Afternoon lecture, January 15th, we are going to talk about some odds and ends. But very specifically, we’re going to talk a little more about present time.

And now, if time and havingness are similar experiences, I mean, if this abstract called “time” can be reduced to the human experience of havingness, then you ought to have quite a process there, huh?

And let’s just take a definition now-I’m trying to teach you to be Scientologists now, not auditors. Let’s take a definition and let’s just make a process out of it. We know all the modus operandi of processes. There are all kinds of them, there are a terrific number.

Of course, there is such a thing as knowing the efficient process that happens to resolve a certain category of thing, but let’s just take time and havingness now and let’s find out something about havingness. Just because somebody has a title to your car that you don’t have-that you lost in some fashion or other-doesn’t mean a total lack of that car unless you are so highly “only oned” that it means that something goes out of existence just because it isn’t in your vicinity. See that? And we find, then, that the car would still exist, only the ownership of it wouldn’t be yours. Now, the ownership is a symbol. The car still exists. You wouldn’t have the doingness of it, but then we’re not into doingness right here. We’re just examining havingness. Now havingness, then, goes from the gradient scale of a symbolized havingness-that is to say, a certificate of title or “It’s mine” or some such thing as that. That would be a symbolized havingness.

Now, an individual who is in this very solidly has this kind of a circumstance to combat and it’s an interesting circumstance. The only present time is where he is. It’s past time everyplace else. This would normally be true. You see, let’s just take it from the definition and the definition would say that. It’d say present time is where he is. Because he can only have if he has a symbolized ownership of and the thing close to him and the doingness of it and beingness of it and so forth. If he has an exclusive on this, why, then he feels he can have.

Well then, if he’s in that frame of mind and if symbols mean that much to him, then the only present time there really is, is a present time right where he is. So what chance does he have to perceive distances? He wouldn’t have a very good chance to perceive over a very large distance, because the fact of the matter is, is he can only have what he owns, personally, by symbolized title. See that? That should be very clear, then, that at a distance it’d be past time.

So when we get this boy into spaces, we would instantly have a problem with him of no space. Why? Because the space is from present time to past time, not from space to space. Come on, wrap yourself around that-don’t make it blurred. See, we wouldn’t have a problem then from space to space, because out of the immediate zone of control-and this is the factor that goes in there and where we add doingness-the zone of control. His exclusive right in other words, to start, stop and change said automobile would be his zone of space. And when his zone of control is via the body only, then we do have a condition where the individual can be in present time only on unit space here.

See, it wouldn’t be present time there. And so it’s present time here, but the restaurant where you ate this morning is where you were eating this morning. You see, that’s the time that restaurant is in, although that restaurant exists right here. I mean there’s just no trick to observe this restaurant and perceive its counter and waitresses and everything. They’re going on, they’re doing something else, but it’s a change of pattern.

Now, the restaurant in past time would be the fixed pattern of particles or a fixed cycle of particles-you eating breakfast, waitresses talking to you. Well, that would now be in the past to such a person who depended for something else to grant to him the right to own.

You know, if the State of Arizona has got to send you a title before you can drive a car, why, then the chances are-or if you can’t go out here in the street and, as you examine it, own a very classy car-you know, just examine it and own it. Same thing, in essence: examination, own. You see, you have limitations of doingness with regard to the car, but actually if you completely have jettisoned this thing called symbolized ownership, you could drive the car too. You might have to use a different body, but you could drive the car without much trouble, as a matter of fact, rather easily. Most of Homo sapiens is pretty well dug in. As a matter of fact, we’re going to get together a pneumatic drill squad to get out the average citizen.

Now, what problem here is posed to the auditor? He could tell immediately-he could tell immediately whether a person was in present time or in past time. In this way, he could tell immediately if the person is in present time here and in past time elsewhere or past time elsewhere or past time here. So that would be a lower grade. Past time here, past time elsewhere. Now, that’s really pretty bad, you see?

Now, we get into present time here, past time elsewhere and then we get into present time here and several other elsewheres are in present time too. And then we get into present time here and take the extreme on it, present time this universe. He could then observe simultaneously all the particles of the universe in any given pattern at any instant. But he’d have to be able to pervade or own the whole condemned universe before he could actually achieve this absolute trick. You see how that would be?

So let’s just look at this business of time and havingness and we find out something else immediately: that havingness consists of ownership or proprietorship, to most people, of a space or an object. That’s what havingness means to most people-space or an object or an action of some sort. But havingness really refers, as we hit it along the groove here, it actually refers to objects. And we get there, then: space, energy, object. And when we refer to havingness, we just limit its meaning there to objects and we’ve pretty well got it and, of course, a body to some degree is an object and so is a symbol-they’re mobile objects. Now, if you’re going to differentiate between a living object and a dead object, you’re going to have an awful hard time, because you would have to say, well, “a living object is something that is mobile, has life in it.”

Well all right, let’s take a racing car, with you pervading it. It’s an object with mobility with life in it. You’re in it. You, a thetan, pervading it, so it must be a living object then. Well no, it’s not a living object because, of course, it’s a racing car and everybody knows a racing car isn’t alive.

Now, just a minute. Do you mean the difference between a biological object and a explosion-motivated object? You mean the difference between a heat engine and a biological engine or the difference between a heat engine and a heat engine? Just what do you mean there? And we get into an absurdity.

Mobilized, organized and well-controlled MEST objects would also perforce include bodies. Because a body has a lot of MEST in it-terrific amount of it. It lives on it, it’s a heat engine. And I don’t care if some other being has mobilized this or if you’ve mobilized this MEST and granted it beingness, you won’t get much of anywhere in materializing or animating other objects than bodies if you think you don’t have the power to mobilize any kind of MEST and make it animate.

Now theoretically, that introduces another slight absurdity that you could have this racing car out here walk down the street instead of roll down the street-you know, lift its right wheel and take a step and lift its left wheel and take a step. You, actually, could have that happen if we carried this out to the other... But we don’t know that that can’t happen, you see?

All right. So let’s take what we know and just skip what we don’t know, at the moment, and hit for the highest certainty on the thing and we find then that any symbol would sort of have a certain amount of life in it. You could say, “Well, a motorcycle is an idea cloaked in MEST which is animate.” Well, ’tis. It’s an idea. It doesn’t do any thinking.

The next time you see the word “the” do some thinking, you let me know, huh? It’s an idea cloaked in energy-quite mobile, easily duplicated and so forth. So we have a symbol.

Now, there should be some demarcation line here in terms of havingness-should be some-somewhere between some life object and a just purely MEST object with no life in it and between an idea which is a live perpetuating idea and an idea which is simply a fixed idea. Oh boy, there just ought to be there so we can classify everything, you know, and get it all into other bins where it won’t make sense.

The truth of the matter is when you talk about an object, you would have to qualify it this way: well, is it a self-determinedly mobile object? Well, if it’s a self-determinedly mobile object, you could either be talking then about an automatically driven automobile, self-determining along a certain course or an unlimitedly self-determined object which could create other mobile symbols-other symbols.

Well, when you’re talking about that last, of course, you’re talking about a thetan, you’re talking about life. But it would have to be, by definition, an unlimitedly self-determined object, which would be the difference between a fixed idea, you know, a limiterily determined object.

An automobile that could drive itself, you see, could only go down the street at a certain rate of speed, turn certain corners, perform certain functions and all of those functions would center around driving an automobile down the street and being an automobile, totally. So it’d be a fixed idea.

Now, if we could exteriorize that idea and blow it up to a point where it could actually create other automobiles or create other ideas or other classes of ideas (in other words, fix ideas into energy itself, all on its own on an unlimited basis), we would be talking about a thetan.

Now, there’s the essential difference, then, between a symbol and a thetan. Now, the preclear who is in present time here and past time everywhere else is pretty well sold on symbols and the next step from there is to be a symbol only and there in itself we get the definition of “limitation.” And there is limitation. Limitation of what? Limitation of ideas, limitation of the ability to duplicate ideas, limitation of the ability to fix ideas in energy. And the more a person is limited in this ability to duplicate or fix ideas, why, the less alive he is and the less in present time he is and, actually, the less havingness he can have. So we tackle this thing from three or four different ways and we all come to the same conclusion: that an individual is pretty near as fixed as he is the thing he is being by belief. See, he’s pretty near as fixed as that.

And fixity itself says, “present time here, past time elsewhere”-to be fixed and no longer be mobile.

To have present time everywhere would require, you see, an enormous instantaneous mobility.

Well, the object of which we have and the time which it represents are not unlimited ideas. And when you get something way down from being an unlimited idea-way down from that, quite fixed and so on-why, its main concern is that which it is in sympathy with. See? In sympathy. Here we have “it will agree with those things which it is nearest to.” So an individual who has to have a great deal is, of course, in sympathy with things which are, you know, other objects. And so if you’re in continuous sympathy with the MEST universe, you naturally would eventually come to believe that you yourself were a fixed idea which had no further goal than to be the idea you had fixed upon to be fixed about. You see how that is?

In other words, continuous contact with objects-whether you make them or find them (but this is beside the point)-continuous contact with objects and continuous sympathy with these objects would eventually, perforce, bring you to a point where you believed you yourself were a limited object-in other words, a symbol.

Well, there’s present time. Now we say, “Where is present time?” We can actually locate it when we talk about a preclear. Where is present time? Where is present time to a tree?

I don’t even think it’s present time outside the bark. It’s present time right inside that bark, that’s about all.

Now, present time to some individuals is just to the length of their fingertips and they actually have their zone of occlusion out there to their fingertip length. It’s what they can reach and protect is the other thing which is describing it. That is the object then that they can have, is how much they can protect and they got into this cycle by trying to protect objects. (Just weaving in other stuff we’ve had on this same thing, show you we’re not departing afield in any way.)

All right. Now, his zone of present time is to his fingertips. That would mean that the far end of the room to this individual wouldn’t be in the same time that he was in-not quite. There would be a lapse there. And the front of the building certainly is not. So his present time would be a zone of perception. We have a zone of perception, then, having something to do with establishing time. And present time, then, would be established to a large degree by the zone of perception.

So you take the occluded case: he’s defending himself in many ways from being out of present time. Now, I asked somebody this morning (a student had exteriorized him), told him to flinch from this and flinch from that and flinch from something else and he came up with the fact of “Well, he’s doing all right and it was all black” and so forth. And I said, “All right, well, flinch from the blackness.” And this was a big puzzler to him because he didn’t know where to flinch to. This left him no place to flinch.

So the occluded case, the occluded case, for bad or worse-by the way, you don’t get the idea these people are unable, because they’re not. They had more ability to protect and it’s been violated more often, that’s about all.

And this boy, who is very, very occluded, will inevitably come up with that same question when you get him exteriorized a little bit and get him to flinching, when you tell him to flinch from the blackness, there’s no place to flinch to. And this could describe his case: no place to flinch to. And so if he can’t flinch, he can’t move, which is all he’s saying. And you ask him to be out of his head and this is like a flinch. See? Very elementary.

But then, an individual’s mobility would depend to some degree upon his idea of his own security. So present time would have something to do with that, his safety. So it’d take a lot of trust to be in present time over a large area, wouldn’t it? Why, you just have to trust hell out of everything.

Well, a person becomes unwilling to trust when he’s unwilling to be betrayed. Of course, the MEST universe pounding in on you twenty-four hours a day, bangity-bangity-bangity-bang-bang with particles, if you’re a particle too is, of course, betraying you twenty-four hours a day. What it does is set up on the heavy incidents of betrayal, such as the times you smashed into the wall and fell off the roof. And those impacts, you see, and those impacts themselves will operate as barriers, which themselves pile up an enormous number of particles.

This would be a very, very sad picture if г thetan were a particle. And no case would ever solve or get better. All cases would get worse, uniformly, no matter what you did to them if a thetan was a particle or, actually, if he depended on his identity for particles-his individuality rather, not his identity.

If he depended exclusively upon particles for his individuality, it would mean he had no sense of personal beingness unless he had some particles. Well, the particle is there to prove to you that he is too-that proves it. The particle proves it. Because particles, MEST universe particles, are visible to one and all. We’ve agreed upon those particles as being visible to one and all. So people will hold up these particles and say, “And look, this proves it.”

Well, that means that his identity and his individuality and his beingness and his time level and everything else must have been challenged very badly, huh? If they’ve been challenged badly and if he’s challenged other people badly on their individuality and so forth and their rightness and wrongness and that sort of thing-if this challenge has gone back and forth very often, well, what’s he wind up with then? He winds up here with the idea that he’d better prove that it exists.

Well, a symbol proves that he exists. That’s very plain. He has to have a symbol to prove that he exists. Well, if he has a symbol to prove that he exists, the next thing you know, he goes down the line from a symbol to prove he exists, down to the extremely fixed idea: “I am John Jones, I tend a railroad gate. Here is where I am during certain periods of the day. And that is what I do, I tend a railroad gate. I lift the side of the gate and put it back down.”

Now, if he had no other activities whatsoever, he would be what you call a fixed idea. He’s a symbol. And an autoist and the engineer of the trains use him for a symbol. That’s where John Jones is. That’s the deterioration of a thetan to an idea.

All right. No sense in backing up the hearse on this. I’m just showing you how many directions this goes. And our problem with a preclear returns to a problem of havingness. Now, a thetan at least can have. An automobile can have if a thetan will pretend that it can. But a thetan can have and a thetan can shift time.

But time is this shift of particles. Now, it can be an improving or a deteriorating shift of particles. And the rate of change of particles if slow, even aesthetic or something of the sort or explosive, still might be desirable. You know, a slow change of particles might be desirable, a fast change of particles might be desirable; a fast change of particles might be undesirable, and a slow change of particles might be undesirable, because all this is what? This is just consideration of havingness which goes back to an aesthetic. An aesthetic deteriorates into a utility.

So, a utility is “we need this piece of energy to work pieces of energy.” There’s actually nothing more degraded than that: “we need this piece of energy to work this-pieces of energy. We need this symbol in order to move these symbols.” That’s utility.

All right, what’s aesthetic? Aesthetic is “it’s pretty.” And then what’s just below an aesthetic? An art critic. It’s pretty, but is it art? He introduces a hidden arbitrary.

And by the way, I might make a mention in passing of the hidden standard. People go around and they say, “Well, you aren’t being a good girl.” And they say, “You aren’t being a good boy.” They’re pretending to you, continually, that there is such a thing as a “good girl” or a “good boy,” you see. And they really don’t tell you what a “good girl” or a “good boy” is. See, that’s the hidden standard. They’re pretending all the time that an ideal standard exists. They’re pretending that there’s always an ideal standard for what you’re doing.

This art critic looks at your painting or your literary critic looks at your story or the poet critic looks at your poem and they look at it and they say, “Well, I don’t know. Its meter is a little bit slow. It’s uh... I don’t know, now... it uh... just... uh... Well, I tell you, it’s very hard to-to-to make you understand this, but this type of painting ordinarily should be done with a little more, you know... And... uh... umm and so...”

Bull! That’s your art critic. He’s pretending there is such a thing as a perfect portrait, a perfect book, a perfect poem. He pretends that somebody knows what it is!

Nobody knows. There isn’t even a good definition for art. It’s a big, beautiful, empty word. “If it pleases you, it’s art.” Well, that’s not even a good definition, but it’s better than most. It isn’t a good definition, because it isn’t very embracive. But it’s better than most definitions.

I’ve read the definition of art as being “the self-created interpretation by the artist of the physical universe, for the representation of significances to his public or audience.” That, by the way, is next to the best definition I know. There are no good definitions.

"If it pleases you, it’s art,” that’s the handiest one. And below that, this long drawn-out affair whereby it’s an interpretation of the individual and so on. And they, by the way, drag that one out every once in a while and then prove to you the movies can’t be art because they’re the product of several people. That’s beside the point of whether the movies are art or not. It’s just you can’t prove that they aren’t art by saying that several people created the work of art.

I’ve seen several works of art that several people have created. There’s some old buildings scattered around the world that I just know that architect didn’t build. I just have a hunch that the architect did not get out there and mount all that stone together. Something tells me his hands were still soft when he viewed the last spire completed.

Now, he might have had the basic idea, but by the time we get to rolling along on the thing, why, if anybody else is going to have a hand in it at all, we’re going to have something else than the basic intention. So if art is just the basic intention, why, then that’s fine, but I’m afraid nobody else is going to appreciate it either or ever be able to see it. Because the only way you could ever keep the basic intention pure is just exactly what you, each and every one, are doing with your mock-ups-keeping them private.

The only reason you don’t see each other’s mock-ups is your general protest against art critics. You know, you finally don’t show them.

Well now, we get into havingness when we get into objects of any kind then, whatever the intent of the object. And the deterioration of the object is the protest of the individual or the persistence of the object is the protest of the individual, one thing or the other.

He’s either protesting because it’s deteriorating or protesting because it’s persisting.

But the number of times he’ll protest against a persisting object are actually fewer in the present state of the society. Individuals in society protest less against a persisting object than those which are deteriorating. They protest those madly.

Now, the dispersal of the particles or the too close a condensation of the particles of any object is the actual protest. Two protests then. In other words, the particles are too close together now, so they aren’t making the proper form or intent or they’re dispersing in some fashion, slowly or swiftly, which again are not matching up to the intent.

Now, you see, that is basically havingness, would be the form of these particles-their proximity one to another. They themselves demark intent, form and everything else in terms of MEST. See that? I mean, that is an obstacle. That is to say, the deterioration, the dispersal of the particles is an obstacle to the creation of any particle which gets so acute that the person ceases to create. I mean, he just says, “Well, there’s no sense in creating, because it’s just going to fall to pieces anyhow.” He’s lost his peak, his joy of creation.

The only reason to work is the joy of putting out effort. Working toward a retirement is like getting very ambitious to die. Working toward a retirement and nothing to do is the shabbiest goal that any society could ever get together with. Because all they’ll be able to do for any enjoyment they have is, actually, not to or to handle effort. But not to handle effort would have to be out of choice while still retaining the ability to handle effort. So a society that’s trying to work itself out of job, all the time, is a society which is trying to work itself into death.

So it is with the thetan. He picks up these automaticities so he won’t have to do it. He’s working himself out of a job all the time. Well, that’s a deteriorating line. He works himself out of a job more and more and more and more and it’ll finally get him, believe me.

All right. What’s this got to do with present time?

Now, on this problem of havingness and present time, we then see that a person who is too certain that all objects will disperse or super-condense, implode or explode... You know, a dispersal of the particles of an object is simply a slow explosion or a fast explosion and the condensation of an object is simply a slow or a fast implosion-particles going inward. Implosion and explosion, then, are the two zones of worship, you might say, of the-he worships a god now, that’s the most dispersed god you ever saw.

Now, where we have this as a fear, we get really what amounts to this: a protest against the change of space, because that’s a protest against the change of position of particles. The relative change of position of particles then is a protest against time because time itself is the change of position of particles, which is changes of spaces. See that?

Now, you find people that think they have to work slowly. Now, this is born solely out of their inability to change the position of particles swiftly. They know they can’t handle that many particles that fast and so they know they have to do that slowly. That’s their survival pace and what fixes it is how slowly they have to combine or uncombine particles.

They look to somebody who’s running at good speed, like a diver walking across against a current on the bottom of the ocean-slow motion. They move so slow. Well, they have to do it slowly because, you see, if you yank particles apart fast or put them together fast, you get a sensation.

Now, if you put particles together at one speed, you get exhilaration. At another speed, you get pain and at another speed, you get apathy.

Now theoretically, you can put particles together so fast that the ridge caused will be total apathy. And theoretically, you can put particles together, snap them together—in other words, such a change so far from their own basic agreement that they will form hard matter.

A test of this would be if you could take a large number of, let’s say, beans-if you could take a large number of beans and drop them into a compressor and then, in a microsecond, smash half a ton of beans into something a cubic foot in space, you would have a nice solid object, be teal solid. And that’s how they make the stuff out of which they make railroad car wheels these days. It’s the speed of fusion.

Now theoretically, you could take the tiniest number of particles, even the particles of air, and smash them together with such incredible speed that it would approach almost instantaneousness and you would get a sheet of new material which would be composed of air but which would last thereafter. See that? That’s just reductio ad absurdum on the same thing.

Now theoretically, you could take nothingness and condense it with instantaneousness and get somethingness. That’s how you make things. And then you postulate that there were particles there because you now have a particle. But that is a no-time proposition and so you can do that any time. All right.

Now, your preclear is educated, then, into a survival pace which means the speed of fusion and separation of particles and that is his survival pace. Automobiles should travel at twenty-five miles an hour. Traffic then doesn’t condense so that it can’t be uncondensed and doesn’t uncondense so that it can’t be condensed again. This gives him and is his liberty to take apart things which have been put together. So he will tolerate speed to the degree which he could alter-that is change or start or stop or recombine particles. That’s speed to him.

You want to see a man rather aghast, have him watch this bean smashing machine that makes car wheels. Gee, he comes out of there and he says, “Rrrrh! God, that’s a lot of power-how many horsepower are on that thing? Gee whiz, that’s awful solid. Whoa! Wow!” But now, if you were doing it at a tremendously slow speed so that he’d have to stay there all afternoon-he could barely see the plunger press-gosh, he wouldn’t like that. See, it’s not enough havingness in the same unit of time, the other is too much havingness in the same unit of time-too much hardness.

Well now, right around in what I am saying right now, right around in this material, there is a way of making MEST mechanically. We know a thetan can do this, but there’s a way of making MEST make MEST so solid and so rigid, out of such apparent nothingnesses, that you could revolutionize any industry you could put your eye on. You’d have to find out how to increase and decrease its rate of fusion and increase and decrease its rate of dispersal. And if you’ve experimented around, even with the available machinery on Earth here, you could build some of the very strange metals that often are found.

The speed with which the companion star of Sirius went together is an example of this. It went together so fast that a spoonful of this stuff on Earth now weighs a ton. We have no comprehension of what kind of an element this would be. It’s right off the valence chart. It’s completely off the periodic chart of chemicals. And yet, it does weigh that much because its size is such and so and it stands in a certain degree of centripetal and centrifugal forces with Sirius itself, the speed of its rotation demonstrates how much it must weigh.

Well, now here’s a lot of industrialism, but here’s a lot of preclear for you. When he runs into a wall, that’s too many particles coming together too quick! And the only thing this is measured by is this-there’s one thing that measures this: does it exceed his ability to alter the result? And powerlessness is built out of that: exceeded ability to alter the result of the dispersion or condensation of particles.

So a person conceives himself to have a lot of power when he can make a lot of particles disperse and no power when he can’t make a few disperse. So you find the case that is having a rough time, you find him chewing slowly away upon his ridges and he believes that he can’t make these things disperse.

Now, this is assisted-an understanding to this, rather, is assisted by a certain Mock-up Process which you can do. You can have somebody mock-up several blocks of granite and then have him rig up tremendous machinery-enormous ten-ton bulldozers, derricks, winches, everything-to move one of these pieces of granite one-half of one inch. Have a crew of a couple of hundred men come out there and so forth.

And you know, by the time you get through building this thing up and making this terrific amount of bric-a-brac necessary to move that piece of granite, it’s a distinct possibility that the preclear won’t be able to budge it. And if he does, he’s going to budge it with considerable strain.

Now you have him take a feather and have him brush all the blocks of granite off the road, at which time they immediately fly. A difference of belief, a difference of concept: how many particles can I disperse, how many can I condense at what speed? Speed is relationship to how fast those particular particles are supposed to condense or disperse. And that, of course, goes immediately into an agreement, which is all reality is composed of.

We agree we have particles and then we agree that they should disperse or condense at certain speeds, that is to say, relative to other particles. So we get relative motion. We get Einstein coming out and saying, "Well, after something goes the speed of light, why, [mumbling] Q equals В equals George equals Oswald equals, so forth.” And everybody gets down and figure-figure-figure-figure-figure-figure-figures and they have a wonderful time o£ it. They don’t get very far, because they’re trying to make energy move energy. And that, of course, is a game all of its own, to make energy move energy. It’s not efficient, but it’s all right. Okay. For instance, you imbibe certain chemicals which make certain chemical reactions on a heat-combustion engine such as the body and that moves energy and energy moves energy and then some more energy moves some other energy, oh, boy!

But if you were to feed somebody a ten-course dinner in one second, I can guarantee that he would explode. And if you were to feed it to him in ten years, I guarantee he’d starve to death.

So there’s a penalty goes with this, which is the measured penalty, measured by Man, against a tolerance of condensation and a tolerance of dispersal of the body itself. And so a thetan who’s gotten to agreeing with the body and agreeing with everything the body can do and so forth has agreed to a tolerance.

Now, the body cannot hit a brick wall at fifteen miles an hour you know, just go along at fifteen miles an hour and just hit a brick wall, without some consequence. Now, it can’t hit a brick wall at fifty miles an hour-you know, no protection, nothing going to crumple up first-just hit the brick wall at fifty miles an hour and live. It is going to be in a remarkably bad state of disrepair. So the speed of tolerance of the body lies somewhere in there. So the thetan gets to believing his speed of tolerance is something.

The trouble with a thetan is, is he can hit a brick wall at fifty thousand miles a second-wouldn’t do anything to harm him. His tolerance is, of course, as infinite as he is a static. And it’s as finite and as cut down as he is matter or energy himself. He is as able as he doesn’t use energy to move energy and he is as unable as he has to have energy to move energy.

And he’s as much in present time, then, as he doesn’t need energy to move energy. So you just work around to that and you come right back to present time because the present time of an individual is his index of havingness.

Now, an individual who can’t make particles disperse, sticks in dispersing particles, so we get him stuck out of present time. He won’t let particles disperse, so you say, “Let go of the engram, reject it, do something with it” and he’s got it right there. He’s got everything. He’s got all of his ideas and everything right there. He’s stuck.

Most of you think of your past, when you can’t remember your whole track, you think of your past as being terrifically scattered all over the place, you know (you usually do), or terrifically condensed. It isn’t either one. Your past is not written on symbols. Your knowingness about where you have been and what you have done is not determined by the knowingness of particles, because particles don’t know anything. It is determined solely by what you know. And you know as much as you are not relying upon fixed ideas.

Now, this whole thing about data in facsimiles and machines is quite similar to this other problem. And this problem is simply this: An individual ties a piece of string upon his finger so that he can remember to get a loaf of bread if he passes a store. And that is known as “associative remembering” and becomes associative logic and lots of other things.

But a thetan has all kinds of automatic machinery to tell him what he already knows and to tell him more poorly. The machinery which he has, in terms of remembering, is machinery which is a string around his finger. Just as the string around the finger doesn’t work, so this machinery really doesn’t work either.

A person has to have an anxiety about remembering before he ceases to remember, so we get knowingness and rememberingness and so forth. None of these things depend upon particles and so we get power itself as great as a person isn’t depending upon particles to deliver power to him.

A preclear is as easy to step out of his head as he is able to own. First he owns not at all and then he owns with a symbol, a deed of title, and then he’ll own just because he’s got the-the thing is something that has been around him for some time and he’s granted beingness to it. And then you have him owning much more widely. He’s owning to the limit of his perception. And then you have him owning to the limit of his knowingness-he knows about something, he can own it. And that goes on up, of course, to total knowingness, which, of course, is total ownership.

Now havingness, therefore, is a very interesting index.

Let’s look out of all that theory though and bail you out of it now by simply feeding you a little process about this thing.

Name off-give me some things now that you don’t have.

Now get somebody else chanting off some things he doesn’t have.

Now get a couple of other people and get one of those naming some things the other one doesn’t have.

All right, throw those away. And get somebody else out in front of you and get this person naming some things you don’t have.

And let’s throw that person away and let’s get another person there and get you naming some things this other person doesn’t have.

Now let’s throw that person away and let’s get you naming some things you have.

Let’s get another person naming some things he or she has.

All right. Let’s throw that away and let’s get two other people and one of them naming some things the other person has.

Throw that away and get a person naming some things you have.

Throw that person away and get another person there and you name some things this other person has.

Okay. Throw them away. And let’s check off some things which you have.

Now which you’re very certain you do not have.

Now let’s get somebody else there and have this person naming very certainly, with great certainty, some things which you have.

And now some things which you do not have.

Now let’s throw that away and get a couple of other people there and get one naming some things the other has.

And now that the other does not have.

All right, throw them away and get somebody naming some things that you have.

Which you do not have.

Now get him naming some things this other person (he or she) has.

And he or she does not have.

Throw them away.

All right. Let’s get another person there and get you naming some things this other person has.

Naming some things this other person does not have.

Okay. Throw that away.

And now let’s get you and another person-see how good you are-get you and another person and have this other person saying, “It’s too late.” And you saying, “No, it’s not.”

Get that simultaneously. The other person saying, “It’s too late.” And you saying, “No, it’s not.”

Now changing persons or not, get this other person saying, “No, it’s not,” when you say, “It’s too late.” You insist it’s too late. And the other person says, "No, it’s not”-disagrees.

Okay, now get two other people out in front of you there and get one of these persons saying, “It’s too late.” And the other person saying, “No, it’s not.” Any emotional tones you want to put into that.

Now swap the roles.

Now have a person way out in front of you someplace and have this person saying to himself, “Oh, it’s too late-well no, it’s not. Well, it’s too late-no, it’s not”

Now have this person put up in front of him two people. One of which is saying, “It’s too late.” And the other person saying, “No, it’s not.”

Okay. Now you yourself say, “It’s too late-no, it’s not. It’s too late-no, it’s not. It’s too late-no, it’s not.”

Okay. Now put another person out in front of you and have this other person saying, “It’s too late.” And you saying, “No, it’s not.”

And instead of verbalizing it, get the feelingness of the agreement and disagreement on this subject. And have you saying, “It’s too late.” And the other person, “No, it’s not.” Disagreeing with that fact that “it’s too late” with you.

Okay.