1. The body of a human being is the instrument either of a self-determined individual or of the environment.
The stimulus-response theory is directly opposed to the idea of self-determinism in human beings.
"Therapies" which are derived from the stimulus-response theory are directly opposed to self-determinism in human beings, and therefore they do not increase it.
2. A human being becomes a stimulus-response mechanism by being interfered with, by being made into an effect, by having his responsibility taken away from him, by having other people's responsibility (blame) foisted off on him, by being made to fail, and by being kept from knowing.
3. There is nothing in the structure of the body which makes a stimulus-response type of operation necessary. It is brought about entirely by the individual's relationship to his own facsimiles, When he is unable to handle his own facsimiles, they begin to handle him, and when something appears in the environment which resembles something in a facsimile, then that facsimile causes the individual to do something on a stimulus-response basis. The more healthy an individualis, the less this sort of thing is likely to happen to him. The more healthy he is, the less predictable his behavior will be. The "response" of a self-determined individual to a stimulus will not be a response at all. He will simply take the stimulus and do what he pleases with it.
It is a common illustration of the stimulus-response theory that fire applied to a person's finger will cause that person to withdraw his finger rapidly and say "Ouch!" This phenomenon has been observed so many times that a rule has been made about it, and this kind of response has been used as the common denominator of behavior. All behavior, it is said, is made up of permutations and combinations of responses to stimuli just like the finger being withdrawn from the fire.
Unfortunately for the concocters of this theory and fortunately for the rest of us there is in the East a phenomenon called the Fire Walk which should have been examined by these investigators and theorizers before they lit their flash in the pan. In the Fire Walk, many individuals, not especially gifted or trained or otherwise unusual, walk with bare feet over a bed of glowing coals. Their purpose in doing this is to summon up within themselves such a force of theta that this ordinarily destructive MEST energy will not even be able to harm the organism which they inhabit. They are successful. Their feet are not burned. And after walking across the fire, they appear not taxed by a terrible effort of control but greatly invigorated by a sudden influx of unwonted power of some kind. They glow with life but they do not burn in the flame.
Theorizers who make up fairy tales about the stimulus response nature of thinking have been quite careful not to open their eyes to the Fire Walk. They consider it in bad taste. Sensationalism! Beneath study. The Easterners continue to walk without burning, however, and stimulus-response "therapies" continue to reduce self-determinism.
4. Another mistaken idea which sprang from the humans-are-MEST point of view was that abilities could be added to an individual by the directive force of another mind. In hypnotism, which is the entering of the direction of one mind into another below the level of consciousness, it was found that a hypnotized subject could "go back" to an early period of his life and relive that experience in vivid detail. Remarkable data were gathered in this manner and subsequently were documented from other sources. It did not seem to occur to the investigators who used this method, however, that a mind which was able to return under hypnotism should be able to return without hypnotism. We may think it silly today that these investigators could overlook such an obvious inference. How, we may say, could they watch this ability in full use under hypnotism and then suppose that it was gone when the hypnotic trance was ended? Where, we may ask, did they think it went? But the answer to this is not so difficult.
We must remember that the hypnotist was deeply oriented in the belief that he was adding something to the capabilities of the subject by his hypnotic interference with the subject's self-determinism. We must remember that any method of approaching the behavior of an individual from the point of view of control springs either from a frank desire to dominate or from the superstitious belief that thinking is a stimulus-response process and that thought is a result of MEST accidents. Having been thoroughly indoctrinated in this wierd philosophy, the hypnotist was unable to profit by the truth which his experiments laid bare, and it remained for an investigator from another field to recognize the startling meaning of hypnotic regression and to generalize from it the truth of returning in memory.
5. In early processing, there was a great effort to have the pre-clear re-experience all the perceptics of the facsimile he was running. This, however, comes clearly under the heading of counter-effort processing, since perceptics are only counter-efforts, and therefore it is no longer a necessary part of processing.
Where does the theory of KNOWING lead us ?
It leads us, for one thing, to the paradox of the development of the organic line. Investigation shows, more and more convincingly, that life is simply thought acting upon MEST. If this is so, then how is it that the force, theta, which is capable, theory says, of beginning with the algae and working its way up to man, cannot remember how it has done this? If we are creatures of and part of a thought force which has taken raw MEST and made it into the most complex and diverse organisms, why are we still attending biology classes and flunking out? How is it that we do not know now all that we would have had to know in order to do what theory says we, or that of which we are a part, have done?
Two possible answers suggest themselves. The first, and easiest, is that the theory is wrong, and that life is not thought working upon MEST, that men are mud after all, and so on. This idea we must reject, since it is in obvious disagreement with observable facts.
A second answer is that once we would have known all this that we have been discussing, but now some aberration has caused us to forget what we once knew. This seems a possible idea, and one that is full of mystery and not devoid of drama and menace.
There may be a third and even better answer, but it has not yet come to light.
In many lands and many languages it has been said or suspected that men are more than they seem, that they have a history which has been mislaid, that they have a divinity which has been lost. Myths of fallen gods and vanished giants haunt our song and literature. This is the second greatest mystery known to man: "How have we come to this?"
Scientology offers the student a chance to unlock the lips of that mystery.
7. What does the quoted experience of the auditor in the industrial plant tend to show about the universality of the phenomenaa which are discussed in Mr. Hubbard's lectures?
8. In a later meeting between this auditor and his associate-pre-clear, the pre-clear made the statement that all his life he had felt resentment at "having been put here". He went on to say that he thought this resentment stemmed from the past life which he had been reporting to the auditor.
As an indication of the spontaneity of this pre-clear's relationship to his auditor and the undirected quality of his reports, it should be added that (not having heard of Dianetics) he spoke to his auditor In this manner: "Say, you know, I don't see why you waste your time with this (industrial) kind of work, which you have such an interest in the mind. You're good, you really ought to be a psychiatrist or something." The auditor reports that he took this ingenuous statement as a compliment.
9. What is "positive suggestion"?
1O. Where do the sensory phenomena which are evoked by "positive suggestion" come from?
11. Are they delusion?
12. What is the easiest way to cause someone to make a mistake ?
13. What effect does a short time factor have upon the ratio of constructivity to destructivity?
14. What one fact brought out by Scientology tends to lengthen the time factor in every human activity?
15. How might this fact affect the behavior of the human race if it were appreciated universally?
16. Are you familiar with the somewhat limited versions of this fact which have been made much of and used in various ways, for good and for evil, in the Christian and Mohammedan religions?
17. Are you familiar with the version of this fact which appears in Hindu religion?
18. Why does the writer become annoyed with people who criticize Scientology?
19. How long has the problem of aberration been around?
20. What is the root difference between the word "Scientology" and the word "Epistemology"?
21. What is one thing to which an individual's self-determinism is directly proportional?
22. Why do some individuals shudder at the idea of being able to remember everything?
23. Can you name an overt act which was done by the United States as a nation?
24. If you had been president of the United States in the summer of 1945, what would you have done with the atomic bomb in order to do the minimum of destruction and the maximum of creation?
25. Does a bomb have evil built into it?
26. If not, where does the evil, if any, reside?
27. What is the result of blaming the acts of men upon the MEST tools which they use for their acts?
28. What is the result of blaming science?
29. What is the result of blaming one's self?
30. What is the result of blame ?
31. What would be a better course of action?
32. Why?
33. What is the job of science in relation to superstion?
34. What is the superstition which Scientology has done the most to destroy?
35. Have some people been surprised at hearing this superstition called a superstition?
36. Do you suppose that the witch burners of Salem also would have been surprised at hearing their activities called superstition?
37. Where are memories recorded?
38. What inaccurate idea of the place of recording of memories led to the choice of the word "engram"?
39. At what levels of the tone scale is stimulus-response behavior found ?
40. What mistake was made by former investigators in relating stimulus-response behavior to the totality of behavior?
41. What is the so-called "stream of consciousness"?
42. Who wrote FINNEGAN'S WAKE?
43. Why are there so few heroes and heroines in modern literary novels?
44. What does a writer have to know in order to write convincingly about a hero?
45. When was the last time you saw a motion picture which inspired you?
46. If it was a long time ago, or never, why do you think this is?
47. What relation do you think art bears to the tone scale?
48. Is it possible for an artist to show great skill and artistry in the creation of something which is actually very low on the tone scale and which will tend to lower the tone of those who see or hear it?
49. What relationship do censorship and lists of forbidden books have to this phenomenon?
50. Why is censorship a failure at producing anything but a further lowering of tone?
51. What kind of a time factor leads people to adopt censorship as a method of operation?
52. What would be the concern of the sculptor if he should find the key of the quarry?
53. At what levels of the tone scale is association considered very valuable?
54. Why is optimum randomity not found at 40.0 on the tone scale?
55. At what tone is optimum randomity found.
56. What takes place as an individual rises above 22.0 on the tone scale ?
57. What is "top static", as we use the term today?
58. What might happen to the interest in gin rummy of an individual who had learned to beat everybody at it?
59. In what way could this be similar to the activities of the individual as a theta being acting in the MEST universe?
60. What would we have to know in order to fill in the bands which lie between 22.0 and 40.0 on the scale?
61. Where is God on the tone scale?
62. What relationship could the phrase "a little lower than the angels" be said to have to the tone scale?
63. Who was (or is) Lucifer?
64. Why are three-way auditing teams preferable to two-way auditing teams?
65. Are you familiar with the PRECAUTIONS section of ADVANCED PROCEDURES AND AXIOMS?
66. Which of the twelve precautions is the most important?
67. What light does the theory of entities throw upon the problem of wide-open and occluded cases?
68. What does the word "COMPUTATION" mean, as it is defined in AP&A?
69. How does this relate to what has been said about experience and KNOWING?
70. Could an individual who was exercising his power of KNOWING, without regard to facsimiles, be aberrated by computations?
71. What does the word "entity" mean in its unspecialized, un-Scientological sense?
72. Is it ever used in that sense in the lectures?
73. If you have done something which was considered a crime in the society in which you lived and you did not want to give yourself up but you knew that the police were coming to question you with a lie detector, what two ways could you choose between in order to prepare yourself (with the aid of another individual) to foil the questions of the police by keeping the lie detector from registering any charge on questions about the crime?
74. Why would one of these ways be much superior to the other?
75. In what way could the police questioner, if he knew enough, spoil the effect of the inferior preparation?
76. Why would there be no known way for him to spoil the effect of the superior preparation?
77. What are the disadvantages of using a blood-pressure guage for a protracted period?
78. What may the auditor substitute for a respiration meter?
79. If you were asked to 'rate in importance to mankind, a series of inventors, would you rate Volney Mathison above or below Eli Whitney?
80. What is said to take place, technically, when one person tells another that he looks tired?
81. Does the E-meter register only changes in emotion called forth by the auditor's questions, or does it register all changes of emotion?
82. Which is more important in using the E-meter, a knowledge of ohms or a knowledge of omens?
83. Why should the sensitivity control of the E-meter be used at a constant setting whenever possible?
84. What will the auditor not know about any given incident if he keeps changing the settings of the sensitivity control and the range expander?
85. How can the auditor use the tone handle in order to get the minimum benefit from the E-meter.
86. How Is fear sometimes registered by the needle?
87. How is it usually registered?
88. What does needle action indicate?
89. What does a drop indicate?
90. What are the "vagaries" of the E-meterl
91. If an incident which the preclear is giving as a motivator does not reduce, what may the auditor suspect?
92. Is this phenomenon common?
93. What does the "single drop" indicate?
94. What does the "stuck needle" indicate?
95. What auditor action is indicated by the stuck needle?
96. What is the "theta bop"?
97. What is indicated by a gradual upswing of the needle?
98. What is indicated by the sudden jump to the left by the needle?
The following symbols are used to indicate readings on the E-meter. What do they mean?
99. V.
100. L.
101. M.
102. S.
103. U.
104. T.
105. What is a DED?
106. What is Arslycus?
107. In general, do we find that certain abstract symbols have the same meaning for most people, or is there a very wide variation in the signification of symbols for different persons?
108. What is one school of therapy which was based on the assumption that symbols were quite uniformly interpreted by most people?
109. What, on the average, is the most reliable and easy-to-get datum about any incident?
110. What is the next?
111. Is there a "correct" interpretation of the symbols?
1. Why do you need health?
2. What is the foundation of superstition? What does it accomplish?
3. How many phenomena can you name that make MEST less important than theta? More important?
4. If you heard the lectures or tapes, how, in your opinion, do the booklets coincide with the text?
5. How much outside research are you doing?