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ENGLISH DOCS FOR THIS DATE- Two Rules for Happy Living - B590300

CONTENTS TWO RULES FOR HAPPY LIVING
HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
WASHINGTON
HCO BULLETIN OF 1 MARCH 1959
Issue 2
MAGAZINE MATERIAL

TWO RULES FOR HAPPY LIVING

1. Be able to experience anything.

2. Cause only those things which others are able to experience easily.

Man has had many golden rules. The Buddhist rule of “Do unto others as you would have these others do unto you”, has been repeated often in other religions. But such golden rules, while they served to advance Man above the animal, resulted in no sure sanity, success or happiness. Such a golden rule gives only the cause point, or at best the reflexive effect point. This is a self-done-to-self thing and tends to put all on obsessive cause. It gives no thought to what one does about the things done to one by others not so indoctrinated.

How does one handle the evil things done to him? It is not told in the Buddhist rule. Many random answers resulted. Amongst them are the answers of Christian Science (effects on self don’t exist), the answers of early Christians (become a martyr), the answers of Christian ministers (condemn all sin). Such answers to effects created on one bring about a somewhat less than sane state of mind — to say nothing of unhappiness.

After one’s house has burned down and the family cremated, it is no great consolation to (I) pretend it didn’t happen, (2) liken oneself to Job or (3) condemn all arsonists.

So long as one fears or suffers from the effect of violence, one will have violence against him. When one can experience exactly what is being done to one, ah magic, it does not happen!

The most basic proof of this is the earlier tests with problems of comparable magnitude and later tests of “selected overts”. When the problem or terminal is no longer restimulative, it ceases to have power to harm one.

How to be happy in this universe is a problem few prophets or sages have dared contemplate directly. We find them “handling” the problem of happiness by assuring us that man is doomed to suffering. They seek not to tell us how to be happy but how to endure being unhappy. Such casual assumption of the impossibility of happiness has led us to ignore any real examination of ways to be happy. Thus we have floundered forward toward a negative goal — get rid of all the unhappiness on Earth and one would have a liveable Earth. If one seeks to get rid of something continually, one admits continually he cannot confront it — and thus everyone went down hill. Life became a dwindling spiral of more things we could not confront. And thus we went towards blindness and unhappiness.

To be happy, one only must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things that are.

Unhappiness is only this: the inability to confront that which is. Hence (1) Be able to experience anything.

The effect side of life deserves great consideration. The self-caused side also deserves examination.

To create only those effects which others could easily experience gives us a clean new rule of living. For if one does, then what might he do that he must withhold from others? There is no reason to withhold his own actions or regret them (same thing) if one’s own actions are easily experienced by others.

This is a sweeping test (and definition) of good conduct — to do only those things which others can experience.

If you examine your track you will find you are hung up only in those actions a person did which others were not able to receive. Hence a person’s track can become a hodge-podge of violence withheld which pulls in then the violence others caused.

The more actions a person emanated which could not be experienced by others, the worse a person’s track became. Recognizing that he was bad cause, or that there were too many bad causes already, a person ceased causing things — an unhappy state of being.

Pain, misemotion, unconsciousness, insanity all result from causing things others could not experience easily. The reach-withhold phenomena is the basis of all these things. When one sought to reach in such a way as to make it impossible for another to experience, one did not reach, then, did he? To “reach” with a gun against a person who is unwilling to be shot is not to reach the person but a protest. All bad reaches never reached. So there was no communication and the end result was a withhold by the person reaching. This reach-withhold became at last an inability to reach — therefore low communication, low reality, low affinity.

All bad acts then are those acts which cannot be easily experienced at the target end.

On this definition let us review our own “bad acts” (or overts). Which ones were bad. Only those that could not be easily experienced by another were bad. Thus which of society’s favorite bad acts are bad? Acts of real violence resulting in pain, unconsciousness, insanity and heavy loss could at this time be considered bad. Well what other acts of yours do you consider “bad”? The things which you have done which you could not easily yourself experience were bad. But the things which you have done which you yourself could have experienced had they been done to you were not bad. That certainly changes one’s view of things!

Only processing can bring a person to a point where he or she could experience anything without enduring consequence. So it is no wonder that philosophy of yesteryear was stopped on “happiness” as a subject.

But all processes from the beginning of Dianetics and Scientology until now which improved the ability to confront (or experience) were gaining toward the goal. All processes that eradicated experience only were poor processes. The early drop in gains in processing (1950) came about because people dramatized an eradication of all badness. The auditors were unwilling to let the pcs experience anything, the pcs sought to get rid of things without experiencing things.

There is no need to lead a violent life just to prove one can experience. The idea is not to prove one can experience but to regain the ability to experience which is only done in processing.

Thus today we have two golden rules for happiness:

l. Be able to experience anything; and

2. Cause only those things which others are able to experience easily.

Your reaction to these tells you how far you have yet to go in processing. And that is the first time we knew that.

And if we achieve these two golden rules, we Scientologists would be the happiest and most successful people in this universe for who could rule any of us with evil?

Of course these are the characteristics of gods — But who said we were trying to make anything else?

L. RON HUBBARD LRH:-.rd