I would like to talk to you now about the Axioms of Scientology.

There is considerable to be known about these. The Axioms were first developed in this science a great many years ago — two years, three years ago. And since that time there have been considerable changes. The changes are all in the direction of simplification.

At present, we are operating with 50 Axioms and definitions. The original list was considerably in excess of 290, and this list of 50 is both better and simpler, and more workable of course.

Now, what are these Axioms and how do they apply? Are they something that you are supposed to read and, you know, say, "Well, I understand that," and turn over the page and "Well, I understand that."

No, I am afraid that isn't the case. You who are in training on this particular subject are not expected to read them, you're expected to absorb them; you're expected to be able to quote them verbatim, by number, the exact words, the exact meaning, and much more important than that, you're expected to understand them.

Now, let's take a look at these Axioms and find out what they compare to. Actually, they compare best perhaps to the axioms of geometry. They are certainly as self-evident as that, but the axioms of geometry are really much cruder than these Axioms, since geometry proves itself by itself and the Axioms of Scientology prove themselves by all of life.

Now, in geometry we have the Aristotelian syllogism being used continually, and we do not use this. We use a much better platform on which to base our understanding. If something doesn't work in Scientology, we change it and find something more workable. We are not bowed down to the great god "No Change."

Now, I know some of you watching this work going forward for the last four years or so certainly would agree with that very wholeheartedly, that we were not completely yoked by the motto "no change."

And so we have today 50 Axioms and definitions. Now, Webster says that an axiom is a self-evident truth. Well, true enough, these are self-evident. But they are not so thoroughly self-evident that they leap out of the page and introduce themselves. You have to introduce yourself to them.

The first of our Axioms is a bit of understanding which, if you do not have it and do not comprehend it, you won't be able to do anything with Scientology. I mean, it's just as blunt as that. The first one, if you don't have it very well and if it's something foggy, so that somebody came up to you and said, "What is life?" and you said, "Well now, let's see. It's something to do with electricity. No, it's a static. I mean, I heard once there was a rumor that… Understand… Let me see. Well, of course, I know what life is."

No, you don't. Man has been saying that for ten thousand years — "Well, er… uh… It has something, I guess… I understand…"No, we're not doing that in Scientology and that's why we succeed in cases. Life is basically a static. That's the first Axiom. Life is basically a static.

What is a static? A static is something which does not have mass, it does not have a location in space and does not have a location in time, it does not have any wavelength. And that's what a static is. This static, however, of life is a very peculiar static — very, very peculiar static. And that is, it has the ability to postulate and perceive, and it has qualities.

Now that you won't find in your textbook until you get over to R2-40, the dissertation there. But it's nevertheless very true that life is capable of qualities. Those qualities are best found in the top buttons of the Chart of Attitudes.

Now you say," Well, all right. Then how can you measure it?"

Well, you can measure it. When you find something that has no mass, no location and no position in time, and which has no wavelength at all, the inability to measure it will tell you that you have your hands on life.

Now, the funny part of it is, out of this static all other phenomena extends. So, naturally, you cannot measure a thing by its own phenomena. Space comes from this. You could say life is a space-energy-object production-and-placement unit. You could say that and that would be equally true, because that's what it does.

I tell you, you would not try to measure a dog by his biscuits. And as a result, why, people cannot measure this static by the phenomena extending from the static.

Well now, number 2 — if you have number 1 down very thoroughly (and you should be able to give quite a dissertation on number 1) — number 2: The static is capable of considerations, postulates and opinions. It also has qualities, you understand? Something, in other words, a life form, a thetan let us say who is very, very close to being pure static, he has practically no wavelength. He's in a very, very small amount of mass. Actually, a thetan — due to some experiments conducted about, oh, I don't know, fifteen-twenty years ago — thetan weighs about 1.5 ounces. Who made these experiments? Well, it was a doctor made these experiments, because he weighed people before and after death, retaining any mass. He weighed the person, bed and all. And he found that the weight dropped at the moment of death about 1.5 ounces, some of them 2 ounces. (Those were heavy thetans.)

Anyway, we have this thetan capable of considerations, postulates and opinions. Well now, the most native qualities to him, in other words, the things which he is most likely to postulate, are these qualities which you find as the top buttons of the Chart of Attitudes. In other words, trust, full responsibility, all that sort of thing.

So we have, then, actually described a thetan when we have gotten Axioms 1 and 2. And if you ever miss this, then you're going to have an awful hard time exteriorizing somebody, because if you think that you reach in with a pair of forceps and drag him out of his head, this is not true. What you do is you exteriorize something that can't possibly be nailed down. Now that's quite a trick, isn't it?

A thetan has to postulate he's inside before you can postulate that he's outside. But if he has heavily postulated that he's inside, now your trick as an auditor is to what? Override this thetan's postulates? Well, maybe you could do it by hypnotism and maybe you could do it with a club, but the way we do it in Scientology is a little more delicate. We simply ask him to postulate that he's outside. And if he does, and can, why, he's outside. And if he can't, why, he's still inside.

Now, thetans think of themselves as being in the mest universe. Of course, this is a joke, too; they can't possibly be in a universe. But they can postulate a condition and then they can postulate that they cannot escape this condition. Of course, they can't be in the universe.

Now let's take up 3: Space, energy, objects, form and time are the result of considerations made and/or agreed upon by the static and are perceived solely because the static considers that it can perceive them.

The whole secret of perception is right there. Do you believe that you can see? Well, all right. Go ahead and believe that you can see. But you'd certainly better believe that there is something there to see or you won't see.

So there are two conditions to sight, and they are covered immediately in that. You have to believe there's something there to see, and then that you can see it. And so you have perception.

All of the tremendous categories of perception all come under this heading and are covered by that Axiom. So you'd better know that Axiom very, very well.

Now, number 4 — we get number 4 here: that Space is a viewpoint of dimension. Do you know that physics has gone on since the time of Aristotle without knowing that? Yet we read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of many years ago — I think it was the eleventh edition, maybe even the ninth edition — and it says there that space and time are not a problem of the physicist; they are the problem of one working in the field of the mind.

And it says that when the field of psychology solves the existence of space and time, why, then physics will be able to do something about it. And all these fellows running around getting their Ph.D.'s and Dh.P.'s, and so forth, and studying all these centuries — not centuries, actually, merely decades; it seems like centuries if you've ever listened to their lectures — the days of Wundt (the "only Wundt") back in, I think, 1867, something like that, on forward, nobody read the Encyclopaedia Britannica and realized that they had the responsibility for identifying space and time so that physics could get on its way. And because they avoided this responsibility, we had to pitch in here and dig up Scientology.

Now, we didn't dig up Scientology to work in the field of physics. We dug up Scientology to work in the field of the humanities. But it so happened that I discovered very, very early while I was studying nuclear physics at George Washington University that physics did not have a definition for space, time and energy. It defined energy in terms of space and time, it defined space in terms of time and energy — in other words, it was going around in a circle and things were being defined by each other.

Now, I first moved out of that circle by putting it into human behavior-be, have and do (or be, do and have), which you'll find in Scientology 8-8008, which you can get from the HASI.

But the point is here that without a definition for space, physics was, and is, adrift. One of our auditors, by the way, told somebody (an engineer in an Atomic Energy

Commission plant) one time, "Well, we have the definition for space."

And this engineer said, "You do?" And of course we didn't invent this for nuclear physics, but they could certainly use it (if they could read).

So this fellow said," Well, what is the definition of space?"

And our auditor said (that was Wing Angel), he said, "Space is a viewpoint of dimension."

This fellow sat there for a moment, and he sat there, and then all of a sudden he rushed to the phone and he says, "Close down Number 5!" He realized that an experiment in progress was about to explode. And one of the reasons he knew it was about to explode is he'd suddenly found out what space was. It's quite interesting.

This is of great interest to nuclear physics, but they get one of these definitions and then they start figure-figure-figure-figure-figure. They don't take the definition as such and use it as such, they figure-figure-figure-figure-figure, and so they lose it again.

When you work R2-40 as a process, you will understand exactly why they lose it every time they get hold of one of these definitions.

Now, I'm not being very kind to these people, but then I don't feel very kind today.

Anyway… (I have a right to my emotions, too.)

Now number 5: Energy consists of postulated particles in space. Now, we got space; space is a viewpoint of dimension. You say, "I am here looking in a direction." Now, we've actually got to have three points out there to look at to have three-dimensional space (we only have linear space if we have one dimension point).

All right. The next thing is that energy consists of postulated particles in space. In other words, we demark these three points out there to have three-dimensional space. We say there's energy, energy, energy — particles. All right. We call those anchor points in Scientology.

Now, the next thing: Objects consist of grouped particles. Now, if we just kept putting particles out there and pushing them together, or if we suddenly said there's a big group of particles out there, we'd have what is commonly called an object.

Now, when an object or a particle moves across any part of a piece of space — in other words, a viewpoint of dimension — we have motion. And so we get Axiom number 7: Time is basically a postulate that space and particles will persist. That's all — that's its first postulate. Time in its basic postulate is not even motion. You understand? I mean, it's not even motion.

The apparency of time, an agreed-upon rate of change, becomes agreed-upon time. But for an individual, all by himself, time is simply a consideration. And he says, "Something will persist." That's all he has to say, and he has time.

Now, if he gets somebody else to agree what is persisting, why, the two of them can then be in agreement, and if those two items are motionless, then they can't agree how fast or how slow they're persisting. So they get them moving. And this gives them a clock or a watch, and so you carry a watch around on your wrist.

But time is not motion. Let's escape from that one right now — an error and a heresy, an heresy to which I myself was prey until fairly recently. We can say, however, number 8: The apparency of time is the change of position of particles in space. Now, if we see particles changing in space, we know time is passing.

But if you had one piece of space and you had three particles (so it would be threedimensional space), and you were simply sitting there looking at those particles and there was absolutely no change in them whatsoever, you would be very hard put to describe even to yourself whether any time was passing or not.

And so: The apparency of time is the change of position of particles in space.

All right, let's take up number 9: Change is the primary manifestation of time.

You see, if you saw these three things motionless, then you would not be able to tell whether time was passing or not, because you might be looking at one time or another. But to prove it, you could say, "They moved this far at such-and-such a speed," or something of the sort, and you could say, "therefore this much time has gone by." So we would say, then, that change is the primary manifestation of time.

Now, oddly enough, you have then your Case V. Right there. Case V is trying to change himself simply because he is in agreement with particles in motion. That's all. He's simply acting on compulsion or obsession to change. And if you ask him very suddenly which direction he's trying to change, he would not be able to tell you. He has no real goal; he doesn't particularly want to be better, he doesn't particularly want to be worse, but he has got to change, got to change, got to change, got to change — he's got to change, he's frantically got to change.

Well, why does he got to change? It's because he has these particles all around him which are dictating change to him. They are saying "time, time, time, time, time, time." In other words, they're saying "change, change, change, change, change." In other words, he's in agreement with the apparency of time, and he has fallen far, far away from the mere consideration of time. So he doesn't conceive what time is; he becomes a nuclear physicist.

Anyway, the highest purpose in the universe is the creation of an effect. Let's get on to that one — 10.

I refer you to the Factors, published in Issue 16-G of the Journal of Scientology, which is available from the HASI and which is also in the Auditor's Handbook. The highest purpose in the universe is the creation of an effect.

Well, we could do an awful lot with that. We could do a tremendous amount with just that one Axiom. And in processing we would see, then, good reason to have space and to have particles and everything else, and how all these things get there: To create an effect — people want to create an effect.

All right. Then people are going around looking for an effect. And they get into very interesting states of mind about this sort of thing. They say to themselves, "Well, let's see now. I caused that effect, but that effect is horrible. Therefore, I can't admit that I caused that effect, so I then throw a lie onto the track and say I didn't cause that effect."

The next thing of this is they become an effect. Therefore, if they can't be at cause, they become an effect. So they are the effect of what they caused without admitting what they caused, so now they're an effect. Now, do you know they get even worse than that, worse than being a total effect?

Well, they certainly do. They get way down the line to the point where they're the cause of anything that is an effect. They blame themselves, in other words. A man in Sandusky falls down and breaks a glass of pink lemonade and cuts his little pinkie, and this person who is in San Diego at the time hears about that, and they know they must be guilty. And that is your — that's complete reversal.

Now, here we have cause and effect, and the person can get into a state where he's cause and effect simultaneously. That is to say, any effect he starts to cause, he becomes that effect instantly. He says, "I think I'll kill him," and he feels like he's dead. Just bing! bing!

We've got to have time in order to witness an effect. Now, there's something else. There… oh, there's a great many things you could learn in this, and one of the things that you could learn from this primarily is that science is dedicated to observing effect. And we completely forget that it has no other goal. It does not have any other real goal. Once in a while a scientist is also an idealist, at which time he wants to use his materials to improve man. But science at large, and particularly when it got over into the field of the mind, was simply a goalless, soulless pursuit — as I've already said in the Auditor's Handbook — and the whole thing of it is just to observe an effect. So these people go around and they observe an effect.

You know, they're not really even causing an effect; they just go around observing effect. And they fill notebooks and notebooks and notebooks and notebooks full of effects, effects, effects, effects. And you'll find out they carry on experiments, not to prove anything, not to do anything, but just to observe an effect. They go around and put a pin in the tail of a rat and the rat jumps and squeaks, and so they say, "Aaahh!" And they note it down carefully in the notebook, "When you put a pin…"(they actually put the pin in the end of the rat's tail) and they write it down — because these people can't duplicate — they write it down and they say, "When you put a pin one inch from the end of the tail of a rat, he moans." Actually, the rat squeaked.

Well, this was observing an effect, the way it's recorded by science. This is so bad that the leading scientist of the day, a fellow by the name of um… um… Einstein… Einstein says that all an observer has any right to do is look at a needle. Well, that's all right if he's an observer, but why then does a scientist believe that all he has any right to do is look at a needle? That's the only way you'd ever get anybody to build anything as bad as an atom bomb. You'd only get them to build something as bad as an atom bomb if they were incapable of responsibility.

And if men were totally incapable of responsibility, if they were just going around observing an effect, going around observing an effect, observing an effect, why, you would eventually get them so that they could build an atom bomb. And they would say, "Well, it isn't my fault. I'm not to blame."

Now, the few scientists who did feel badly about this and joined organizations, and so forth, were promptly fired by the government — some sixty-seven of them. The actual instigators and constructors of the atomic bomb have now to date been uniformly fired by the United States government. They had some responsibility.

So, oh, the government got that out of the road. Now they've got people who just observe effects and everybody's happy — except the American people one of these days.

You could take any one of these Axioms, by the way, and blow it up considerably and make an awful lot out of it.

But let's go into number 11: The considerations resulting in conditions of existence are fourfold.

Now, why should I talk to you about that, the conditions of existence? Because I've spent hours and hours here in these lectures talking to you about the conditions of existence. And here they are merely stated in axiomatic form. And in case you are still confused, I invite you to look over 11 (a), 11(b), 11(c) and 11(d). And that is an exact statement of these conditions of existence: as-isness, alter-isness, isness and not-isness.

We've spent enough hours on that, so let's take up number 12: The primary condition of any universe is that two spaces, energies or objects must not occupy the same space. When this condition is violated (a perfect duplicate) the apparency of any universe or any part thereof is nulled.

Now, let's get Korzybski, let's look at general semantics and let's find out that he was very careful to demonstrate that two objects could not occupy the same space. In other words, Korzybski was dramatizing "preserve the universe, preserve the universe, preserve the universe."

Now, this one tells you that if two objects can occupy the same space, you haven't got a universe. And sure enough, if you just ask a preclear a lot of times what object can occupy the same space you're occupying, he'll work at it and he will work at it and work at it, and the first thing you know, why, he's capable of doing many things which he was not able to do before: his space straightens out, he can create space again, and so forth.

Merely because this mest universe has been telling him so often that two objects cannot occupy the same space, he has begun to believe it. And he believes this is the most thorough law that he has. So we find a person perfectly contentedly being in a body, believing he is a body. Why, he knows that he, a thetan, could not occupy the same space as a body. He knows this is impossible. Two objects can't occupy the same space. Why, he's an object and his body is an object, so the two can't occupy the same space.

Well, actually, this is very interesting, because you'll find that two universes can occupy the same space and actually do occupy the same space. You'll find the universe of the thetan is occupying the same space as the physical universe.

But once he declares that the both of them are occupying the same space, you get an interesting condition. Now, I'm not going to try to take up at this time the perfect duplicate with you; you will have to prove this to yourself. But it's just enough to say, "Two objects are occupying that space, identically occupying that space," and poof! it's gone. It's just enough. That's just the way you make things vanish, that is, to get its as-isness. And this is why asisness works and why things disappear when you get their as-isness.

Okay. Now, here is the oldest thing that man knows. And it starts this way. This is the next one here — 13. Axiom 13: The cycle of action of the physical universe is create, survive (which is persist), destroy. Now, that's the oldest thing man knows. He knows that the universe goes on the basis of death — actually, he did know that, that it went on the basis of death, birth, growth, decay; death, birth, growth, decay; death, birth, growth, decay and so on. He knew that he had time involved here on a lineal line.

Now, the funny part of it is, you've got to postulate death to get a cycle of action, and you've got to postulate time to get a linear line. So we're dealing here with one of the most intimate things.

Now, in Scientology we take this old Vedic — we find this, by the way, in the RigVeda. It's been with man about ten thousand years that I know of. And we find that this is the cycle of action of the physical universe: create, survive, destroy.

Now, in Dianetics I isolated just one portion of this line as a common denominator of all existence, which was survive. And sure enough, any life form is surviving. It is trying to survive and that is its normal push forward. And that has, incidentally, terrific impact. But it has two other parts, and that is create and destroy.

Create, survive, destroy. And survive merely means persist. So all of these things are based on time. And we have the primary consideration that there is time underlying Axiom 13.

Now we can go in there with 14 and 15 and 16, and find out that the conditions of existence fit these various portions of the survival curve. And that would be as follows: that we find out that survival is accomplished by alter-isness and not-isness, by which is gained the persistency known as time. That's a mechanical persistency.

In other words, if we keep changing things, changing things, changing things, and then saying they aren't and saying they aren't and saying they aren't, and changing them, and then pushing them out, and then changing them and pushing them out and — in other words, reforming them and trying to vanish them; pushing them, in other words, using energy to fight energy — why, we'll get survival. And believe me, we'll get persistency. There's more to it than that. I invite you to R2-40 to understand that completely.

Now number 15: Creation is accomplished by the postulation of an as-isness. Now, do you know that all you have to say is "Space, energy, time. That is. That's the way it is."

And you could say, "It's now going to persist" — you've added the time to it. That's asisness.

Now, if you immediately after that simply looked at it and got its as-isness again, it'd vanish. All you had to do was get it in the same instant of time, you might say, with the same time postulate, and it would disappear. You could create; it'd disappear in terms of as-isness.

In order to make that as-isness persist, you'd have to alter it. But we've gone into that a great deal.

Now 16: Complete destruction is accomplished by the postulation of the as-isness of any existence and the parts thereof. In other words, you want something to disappear, the complete destruction would simply be vanishment; you wouldn't have any rubble left. When you blow something up with guns you get rubble left. You can ask anybody who was in the last war, and there was an awful lot of broken bricks lying all over the streets.

Yeah, if anybody had really been working at this in a good, sensible way and he'd really meant total destruction, he would have simply gotten the as-isness of the situation and zoom! it would have been gone. That would have been the end of that. If you wanted to declare the whole as-isness of a country, if you were able to span that much attention and trace back that many particles that fast to their original points of creation, why, you would of course have a vanishment. And that's complete destruction. So complete destruction is asisness, and also complete vanishment is as-isness.

And as-isness, of course, is simply a postulated existence. And what we're looking at most of the time is number 17: The static, having postulated as-isness, then practices alterisness, and so achieves the apparency of isness and so obtains reality.

In other words, we get a continuous alteration and we get this apparency called isness. And the static, in practicing not-isness, brings about the persistence of unwanted existences, and so brings about unreality (in other words, it's not-isness that gives us unreality), and that includes forgetfulness, unconsciousness and other undesirable states. Quite an important Axiom and a very true one.

Okay.