I would like very much tonight to tell you about some various techniques, and I am sorry that I am not going to be able to tell you about the technique in which I am sure most of you are most interested; that's 88.

The reason I'm not going to tell you about 88 is 88 requires a lot longer buildup than three days. It actually is much simpler. It's a brand-new method of running, but it requires an enormous amount of preparatory survey – reorientation.

So instead of that, as preparatory to 88, I'm giving you a technique – Technique 80 – which, by the way, you will be able to use on the general public.

You can't use Technique 88 very much on people. You try to persuade them as to what you're doing, and one of them is liable to say to you that you have to be a mathematician in order to run it. This isn't true. It just happens to be a little bit out of their common run of understanding of the MEST universe.

And furthermore, when you talk about Technique 88 it makes people feel just a little bit strange, and they're afraid to stamp on something or something like that, because they're afraid their foot will go through. It makes the whole universe look sort of like a thin piece of Czech glass and makes you feel like a very small child playing with it.

Because the truth of the matter is, actually, with 88, theoretically – just theoretically, fortunately – you could go far enough with Technique 88 not to just have the preclear go poof! but to have the room go poof! And this is hard on rooms and so on.

I don't think anybody actually will apply 88 to the point where this solar system will go poof! like that and so forth, because I'm asking everybody a favor that I run on 88. I say, "Now you have to do me one favor." And, of course, when they all get through - they don't know this yet; I won't tell them what the favor is – it's leave the solar system! Well, they're committed to this one favor, so you're safe. Anyway. . . Actually, that's not the favor I'm going to ask them, but...

Now, what I am going to talk to you about is Technique 80, which is actually preparatory to 88.

Technique 80 can be used very widely, and it is very close to the ultimate in ARC – affinity, reality and communication. So in these three lectures I am going to develop affinity, reality and communication for you as far as I can so that you can use it and use it very, very well. And I will give you, with that, this technique.

This technique has to do with a progress up the dynamics to a point where you are, theoretically, in contact at considerable distance and can be almost anything. And when I say be almost anything, I mean you could be an icebox or a Cadillac or anything while you're still being yourself. Sounds fantastic, doesn't it?

But it's very, very fascinating that you are highly individualized and you will never be more than yourself, but your self and your individuality can get up to the high point of your own recognition not only of a brotherhood with the whole universe but a sort of a recognition of yourself as the universe.

This is very dangerous for people if they are low on the tone scale, to get the idea that they're the whole universe. I've been around in institutions occasionally and run into fellows who thought they were God, and other things. And they weren't well, because they tried to reach it by the reverse route. And they backed down tone scale to get there, and the only place a fellow gets when he goes down tone scale to get there is dead.

Well, in this series I'm going to tell you how to get UP tone scale to get there and still retain your potentiality of action.

The most important factors involved in thought or the material universe are the subdivisions of thought itself. And these subdivisions are affinity, reality and communication. There are three parts of thought; there are three parts of life; there are three parts of living. And it makes a very interesting triangle. And we don't have a blackboard here. Do we have a blackboard? So you'll just have to paint this in the air.

Oh, it's black behind me, so it's very easy, you see, to just paint this in the air. [See diagram one in the Appendix.]

Imagine a circle, a circle up here. You talk about a symbol; this is a timeless symbol. And by the way, although Dianetics has never existed before on the time track evidently, this symbol has existed there. And that symbol must come from practically the beginning of all time. And this is a circle and inside the circle is a triangle, and inside the triangle at the top is the figure infinity and at the bottom is a zero.

You should remark that symbol fairly well. The big circle could stand for the universe, perfection, completion or the continuation of time after the end of time. In other words, time ends and begins at the same point.

Now, here you have the triangle. And at the top of this triangle we have affinity, over at this corner of the triangle we have reality and over at this corner of the triangle we have communication. And then we have the infinity mark up at the top, and at the bottom of the triangle we have a zero.

You all remember Shakespeare's quotation "To be or not to be, that is the question." The infinity is beingness or "to be." The zero is "not to be." And zero and infinity, so far as the thought and the universe are concerned, are the same thing.

Thought is all or thought is nothing. A facsimile or an independent thought could exist on the head of the pin.

Now, the problem is, here, that a thought can exist on the head of a pin. Let's say all the thought that went into the Encyclopaedia Britannica, so far as shape and size is concerned, as thought is concerned (thought itself, not words written on a page), you could put it all on the head of a pin. In other words, it's just symbolizing for you a zero. Or you could take the thought, just this one small thought "cat" (you think "cat"), and that thought could be as big as this universe or all the island galaxies. You see, it just doesn't matter, then. It's that big or it's that tiny; all that thought can be that tiny or that little thought can be that big. These are interchangeable.

Now, we talk in Advanced Procedure and Axioms about the state of beingness, the prime thought – the prime thought. That prime thought is "to be." And that prime thought is infinity, because when a person decided to be everything he could be, he is of course deciding to be infinity. That is the most he could decide to be. So there he is, clear up, the top of the tone scale – infinity. That is ultimate beingness. But what does that mean? That means that he would be not only himself but could be or would be everything. That's an ultimate in beingness.

Now, at the bottom you could have a prime thought of not-beingness. Well, how not-being can a person not-be? Well, that's zero. And so you have the two decisions, the two possible decisions in the business of living: infinity or zero.

Fortunately, most of us exist somewhere on a gradient scale. That is to say, from 0.0 up we decide on just a little more and a little more and a little more beingness, until at last we have decided to be quite a bit – at least ourselves. And then up we go a little higher and a little higher along all the dynamics. And when we have gone out on all the dynamics and have at least developed the capability of being all the dynamics, we have arrived at ultimate beingness. But of course, you get to the beingness of infinity, it could just as well be zero, because when you are that high on the tone scale, you could simply re-decide. So it would be one or the other.

Gradient scale of beingness. Now perhaps you understand a little bit better what is meant, then, by this zero and infinity. And perhaps you understand a little bit more what is meant by "to be." This is quite important. Just to say "to be" is to utter only a verb.

We are not addicted to uttering undefinables if we can possibly avoid it. So let us examine what we call the dynamics in this business of beingness. There are eight dynamics. Dynamic one, as far as beingness is concerned, would be to be oneself.

Now, you understand that you have in all existing volumes before this date the eight dynamics described in terms of survival. I'll give you that difference in a moment with what I'm telling you now.

There's the beingness of one, and that's a great deal different than the survival of one. There's the beingness of one, of yourself.

And then there's the beingness of the second dynamic, the beingness in the sphere of creation, children, future, or (and get this one) illusions. That's the second dynamic. Illusions comes in there. And Frank Lloyd Wright down here building a town is just creating an illusion by that definition, you see? That's what I mean by an illusion. Constructive line comes on the second dynamic.

Now we take the third, the beingness of a group. Around here, the people who are here have begun to experience, to a very large measure, this beingness of a group. A group becomes its own life, and each one becomes the life of the group. But anyone could detach himself from the life of the group and you'd still have a life of the group. Even if all the members of a group disappeared, there would still be a record of an existing group. It's very interesting; it's almost mystic, but it becomes very unmystic when you experience it. It becomes as solid as this platform.

Now there's the fourth: that is the beingness as a species – one single species. And I won't say man with this new definition of the dynamics. I don't mean just man. I mean the species to which one belongs. Fortunately, many can expect to get out of the rut of being a Homo sapiens. I say that brutally, because Homo sapiens today isn't doing too well. I'd hate to think of a dynamic being devoted wholly to Homo sapiens as he acts.

Five would be all life.

Six would be the MEST universe – the material universe. But remember, in each case it's the beingness of it.

And seven is the beingness of all thought, any thought.

And, of course, the eighth dynamic is merely an infinity turned on its side; eight turned on its side gives you an infinity. And so you have, there, "beingness of all." And most creeds and so forth, when they say "beingness of all," they codify this and they say God, and then they put God up in armor or something, put him on a pedestal and reduce him down to a very finite affair. They're very quick to depart from that infinity. So let's not confuse a religious symbol for an infinity of the eighth dynamic, because the infinity of the eighth dynamic simply means, in our terminology here, the "beingness of all." It has no other codification. It doesn't say that all is good, bad or indifferent; it just says it's all. You say an infinity – infinity of beingness.

Well, now, there are the eight dynamics.

Now let's take up this factor: Low on the tone scale, at about 4.0 on the tone scale, we have survival – in its crude definition we have survival. Now we go up the tone scale to about 8.0, and we get into the realms of beingness with identity. And then we go up the tone scale again and we hit about 32.0, something like that, and we're starting to get into the beingness along all the dynamics. And actually, you can plot this tone scale by starting in at the bottom with one, and as you go up the tone scale, plot the rest of the dynamics in: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and eight is 40. These things will occur, more or less, in that staggered fashion up the tone scale. [See diagram two in the Appendix.]

But when we talk about survival normally, we mean survival of a body, we mean the survival of one lifetime, we mean the survival of a very finite, specific thing, and we only mean that it must continue to exist at any cost through a span of time. Well, that's sort of silly, because you actually control, command and create time. So as you go up the tone scale, you're not asking for anything to survive against a span of time. You want something to be, and to be does not include time; survival includes time.

Now, you notice as you come down the tone scale, you get into more and more and more and more time – more and more and more time till you get down to 0.0. And that's all time – is in any instant, in death. You take the death of a body, or apathy, just above that level: An instant of it can be an eternity. It can be an eternity.

You'll find the engrams that people are dragging along the track with them are engrams which have that eternal factor of apathy in them. Here is one instant of not-beingness so low that that not-beingness becomes, in itself, a survival along all time. A person can get an apathy engram a trillion years ago and still have that moment in existence today. I'm talking now about the span of all lives. It's very simple to see.

But up here at the top of the tone scale you have the reverse. You can put a complete universe or the span of all lives into an instant at the top. What you're doing is reversing it, so that as you go up the tone scale you become more and more and more capable of action per given instant.

Of how much action are you capable in one second? Well, at the bottom, you're capable in that one second of complete motionlessness, and at the top, you could live a whole lifetime, theoretically, both sides. In other words, you go up the tone scale, you get more and more and more and more time, actually, because you get up the line to where you are time and then you're controlling time and then you create time.

Now, if you see somebody who is flying around like mad, and he just seems to get all sorts of things done, he never complains about the fact that he hasn't any time; sometimes he looks around rather puzzled and wonders why somebody else isn't moving as fast as he is. And he just keeps getting these things done – brrrrrr! And comes four o'clock in the afternoon and he figures he's loafed all day.

And there's somebody else: They get up and they walk around and they work real hard, and they got one envelope addressed at supper time! And yet they think they've been moving all that time. They think they have; they have a concept of it.

Now, just a little bit higher than that, the person senses his inability to control time or realizes time is whipping him, and so he starts in with this kind of thing: "But I have no time to do anything." And he'll sit around for hours and tell you how he hasn't any time to do anything. "Why, I couldn't even start it – I mean, I wouldn't have any time to do it if I did start it." And so on, "There's no use to do it anyway, because – I mean, you couldn't hardly get it finished; there's just no time." That's at 1.5, by the way. 1.5s are wonderful at this. They will explain to you for hours how they haven't five minutes. Usually they haven't got five minutes to themselves, they have to do so much for others. (You never notice them doing this, but they tell you.)

So anyway, as you go on up the scale, you have more and more time. Now, isn't that peculiar? It simply means that at the bottom of the scale your capability of handling MEST has dropped to the point where all that happens in your interaction is that MEST handles you.

And if you ever see somebody laid out on a bier (b-i-e-r) – if you ever see anybody laid out that way – you will know instantly that they have inherited all of the universe wrong way to. That is to say, they are now in possession of the whole thing – dead. Actually, they have completed what could be called a cycle, but it'd be a mistake to do so, because what's really happened is the whole universe suddenly inherited them.

They are owned now. How much owning can there be? Well, the ownest owningness that you can do, as far as owning is concerned and so forth, would be at that level of 0.0. That's what makes MEST so attractive; MEST is dead. Even though it has joints in it and moves and wheels turn and belts spin and so forth, that thing is still a dead thing. You know that very well.

Female voice: “MEST?”

Yeah. M-E-S-T.

Female voice: “What's that?”

Oh, I beg your pardon. That's such a coined word in Dianetics; I beg your pardon. M-E-S-T: It means matter, energy, space and time.

Female voice: “Oh, okay.”

M-E-S-T. It's the first letters of it. An old engineering trick of taking the first letters of something and getting some things that sound like "ENIACs" or... The most wonderful words are being coined these days in engineering.

Now, here then is this gradient scale of beingness: not-beingness is dead; beingness is full life. And those are the two ends.

So we take this symbol; we take this symbol of the circle, the triangle and the infinity and the zero, and we can behold, in that, something which would symbolize all you need to know about anything, anywhere, to accomplish anything that you want to accomplish. Of course, it needs a couple of billion words of explanation, but it's been there for an awful long time and it's a very good symbol to remember.

The circle: The universe and the continuum of time; the beginning is the end of all.

The triangle: That means thought. And the three corners of the triangle are affinity, reality and communication. And they're the three component parts of thought (I'll explain to you why); ARC, they make up thought.

And there's the fact that you mustn't overlook, is this triangle of thought is imposed upon and becomes the circle of the MEST universe. The triangle is one end, the high end of the tone scale-all thought. And the circle is the bottom of the tone scale and it says all MEST – the universe, the circle, circular time, so on. And there is thought impinged upon the universe.

And that combination, then – the circle and the triangle – is exemplified by infinity (the allness of everything). And that is how much you could be: you could be both the circle and the triangle, or at the bottom, zero, which means that you could actually be neither, nothing, and that's not-beingness.

Actually, all a person would have to do theoretically is simply decide to be. I stressed that in November and a lot of the boys really strained at it. I said there's no reason you had to go back on the track and erase engrams. Why don't you just suddenly say "I'm going to BE"? Of course, if you felt this violently enough, you'd of course disappear and swell up and be the whole universe. But it's unhealthy, because the fellow decides this and he decides at the same time that he probably can't be this, and he decides that this can't be because it isn't, and so forth. And so instead of going up the tone scale like a WAC Corporal (that's a rocket, by the way), he goes down the tone scale and out the bottom, because he gets the sensation of running head-on into MEST.

But there you have the triangle of thought on the circle of the material universe, and the decision: the circle, the triangle, the decision.

Actually, that's all you need to know. You should take that and you should figure and you should say to yourself "Gee, that's true!" and say, "Zip!" There's only one trouble with saying "Zip!" Too many other people trying to say "Zip!" at the same time, originally on the time track, made a sort of a collision. And some of the people who were zipping this way ran into some of the people who were zapping that way, and it became a little bit confused on who was zipping and who was zapping and some of them became MEST. And becoming MEST is a very bad thing to do.

Homo sapiens is just a hair above MEST, just a hairline above it. Pretty grim. He's running on the first dynamic; he makes a complete practice out of going around and saying "I'm not, I'm not, I'm not being. I'm not being. Yes, I'm not," so on. "Well, I'm not so good at that, but uh. . ." and "What is your opinion?" and, "Do you approve of me?" and "Do I have a license to survive from you?" and so on. And he just is going around all the time making up this business at zero. And somebody who comes along and says to him all of a sudden ìI amî (something or other). They say, "Oh, he's opinionated, he is. Ha-ha. Huh! Huh! Invalidate him! Nullify him! Kill him!" because he's liable to upset this zero. And this zero is so easily upset that-do you know that Homo sapiens can only survive about sixty-nine years? Imagine, sixty-nine trips around the sun, that's all he can survive. It's hardly worth paying a nickel for. Well, it's a ride you get, sixty-nine round trips.

And then what do they do with him? They take him and his education and everything else and they bury him. I don't know why they bury him. They don't even make a practical use out of his body! It's very remarkable. The only ones that profit by the body is the florist.

Although I did hear about a battlefield one time in France where ten thousand men – knights and yeomen and so forth – had been killed, and it'd been nice and green ever since and the wheat grew well there, so it does have some advantage.

But what I'm getting at is he's trembling right on that zero; he's making a cult out of not-beingness. And any time you do that, watch out, because the fellow's just wshhh-wshhh!

Now, the state of beingness up here would be a very interesting one to reach, particularly if you could reach it with such full determinism that you could be any part of it at will – any part of it – of the gradient scale between zero and infinity. If you could be any part of anything at will and really be that part of that thing at will, on any dynamic, you would be attaining toward the potentiality of zero to infinity at your own decision, in other words. You could say, "The third dynamic. Well, I'm not going to be the third dynamic right now, I'm going to be the fourth." And you could make up your power of decision on the line. Or you could simply go up tone scale and say, "I'm infinity." Be an interesting experiment.

How do you get there? What do you have to do to get there? We have this symbol of the circle, the triangle, infinity and zero. It actually tells you all you need to know with a few dozen more lines and a lot of explanation. How do you get, then, up toward infinity? And how can you monitor and modulate your own existence and your own conduct in such a way as to be anything you want to be?

Tell you how low this society at this time is: The biggest ambition of everybody seems to be "I want to be myself." The poor guys, they haven't even gotten to the first dynamic.

Okay. Let's take a break.