks after he's cleared, and you could sit right down and do it with Rising Scale Processing. And beyond that, I don't know. That answer it?

Male voice: Yeah.

Okay. Thank you very, very much.

Audience: Thank you. Thank you.