And this is December the 17th, the first lecture of the day. Today we're going to cover at least part of formulas of the steps of SOP 8-C. Before we do that, however, I want to give you a little further integration on the last talk I gave you concerning the communication line: C to E.

Now, when we summarize communication, we find out that it essentially is duplication in space. And duplication in space on a relay system is a communication system. That's what a communication system is: ways and means of making something at C repeat at E is a communication system.

Now, we can have a parallel line to that when we have a conversation, so that we get one line which is, let us say, C on the right side and E on the left side; and then we have the reply line, which is C on the left side and E on the right side — a reverse to that. In other words, there's a C and an E together, and a C and an E together at the other end of the line, and two lines going back and forth. Communications, then, always go on two lines, not one line.

And we get this effect: we get C going through to E, and then E turning around, changing slightly, and becoming C in its turn and going back forward to the first C, making it into a slight E. And then we get that turning into C and going back through the first line again, and then the E on the first line turning into a C on the second line and going back to the E. And we get this picture, then, of a — you might say, a complementing system. And that gradient scale, as you went along, would form the woof and warp of logic also, the slight changes — that makes a C into an E and so forth.

After a while, somebody who's communicating begins to wonder who source is and they begin to worry about authorities. That's a symptom of both the C end and the E end getting enmeshed slightly in the lines and considering themselves particles, rather than cause and effect on the line.

Now, this is important because we get into, immediately, duplication. And the one thing you mustn't do — I repeat this — the one thing you mustn't do is "duplicate nothing." If you don't believe that this is onerous and upsetting, just speak to somebody and get no answer. You can't duplicate the nothingness you get at the other end.

And that is the anatomy of not having caused an effect. It's very disturbing not to have caused an effect. Because if you don't cause the effect — if you get nothing at the E you are heading toward — why then of course you, becoming E where you have just been C, have to duplicate nothing. And you can't duplicate nothing, you feel. That's the one thing you mustn't do — duplicate nothing — and so you become very disturbed. And that's "no answer" on a communication line.

This is so bad and, by the way, so basic, that if you take a person who is neurotic and you have them sit in one chair and talk to the other chair — an empty chair — and then have them go over to the empty chair and talk from the empty chair back to the first chair they were sitting in, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, why, they'll eventually get into fairly good condition. They have had the trouble of insufficient answers, which makes it necessary for them to duplicate nothingness.

Now, we take duplication on all dynamics and we find out that duplicating nothingness on any dynamic is a very difficult process for the thetan. It's actually the simplest process in the world, but it's the one thing he thinks is the most difficult process. And so we get our highest button: The highest common denominator in terms of aberration is the compulsion to have something and the inhibition of duplicating nothing — the compulsion to duplicate something, the inhibition to duplicate nothing. One must not duplicate nothing; one must duplicate something. And between these two things, we get the difficulties of the dwindling spiral.

Therefore, things become more and more solid, one resists more and more, one gets smaller and smaller, one feels he has less and less power and so forth, simply because he has, each time, refused to duplicate nothing. Makes him quite upset to duplicate nothing.

We get various practices and manifestations in life this way. Nothing, in terms of a place in space, early on the track, was so abhorrent to the individual that he was certain, after a while, that he himself was nothing. He had compulsively become nothing. You see how he'd compulsively become nothing? He had refused to duplicate the nothingness around him in space, and refused to duplicate the nothingness around him to a point where he became more and more solid, more and more solid, and more and more solid, and then finally he vanished. And that's the first inversion. He vanished and became nothing. And sure enough, in the preclears that you will be processing here on Earth, you will find they are all beautifully sold on the idea that they are nothing.

Well, actually, they are fighting the truth of the matter; and anytime you start to fight a truth, a basic truth, you're in for trouble. He only became nothing, you see, because he could become nothing, and it wasn't true that he was anything at all. And so he fought the idea that he was nothing and so denied himself, which you get as the only ethical and moral crime. One says — keeps insisting that he's something, you see; he insists he's something and refuses to duplicate nothing. And in such a way, why, he's trying to say that he is something when actually he is nothing. And he comfortably is nothing handling somethings, but after a while, he handles these somethings, and then he begins to believe he is the something. And so it is with a thetan who takes hold of a body. He at first is a nothingness exterior to the body, merely guiding and directing it, and then after a short time becomes a body. He thinks he is a body, he's sure of this.

Well, we get these inversions and counter-inversions, and inversions and counter-inversions, and it's all on a something-nothing, something-nothing, something-nothing problem. And so, with our dwindling spiral, the place to arrest the dwindling spiral is on that button "duplication of nothing" — "cannot duplicate nothing."

Now, how would you run that? Well, you'd run that with Matched Terminals, by moving the idea around, by getting nothingnesses in the walls, and nothing­nesses here and there. And just duplicate the idea that you can't duplicate nothing, going right on duplicating it, and some interesting things will occur in a case. These people who are so super, supersolid, who can't get out of their bodies and that sort of thing, are fighting this with desperation.

And some of the people on a further inversion who exteriorize very easily but do an immediate bunk for Arcturus, they are on a further inversion than the fellow who is merely solid in a body. They're disabused of being the body. The body unmocks at the least provocation. Bang! It disappears.

They have become, you see, this something in terms of a body, and now this body is something which they try to duplicate and try to duplicate. And now they can't duplicate the something and they begin to duplicate the nothings, through not having any answer and other reasons. And the next thing you know, why, the body's nothing and they have become sort of something again. But they are a much lower order of something than they were priorly.

And thus we lay apart the anatomy of the thetan in terms of somethingness and nothingness. Certainty, somethingness, nothingness and duplication, then are our highest working tools.

Now, in the formulas of the steps SOP 8-C, you'll find that this winds itself through rather continuously, rather consistently, and is a background to all the other material — duplication, nothingness, somethingness, must duplicate something, mustn't duplicate nothing.

For instance, I dare say when you're duplicating a mock-up, one after the other, you'll never duplicate the space around it, you duplicate the mock-up. You'd be much better off, as far as processing was concerned, to duplicate the nothingness around the mock-up — and just skip the mock-up.

When one starts fighting this — whoa, he starts fighting this madly — why, after a while, he can only mock up nothing. That's the case of no mock-up, you see — he's compulsively duplicating nothing and fighting against doing so. Whereas the only thing that's real salvation for him is, of course, to just go on duplicating nothing for a while. He'll get mock-ups.

Now, all of this — formulas of the steps SOP 8-C — is integrated on the goal of action. We want to get somebody back into action. We're not too interested in the theoretical side of life, beyond giving an individual enough understanding of it so that he can construct and work and survive and live ably in it.

Step I — Step I is Location. It is based on the Prelogic: Theta orients objects in space and time. Now, you know the Prelogics are, "Theta orients objects in space and time and creates space and time in which to orient objects which it creates." And this is more or less — all five of the Prelogics simply come down to that.

Well, now in Location we have, particularly, "Theta orients objects in space and time."

And we have the Axiom pertinent to that: In life experience, space becomes beingness. That's out of 8- 8008. "In life experience, space becomes beingness." An individual then, plotting himself around through spaces, and locating and orienting himself and so forth, has as much beingness as he can have space.

Now, you see why that is? You see how this duplication of nothingness weaves its way in there. If a fellow can't duplicate nothingness, he can't have space, of course. It isn't that space is a nothingness; space is actually a viewpoint of dimension. But it adds up to a "no energy deposit."

The formula of this is: Permitting the preclear to discover with certainty where people and things are not, in present, past and future recovers sufficient orientation to establish his knowledge and certainty of where he is; and nega­tive orientation of beingness, havingness and doingness on each of the eight dynamics in the present, past and future — is the basic formula on which this is worked out. And you can work out nearly all possible processes from that formula.

I'll repeat that formula: Negative orientation of beingness, havingness and doingness on each of the eight dynamics in the present, past and future. "Where isn't God?" That would be a very rough one on somebody who's been taught thoroughly that God's everywhere. But nevertheless, if you've handled the other dynamics, he can tell you where God is. He comes to know that.

Now, of course, in a formal write-up of this matter — this is just a rough draft of this — in a formal write-up, we have the actual steps, a Step Ia and Step Ib, just as you have it on the mimeographed sheet. And we have, then, ways and means of using this — many ways of using it. Lots of variations on Step I: Location, lots of them. Okay.

We go into Step II. Step II, the handling — is handling bodies; you can call that such. And the Axiom: In life experience, energy becomes doingness.

A person uses a deposit of energy called a body to move through space and time and so forth. And he gets so accustomed to being moved around by this body, which isn't himself, that he believes it is himself and there he is trying to duplicate something, and trying not to duplicate nothing. And in this wise, he becomes very interestingly confused.

And the Axiom on this is: That which moves the preclear can evaluate for him. Anything which changes the preclear in space can evaluate for him.

Another Axiom: Compulsive positioning precedes compulsive thinking. Hence, education — constricted space, fixed. Then they fix ideas and get all sorts of interesting things.

Well, of course, there are other things which appertain to this handling of bodies, which is the matter of automaticity. The biggest automaticity there is, is a body, in terms of this planet here, right now.

Now, the formula for this is Formula II: Permit the preclear to discover that he handles bodies and allow him to handle bodies in mock-ups and actually — which is to say, fixing them and moving them in mock-ups and actually until he recognizes that he handles bodies. At the same time, you start remedying scarcity of bodies by running End of Cycle — dead bodies, bodies dying and that sort of thing. You could do that if you were just handling bodies in every way, shape and form.

One preclear I know of did not exteriorize until he had mocked up his body and cut it to pieces about fifty times. Mocked it up and chopped it to bits, and mocked it up and chopped it to bits about fifty times, and then stepped out of it. All of a sudden realized that he could destroy a body. He was compulsively held in a body. He was there because he thought the body was superior to himself, simply because he couldn't destroy it. Okay?

Now we go over to Step III — Spacation. The Prelogic of Spacation is: Theta creates space and time in which to locate objects. And the definition: Space is a viewpoint of dimension. And the Axiom involved here is: Energy derives from imposition of space between terminals. Energy derives from imposition of space between terminals.

That isn't a statement of all the ways that energy derives. Energy also derives simply because you say it's there. That's the primary way energy derives. But all — energy also derives from imposition of space between terminals. And you can take a mass of solid energy and another mass of solid energy and interpose space between them, and if you will — are able to maintain that space, regardless of anything they're trying to do, there will be an interchange of energy in there. In other words, a free energy flow will result.

And we get into Formula III, which is that for Spacation, which is: Permit the preclear to regain his ability to create space and impose it upon terminals, and regain his security concerning the stability of mest space. And that's all there is to that step.

Of course, in the edition you will get, that merely also contains, why, he holds on to the two back anchor points of the room, and that gives him a sensation of the stability of mest space. And you have him mock up his own space and you have him do space in brackets and so on, till he can handle space.

Now we get into Step IV and the name of Step IV is, from here on down actually, Havingness. And we find this resting on the Axiom: In life experience, matter becomes havingness. Also becomes time, by the way.

Formula — that's Formula IV: The remedy of problems of havingness is accomplished by creating an abundance of all things.

So we have various processes which have come in under this step; we've had GITA, Expanded GITA and we have this automaticity.

Now, it's actually an automaticity which gives the preclear havingness. And so we get it down to a little bit finer level, and we remedy automaticity under this step.

The preclear has rendered automatic his desires and ability to create and destroy and thus has placed havingness beyond his control. Havingness is beyond his control, he has an awfully hard time having. And the formula — Formula IV is: Place in the control of the preclear his automaticities of havingness and unhavingness, and permit him, on his own self-determinism, to balance his havingness.

That's the formula for that. Don't forget to balance somebody's havingness. After you've gotten rid of Lord knows how much energy, and discharged it in various directions and — you just don't neglect to give him back some, because he'll want some.

The main difficulty you run into right there is this button "mustn't duplicate nothingness" which gives him a craving for havingness.

Now we get Step V — Terminals. And the Axiom — first Axiom applies there: Space exists by reason of anchor points.

Definition: An anchor point is any particle or mass or terminal.

Axiom: Energy is derived from mass by fixing two terminals in proximity in space.

Axiom: Self-determinism is related to the ability to impose space between terminals.

Axiom: Cause is potential source of flow.

Axiom: Effect is potential receipt of flow.

Axiom: Wrongness in terms of flow is inflow.

Comment: The mest universe exists as a continuous potential outflow in its vacuums and a continuous potential inflow in its atmospheres, when viewed by the thetan. mest universe is ... You get out there in a vacuum of space and you have some havingness, and the pressure in this havingness, of course, has to be greater than the space around it — the pressure in it — and the mest universe, which is to say the vacuum, will just go pshew! and you haven't any mock-up.

And so the mest universe, apparently, out in space takes things away from you faster than you can possibly create them. Which has a tendency to bring you into a state of sort of a defeat, you know? Get the idea after a while that this isn't so good.

And down in the atmospheres — that is to say, down on planets and in heavy gravities — and by the way, a planet can be totally without atmosphere and yet have such a heavy gravity that this same condition can exist. Gravity is actually "put your attention on the center of the Earth." That's the definition of gravity. You'll find the GE has got his attention on the center of the Earth like mad. And every once in a while, you get a thetan out who's having gravity trouble — that's because he's got his attention on the Earth. And he gets that inverted after a while, and his attention goes exactly the opposite direction, and then after that he falls up, as a thetan. Very curious. You'll see somebody flop around like this.

Change of Space Processing from one place to another — the Moon and so on — will often reveal in a thetan a latent fear of gravity, which is a pull, which is quite interesting. They get sick on it and everything else; and then they get heavy and — they're not heavy, a thetan isn't heavy. They've just got the idea of gravity to such a degree that as they move around from one planet to another — you say, "Be on the Moon, be on the Sun, be on the Earth, be on the Moon, be on the Sun, be on the Earth, be on the Moon, be on the Sun, be on the Earth, be on the Moon, be on the Sun, be on the Earth, be on the Moon, be on the Sun, be on the Earth." And the fellow all of a sudden is — "Ooohhh," he can't get away from the Moon or he can't get away from the Sun easily or he can't get away from Earth easily. You just keep on drilling him, and all of a sudden, why, he can move away from them with great ease. He just — you clicked in his idea of gravity.

Well now, gravity actually takes something away from somebody, if it's pulling down. And if one falls, gravity will take something away.

But in terms of atmospheres and so on, sunlight hitting somebody, sound — you see, what makes an atmosphere bad is sound. And the sound hitting somebody — and everything is hitting a person from a 360-degree sphere. You know, all around the edges. It's hitting him everywhere, from all sides at once, continually, and so it gives him havingness. It just makes him a present, every split instant, of new havingness. He gets to a point after a while, where he thinks he has to have. He gets compulsive havingness.

And then he thinks he has to duplicate somethingness, and so on and so on and so on. Of course, that'll invert eventually till somebody will compulsively try to duplicate nothingness. Birth control: manifestation of duplicating nothingness — big dramatization.

You'll find more people who ought to be worrying about something else squawking around worrying about the birth control situation. I know a lot of people in the US government right now — Public Health Service — are desperately worried. And the Public Health Service is actually appropriating more money than you could easily count in a couple of weeks, in the problem of birth control in India. What business this is of the US government. . . Last time I talked to a couple of Indians they weren't worried about birth control. They weren't even vaguely interested in birth control.

But US government is sold on the idea of — evidently, of duplicating nothing­ness. You look at one of the bureaus down there, you sure believe it. And they keep duplicating nothingness and duplicating nothingness so they — it even goes into the second dynamic in the Public Health Service and then they want India to duplicate nothingness.

And I tried to tell the director of the project down there once that I thought, it just seemed to me, that this was probably a problem of culture rather than a problem of test tubes. And he couldn't get this. I said, "You'd really have to move in there on a cultural level before you could move in with a test-tube level." He didn't buy this at all. He went right on talking about some handy, jim-dandy little injection that you put in the left hip of every Hindu and after that he couldn't have babies. And therefore that solved the whole problem of Hinduism.

Well, India is on a compulsive "must duplicate something" basis — which, by the way, is a bit healthier. And this "must duplicate something" is pretty widespread. So much so that you walk down the streets, most of the symbols which you see are somewhat related to the second dynamic.

And a fellow is as — you'd say, would be as poor — he would be as very, very poor as he would have mouths to feed and couldn't procure more food, and this'd be a ratio in that. But no, no, your Indian thinks he's wealthy — if he had eighteen, twenty, thirty-five, forty kids, he'd think this was — life had really graced him with a few bonuses.

American workman gets two kids, he thinks he's cursed from there on out. Just slight difference of viewpoint. It's actually a difference of inversion. When you get lots of food in a country, people think they can go on as the first dynamic. All right.

So we just look at that and we find out that — as far as the formula's concerned, this condition in Step V — that in space, a person is threatened by outflowing. Space makes him compulsively outflow. Well, he doesn't like that because that's compulsive outflowing. Actually, he's only healthy as long as he outflows, because he continues to create energy.

But space makes him outflow. Well, he gets tired of that after a while, and so he resigns from space opera and turns in his VM, and he hits a planet, and for a while there on the planet, why, he'll go through a cycle of being inflowed at.

And the difference between a space opera character (that is, the character of people in space opera) and the character of people in planets, are just this difference — it's just this difference, there's no other difference: The space opera people are compulsively outflowing, and the atmosphere people, on planets and so on, get compulsively resistive toward inflow, but they get inflowed on all the time. And so, their mode of operation and action and so forth is inflow.

And you get the essential difference: You get these people being rather peaceful, in the atmospheres, and accepting things and having things and so on. You get space opera guys trying to throw everything away and shoot everything up and blow everything down and — action, action, action, action, more motion, more motion — all very compulsive. This doesn't mean one is better off than the other, but it simply means that thetans like a change once in a while.

Now, outflow is registered in these emotions. By the way, in 8-8008 there are two lists. One is an inflow list and the other is an outflow list. Well, outflow, amongst many other things, is joy, enthusiasm, antagonism, loss, criticism, ridicule, overtness — all in terms of experience. Outflow, in terms of experience, then, is an outgoing type of action. And we have then, of course, joy, enthusiasm, antagonism, loss, criticism, ridicule, overtness. See, that really characterizes a boy in space opera, by the way. That's just him, right down the line — bam, bam, thud.

Now we have inflow, and we get atmosphere-type people. It's only when these two things are arguing against each other in the same preclear that we start to run into very much trouble. All these people you're having any trouble with, I don't care whether we're talking about para-Scientology or anything else, all we're really having any trouble with in these people is their space opera is so doggone space opera that they're just — it's just dazing. They've got more engrams and more automaticities built up on the basis of outflowing, and then they're stuck here on a planet where nothing can happen but an inflow, and they don't like this because they're sort of — "they hunger for them good old days." But you get them to think about them very much and they say, "Gee, they sure were hectic!" Because in their present frame of mind they couldn't possibly contemplate the frame of mind that goes along with living in the vicinity of vacuums.

Earth is a — is of course an atmosphere planet and is an atmosphere problem. And the mest universe only has those two types of problems: It has the problem of nothingness and the problem of somethingness. Well, inflow is sensation, havingness, trying to understand, betrayal, apathy. That's inflow, which makes atmosphere people, and people on planets and things, pretty mild. They're always a pushover for space opera boys.

Now, don't think I overtalk this business of space opera until you get on your E-Meter and start talking to this nice, quiet, calm old lady who seems to be sort of betrayed somehow, and you find out that you are looking — in this nice, calm, quiet, if somewhat betrayed and apathetic old lady, you're looking at the "Scarlet Rogue" wanted on five planets! (audience laughter)

You wonder why this person doesn't exteriorize easily. Well, they're wanted too badly elsewhere, amongst other things.

Well, we have a condition, then, and the condition is: A preclear at Step Level V in SOP 8 has an energy starvation and space scarcity caused by inflow, resulting in desire to have other energy and failure to manufacture energy. He believes himself uncreative, wrong, betrayed, under criticism, and has shut out much inflow with curtains. And that's the condition of a case in SOP 8.

Now, the condition to be remedied is energy starvation, and this condition is remedied in various ways. The condition, however, which is even more intimate as far as this — because see, this SOP 8-C isn't particularly treating this SOP 8 black level case. However, there is that step level condition, and this person is compulsively duplicating nothingness. And he'll go right on duplicating nothingness, duplicating nothingness, duplicating nothingness. And he'll try it in various ways. He won't get mock-ups, he won't change, he won't get better. He's having a strenuous effort also to unmock things — his automaticity is set up on unmocking things.

The condition is remedied in a thetan — because any thetan's slightly subject to this noncreative condition — by Formula V. And Formula V is: The thetan is rehabilitated as to energy and terminals by remedying his postulates about inflow and outflow, and giving him drills relating to outflow and inflow of energy.

The table on that's SOP — I mean, is 8008. And he's got postulates about all this and he has automaticities about all this — outflow and inflow and "can't create" and "mustn't be at cause" and "mustn't be an effect."

Now you get outflow and inflow in terms of effect: A person being inflowed on is being an effect, and a person outflowing is being cause. And a thetan has this pretty well nailed down. So he gets unwilling to be an effect, in many cases, and starts keying himself in on overt act — motivator mechanisms and so on.

But above all this other, he's duplicating nothing. Now, you wonder why something doesn't happen with a case. Well, nothing can happen with a case because that's what's wrong with the case — the case is nothing. And you ask the case what's happening and the case says, "Nothing." Of course he says, "Nothing," because that's what happens with his case — nothing. Because that is what is wrong with his case — nothing. And that's what he keeps duplicating — nothing.

The most irritating thing that you can do to a Step Level V in SOP 8 is tell him nothing is wrong with him. That happens to be the level truth, but he doesn't interpret it in exactly the same way. "What is wrong with him is nothing" is a clean statement of it. He's unwilling, you see, to be an effect, and he tries to be cause and he gets caught between.

Well now, you'll find a thetan — any thetan gets into this condition to some degree. He's unwilling to be certain causes, he's unwilling to be certain effects. So he's — he has to be drilled with regard to this. Well, you get him to change postulates and shift postulates around and so forth, with regard to outflows and inflows.

A little bit earlier in this step you have here, cause . . . Oh, "Wrongness in terms of flow is inflow." See, that's what he interprets inflow as — as Wrongness; and he's very loath to be inflowed on very hard. And yet he persistently pulls in on himself. He has, compulsively — he has to have, and so forth.

Now, any thetan gets this remedied, and as I say, remedy it in terms of postulates. And what are the exact postulates to be remedied? Well, again, "duplicate nothing" — he has to be willing to duplicate nothing. And he — show him a nothing, have him find a nothing and then have him duplicate it. You go on with this for a while and all sorts of interesting things occur.

When he gets mock-ups, have him duplicate the nothingness around the mock-up and neglect the mock-up. By the way, you can just hear the wheels grate on some preclears when you do this. They just can't keep their eyes off the somethingness, and just can't put their attention on that nothingness. It just goes snap! snap! And I was telling you much earlier in this course about this scissors effect. Their attention will close in on the somethingness so tightly that it will actually go out beyond the somethingness. You know, it'll just — the two attention beams from them, two beams that they put on it, will just overlap and they will see beyond the object, rather than see the object. Or, and as it declines, they will see narrower than the object or closer than the object. In other words, the object itself — now that gets worse until at last they try to see the object and it disappears — pong! They can look at the nothingness around the object and the object disappears. In other words, it's closed all the way out.

Now, you could draw up a very interesting and highly educational and informative table on the subject of this, but you see the obvious conditions to be remedied there. It's just that they're compulsively putting so much attention on somethingness that they unmock it. And they compulsively are avoiding putting their attention on nothingness.

Now, remember that duplication and communication are necessary co­partners. Duplication and communication are partners. Communication cannot exist without some semblance of duplication. So if a person will not duplicate nothingness, he cannot see nothingness. That which a person cannot duplicate — that which a person cannot duplicate — he will not see. See that? You want to know why people can't see something, well they can't duplicate it. That's why they can't see it.

Perception is not something which simply stands there doing something for you. You have to duplicate what is there to be perceived before you can perceive it. Perception always requires action and volition on the part of the perceiver. All right.

Now let's get into the next level there, and get what that Step Level V is now: that's just — that's terminals and energy. The fellow's got the idea he has to have terminal? in order to make energy. And, oh, he has to have something in order to have a something — the something of energy; and he has to have other somethings to have somethings or others and so forth. And he just is completely unbalanced. He doesn't realize he can make out of a nothing anything he wants, including another nothing. Just never occurs to him that he can make a nothing out of a nothing, or originate a nothing, or transfer a nothing. He's avoiding this, and he's going on to terminals.

But at the same time you have to drill a preclear until the preclear — exteriorized in SOP 8-C — is able to make terminals, fix terminals, get them to interchange, have energy flow at him, have energy flow out from him and so forth. You just exercise him in terms of energy till he's happy about it.

Now we get into Step VI and we get symbolization.

Definition: A symbol is an idea fixed in energy and mobile in space. It's an idea fixed in energy and mobile in space. Any symbol you ever ran into was mobile. It's the main thing wrong with symbols, they don't stay put. And yet they are fixed ideas. So it's a fixed idea that won't stay put, and this is upsetting to people. So symbols get them into trouble.

You can never say to a preclear, "Now, where is that symbol at this moment?"

And he says, "Which symbol?"

And you say, "The symbol called 'where.' Now, where is the first 'where' this minute?"

If you go out into outer space and send it out on a radio signal, you could probably get in a spaceship and beat the signal and get around in front of it and receive it again. And you could find out where it was and you could probably plot it.

But you can't do that here on Earth, things move too slow. You ask some­body where the "where" is that you first uttered on the end of the sentence and he becomes completely discombobulated. What it was is a symbol fixed in energy and he cannot thereafter establish its location. So when a person becomes too fixed upon symbols, he becomes fixed on the idea that he can't establish the location of anything.

So he gets lost. You really get somebody lost if you make him concentrate entirely on symbols and never concentrate on nothingness and never concentrate on somethingness, just have him concentrate on a symbol. A symbol is a tricky somethingness that manages to make a nothingness out of itself with great ease, and make a nothingness out of you with great ease. It's mobile. You take the printing in a book — the book is mobile.

Now, Formula VI is: The thetan who has been moved about by symbols is strengthened by mocking up and moving about and fixing in space ideas. The best part of a symbol is an idea, and so you have him handle ideas that way and you'll find out they're very heavy.

Of course, Step Level V, you handle ideas mainly about outflow and inflow, just specific ideas.

And in Step Level VI, you handle these in terms of ideas like symbols. You'll find people are very sold on symbolization. The more you validate symbolization, though, the unhappier your preclear is. There are people around who are very sold on symbols and they just won't move until you do something about it.

You say, "Mock up a man out in front of you there." He gets mock-ups perfectly well, you see — "Mock up a man."

"Well," he'd say, "you say a man. Now, do you mean an old man or a young man? What kind of a man do you mean?"

"Well," you say, "just a man."

"Well, yes, but you want him big or small, how do you want this man?" See?

What he's trying to do is fix an idea; he's trying to establish this idea man. He is no longer capable of concentrating on nothingness around the symbol man. He doesn't get a big classification called man. He can't just dip into the bin and say, "Man? A man's a man. Let's see, there's all kinds of men." And his idea of getting this big class called man, and getting one particular man out of this big class or just putting up something and say, "This is the class of things known as man" — he's beyond that, he has to be specific about it. So he'll sit there and hem and he'll haw about it; he'll want to know exactly what you mean. He's looking into the core of this mobile thing, a symbol, all the time, and trying to fix it in space. And he's getting frantic about fixing this in space — he's been frantic for a long time. Words keep flying; he can't stop them and fix them in space. He tries to take your words, then, and fix them in space. They don't fix.

He's — tries to cull out of the library esoteric and forgotten lore and fix those symbols in space. He wants to know exactly where they came from. Did they come from the later Neon Period or the earlier Pliocene Period? He is more taken with whether or not celluloid was originated in the early nineteenth century in Boston or where, than he is at looking at the celluloid. He always looks for the significance under, simply because he's trying to fix an idea in space. Simply because symbols, horribly enough, won't stand still long enough. They just keep moving around. They're ideas in energy, and they're in motion. The fellow becomes frantic about this after a while and this is very upsetting to them. All right.

Let's get into Step VII. And Step VII, although we've called it many things before, best descriptive term for it is probably "barriers."

Axiom: The mest universe is a game consisting of barriers.

Definition: A barrier is space, energy and object, obstacles, and time.

Those are all barriers. Time's a barrier, space is a barrier, energy's a barrier and objects are barriers and all of them are obstacles. mest universe is sort of an obstacle race. Not anything is wrong, you see, with the obstacles — actually happiness is the overcoming of not unknowable obstacles toward a known goal. People have got — you get somebody doing that and he becomes very cheerful about the whole thing.

It's not a bad game, it's a good game. But people get so bogged down in the obstacles . . . They're like the hurdle racers, you know — they go running around the track, and hurdle racers three, four and five all trip on hurdles. And after they've tripped on two or three hurdles, why, they sort of stand still and they don't finish the race. And they stand there and get kind of peeved at the last set of hurdles that went down. Whereas runner one and runner eight just sailed over the hurdles and came on home. Well, runners one and eight are perfectly happy and these other runners, they're not happy — they're standing around wondering what the significance is of the hurdles falling over.

You just get somebody back into action again and he'll be perfectly happy to play this game called "obstacles." Up to the time when he's a loser in this game called "obstacles," however — if he's been a long loser in it, he's not happy about it at all.

It's not just a difference of mind about the thing, it's his conviction that he's going to win or his conviction that he's going to lose that makes it possible for him to go on or makes it necessary for him to stop.

Now, Formula VII is: The problem of barriers — the problems of barriers are resolved by contacting and penetrating, creating and destroying, validating and neglecting barriers, by fixing and unfixing attention upon their nothingness and somethingness.

Well, that's not just a big mouthful, you've been doing that — Six Ways to Nothing. You neglect barriers, you put them up there and fix people's attention on them. Now, the invisible barrier is something you put up there and don't let him look at it, and so on and so on and so on.

It's quite interesting that barriers and terminals are very closely associated. There's many a fellow has sat in front of a barrier long enough so that it became a terminal. And the degeneration of a barrier is for it to become a terminal after a while.

Well, let's take somebody who works at a machine lathe. He works at this lathe every day down there at this plant; and he works this lathe, and it's a barrier. He can't walk through this thing. It's also a communication system. Well, he can't duplicate the lathe. The lathe doesn't quite duplicate what he has in mind. The fact that the lathe doesn't quite duplicate him makes him logical, by the way. Logic is not quite duplicating — it's similarities.

Duplicating in one space, continually, is in itself identification; that's what identification is. The difference between differentiation and identification is one of position in space. Differentiation are big positions — wide-apart positions in space — and identification is a whole lot of things in the same space; as far as space is concerned, energy's concerned. All right.

When you get — this fellow's with this lathe and this lathe doesn't quite duplicate him and he doesn't quite duplicate it but he will after a while — he'll have wheels in his head. That's because he's standing there getting an energy interchange. He's got a terminal. He no longer has just a barrier — he's fixed his attention on it so long that it's become a terminal.

Well, it works this way with somebody who's been overeducated. He's in a schoolroom so many years that he eventually starts to use school walls as his terminals, and he gets unhappy after a while at having to graduate. Now, there's a problem of a barrier degenerating into a terminal. When a barrier degenerates into a terminal, it has a tendency to fix the individual in that spot in time.

So we have this fellow at the lathe, when he's home at night in bed he's still running the lathe. Years after he's lost that job, he doesn't run lathes anymore, you try to work him as a preclear and you'll find out he's still standing there at the lathe.

Any case that's having a little bit of a bad time of it here has had — at one time or another used a barrier, particularly one which had to do with communication — has used some sort of a barrier. Communication. Anytime you put mest on a communication line, you effect a barrier, even though it pretends to be a relay system. And the more MEST you take out of a communication line, the faster the communication flows and the more exact it is. The more mest you put into a communication line, the less duplication there is.

So we get an individual sitting there or standing there at a barrier so long that it at length becomes a terminal, and then we take him away from the thing and he's got a terminal missing. And you'll get a manifestation like the front of his face is gone. You'll get something like that. He'll get the idea that his throat's gone or he has a nothingness. Sure — he lost a terminal. He used mest so long that it became a terminal, and then he lost it. And you can spot the tool or implement on any preclear that's having trouble. The tool, implement or position — something that was a barrier and so on.

It's not a person, by the way, it's a mest object. And by the way, he doesn't duplicate the nothingness around it. His concentration is always upon it, his attention is never on the nothingness surrounding it.

Six Ways to Nothingness, Reach and Withdraw from the walls, that's — reach through them, any such technique — "What's the realest thing in the room?" that all comes under that formula. "What's the realest thing in the room? All right. Reach for it, look at it, feel it. Okay. Now withdraw from it. Let's — what's something else real in the room?" That's Contact. Well, of course, that's just barrier — contact with barriers.

Before a fellow can go ahead on a game of obstacles, he has to find what obstacle he is confronting at the moment. It isn't enough for you to simply knock out or wash out all past obstacles that stopped him — this is not what's worrying him. What he's worried about is what are the obstacles which are just now confronting him? Well, he's been stopped so often that he knows anything can stop him — he thinks.

So you have to give him a certainty that he is in an area where he's not necessarily stopped.

As a matter of fact, it's a much bigger trick to stay in the mest universe than it is to slide out of it. Your preclear who is sold, though, on the fact that he can't duplicate nothing, will find it almost impossible to slide out of the mest universe. "Mustn't duplicate nothing," you see. If he can't duplicate nothing — that's what this universe has got the most of — and if he can't duplicate it, then it's senior to him, so it commands him. So nothingness commands him. He has problems of security, he has to work so that he won't starve. He has to work so that he won't starve, well, he has to worry about starving because he can't create energy and around and round it goes. All right.

Let's take up Step VIII. And we get in Step VIII, "Communication by Duplication," which, of course, is a title there which is simply put down to rub your nose in it real hard. Now, you can say duplication, you've said communication; when you've said communication, you've said duplication. Well, unfortunately, when you've said duplication, you've said a lot more than communication. See, communication is a smaller subject than duplication — that's a bigger subject. But they're both interdependent. It's like calling this thing "Step VIII by Step VIII." All right.

And we find the fundamental involved in it is: The basic action of existence is duplication. The basic action of existence is duplication. Whereas we might have the prime principle of existence where far — far as life forms is concerned is survive, why, we've got a higher action than that. The dynamic principle of existence is survival. Okay, but that's as far as life is concerned and life forms.

Now we no longer worry around with life forms, we've got the upper level of this. And that's "the basic action of existence is duplication" and that's much, much senior to survival. A fellow only starts surviving when he stops duplicating. All right.

And we've got a Logic that applies here, is: All operating principles of life may be derived from duplication. All operating principles of life may be derived from duplication.

And we have the Axiom: Communication is as exact as it approaches duplication.

And we have an Axiom: Unwillingness to be cause is monitored by unwill­ingness to be duplicated. You won't be cause if you won't be duplicated. See, if you're afraid that by being cause you'll be duplicated, why, you won't be duplicated, so you won't be cause.

This fellow goes around saying he doesn't want to cause anything bad and that sort of thing, that he doesn't want to cause anything — he's afraid he'll be duplicated. People standing around mocking him, saying things after him and so forth, this really drives him mad.

A person would much rather be betrayed than ridiculed. A person's afraid to be cause — for instance, he's afraid to write a story for fear he'd be ridiculed.

And: Unwillingness to be an effect is monitored by unwillingness to duplicate. If a person won't duplicate something, he isn't willing to be an effect. So a person gets stuck halfway between — he doesn't want to be cause and he doesn't want to be effect. The reason why he doesn't want to be cause and doesn't want to be effect is he doesn't want to be duplicated or he's afraid he will be duplicated. So if a fellow is in the state of mind wherein he is afraid he will be duplicated and he is unwilling to duplicate, he is exactly in the middle between cause and effect and he's stuck but good. And he's going noplace and he won't move out of his head easily at all.

The Axiom: An inability to remain in a geographical position brings about an unwillingness to duplicate.

Axiom: An enforced fixation in a geographical position brings about an unwillingness to duplicate. Inability — impossible to stay, and "won't duplicate," see, is "won't duplicate time" — won't be there in two times. See, he won't duplicate time. So geographical location is immediately associated with unwillingness to duplicate and be cause and effect.

So a person who has been moved all over the place and shoved all over the place and can't stay anyplace and so forth, he has a trouble with time. He also has trouble with being cause, with being effect, so forth. It's impossible for him to stay and he has to go and he has to stay — these are bad things.

Axiom: Inability to duplicate on any dynamic is the primary degeneration of a thetan. Inability to duplicate on any dynamic, primary degeneration point of the thetan.

Axiom: Perception depends upon duplication.

Axiom: Communication depends on duplication.

Axiom: In the mest universe, the single crime is duplication.

Formula VIII: The primary ability and willingness of the thetan to duplicate must be rehabilitated by handling enforcements and inhibitions relating to duplication.

And that's your duplication step. You got to fix it up so he can duplicate something and duplicate nothing and not duplicate it and duplicate it and remain in one position or go away.

Now, if you just start putting up in the walls — have somebody start putting up in the walls "Impossible to stay," and put up in another wall, "Impossible to stay," in another wall, "Impossible to stay" — he'll get frantic after a while.

And we'd put up in the walls, one — the first wall, "Impossible to go. Impossible to go. Impossible to go. Impossible to go." And he gets frantic on that, see? He mustn't reach away from and he must stay on the ground and so on, and this way he gets all fooled up.

Now, if he is unable to remain in geographical positions, his time track gets jammed. You see that, because he's — impossible for him to duplicate time. Because he can't duplicate time — the way you duplicate time would be in the same position twice — two, three, four, five, six times.

Okay, you've got an awful lot of stuff there. I don't know whether you're more confused or otherwise, but I would say that you were probably relieved to know that that's all there was to it.