The Axioms of Scientology are a list of usable or self evident truths and are a major part of the technical information of a Scientologist.
Having these we are now operating on just fifty axioms and definitions, where the Dianetic Axioms of 1951 were in excess of one hundred and ninety. We arrived at these fifty Axioms of Scientology through a great many changes, a great many major developments — all of them in the direction of higher workability and simplification.
A student in training in Scientology is not expected to read these Axioms. He is expected to absorb them, quote them verbatim and by number, understand and apply them.
Webster's says that an axiom is a self evident truth.
Comparing the Axioms of Scientology with axioms in another subject, these are certainly as self-evident as those of, for instance, geometry, which is actually a relatively crude subject in that it proves itself by itself, which is a limitation that Scientology does not have.
The Axioms of Scientology prove themselves by all of life.
In geometry we find the Aristotelian syllogism arbitrarily cutting across the whole subject. In Scientology we needed a better base than the syllogism and we have a better one.
The platform on which we base our understanding is, if something doesn't work when applied we change what we are doing and find something which does work. We are certainly not bowed down to the great god No Change.
Well, true enough, these Axioms are self evident truths. But they are not so thoroughly self evident that they leap out of the page and introduce themselves to you. You have to introduce yourself to them.
The first of the Axioms is a bit of understanding which if you did not have and did not actually understand very well you would not be able to do anything with Scientology.
It's just as blunt as that.
Axiom One: Life is basically a static.
And what is this static?
Definition: a Life Static has no mass, no motion, no wavelength, no location in space or in time. It has the ability to postulate and to perceive.
This is a peculiar and particular static, having these properties and a further peculiarity, which we find in the next Axiom.
Axiom Two: The static is capable of considerations, postulates, and opinions.
You can't measure this Static.
When you find something which has no mass, no location, no position in time and no wavelength — the very fact that it can't be measured tells you that you have your hands on Life itself.
You can't measure it, yet all things measurable extend from it. From this Static all phenomena extend.
You cannot measure a dog by his biscuits and you cannot measure this Static by the phenomena extending from it.
Space is one of these phenomena. You could say that Life is a space-energy-object production and placement unit because that is what it does. But when you measure these you do not measure Life.
A thetan is very, very close to being a pure Static. He has practically no wavelength.
Actually a thetan is in a very, very small amount of mass. From some experiments conducted about fifteen or twenty years ago — a thetan weighed about 1.5 ounces! Who made these experiments? Well, a doctor made these experiments. 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 and some of them 2 ounces. (Those were heavy thetans.) So we have this thetan capable of considerations, postulates and opinions, and the most native qualities to him — in other words the things which he is most likely to postulate — are these qualities which you find in the top "buttons" of the Chart of Attitudes. "Trust", "Full Responsibility", etc.
So we have then actually described a thetan when we have gotten Axioms One and Two. Without these known well an auditor would have an awfully hard time exteriorizing (Exteriorizing: exteriorization: the state achieved in which the thetan can be outside his body with certainty) somebody — because if you thought that you reached in with a pair of forceps and dragged someone out of his head, well, this it not the way it is. You would not be thinking of a thetan. To exteriorize something that can't possibly be grabbed hold of, that's quite a trick.
A thetan has to postulate he's inside before you can have him postulate that he's outside. But if he heavily postulated that he's inside, now your trick as an auditor is to do what? Override this thetan's postulates? That would fit into the field of hypnotism, or maybe you could do it with a club, but the way we do it in Scientology is a little more delicate than these. We simply ask him to postulate that he's outside, and if he can and does, why, he's outside. And if he can't, why, he's still inside.
Thetans think of themselves as being in the MEST universe (MEST universe: the physical universe, from the initial letters of matter, energy, space, time). Of course, this is a joke, too. As the Static 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.
Axiom Three: Space, energy, objects, form and time are the result of considerations made and/ or agreed upon or not 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's something there to see or you won't see. So there are two conditions to sight, and they are covered immediately here in that you have to believe there is something to see and then that you can see it. And so you have perception. All of the tremendous number of categories to perception come under this heading, and are covered by that Axiom. So that Axiom should be known very, very well.
Axiom Four: 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 Encyclopedia Britannica of many years ago (the Eleventh Edition, published in 1911) 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 with it.
And all those fellows with their Ph.D.'s — not for centuries actually but a number of decades (it seems like centuries if you've ever listened to their lectures) — going back to the days of Wundt, The Only Wundt — about 1867 — they didn't read the Encyclopedia Britannica and find out that they held the responsibility for identifying space and time so that physics could get on its way.
And because they avoided this responsibility we have to pitch in here and discover and develop Scientology — not to work in the field of physics, however, but 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, and it defined time in terms of energy and space. It was going around in a circle. I first moved out of that circle by putting it into human behavior — be, do and have, which you'll find in Scientology: 8-8008, but the point is here that without a definition for space, physics was and is adrift. One of our auditors was recently talking to an engineer in an Atomic Energy Commission plant, and happened to remark, "Well, we have a definition for space." This engineer said, "Uh, you do?" and got instantly interested. Of course we didn't make this definition for nuclear physicists, but they could certainly use one. The engineer asked, "What is the definition of space?" and the auditor said, "Space viewpoint of dimension." This fellow just sat there for a moment, and he sat there, and then all of a sudden he rushed to the phone and dialed a number and he said, "Close down number five!" He had suddenly realized that an experiment in progress was about to explode and one of the reasons he knew it was about to explode is that he had found out what space was. This is of great interest to nuclear physicists, but they will get one of these definitions and then they will start to figure, figure, figure, figure, figure. They don't take the definition as such and use it as such. They figure-figure, and they lose it.
Using the process R2-40: Conceiving a Static
Axiom Five: Energy consists of postulated particles in space.
Now, we've got space: a viewpoint of dimension.
You say: "I am here looking in a direction." We've actually got to have three points out there to look at, to have three dimensional space. If we only had linear space we would have only one dimension point. One point to view. And energy consists of postulated particles in space, so we'll demark these three points out there to have some three dimensional space and we'll have these particles which we will call Anchor Points, and we'll have energy.
And so we come to objects.
Axiom Six: Objects consist of grouped particles.
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. When an object or particle moves across any part of a piece of space — in other words a viewpoint of dimension — we have motion.
And we come to the subject of time.
Axiom Seven: Time is basically a postulate that space and particles will persist.
Time in its basic postulate is not even motion. The apparency of time — an agreed upon rate of change — becomes agreed upon time. But for an individual all by himself is simply a consideration. He says something will persist, and he has time. Now if he gets somebody else to agree on what is persisting, the two can then be in agreement. And if the items are motionless then they can't have agreements about how slow it persisting or it get them moving. And this gives fast or how 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. It is an error. We'll call that a heresy.
But this gives us another Axiom:
Axiom Eight: The apparency of time is the change of position of particles in space.
Now if we see particles changing in space we know time's passing, but if you had a piece of space and some particles, 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.
Axiom Nine: Change is the primary manifestation of time.
If you were looking at motionless particles you would not be able to tell whether time was passing or not because you might be looking at one time or another. Then to prove time 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 can say that change is the primary manifestation of time. Now, oddly enough you have your "Black Five", occluded case ("no pictures, only blackness") right there. A Black Five is trying to change himself simply because he's in agreement with particles in motion. That's all. He's simply acting on compulsion or obsession to change, and if you asked him very suddenly in 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's got to change. He's frantically got to change. Well, why has he got to change? Because he has these particles all around him which are dictating change to him. They're saying, "Time… time… time… time… time… 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.
Axiom Ten: The highest purpose in the universe is the creation of an effect.
We could do a tremendous amount with just that one Axiom, and in processing we would discover then good reason to have space and to have particles and how all these things get there. People want to create 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'll introduce a lie here and say I didn't cause that effect. And then — they become an effect. If they can't be at cause they become an effect. They are the effect of what they have caused without admitting they caused. But it can get even worse than that — worse than being at total effect. They get way down the line, to the point where they're the cause of any effect. They blame themselves, in other words. A man in Sandusky falls down and breaks a glass of pink lemonade and cuts his little pinky, and this person who is in San Diego at the time hears about that and knows he must be guilty. That's complete reversal.
A 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 like that. Now we've got to have time in order to witness an effect. As an example of this one could observe that science is dedicated to observing an effect and does not have any other real goal. Once in a while you see a scientist who is also an idealist. 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 goal-less, soul-less pursuit, the totality of which is just to observe an effect. They are not really even causing an effect. They just go around observing effects. And they fill notebooks and notebooks and notebooks full of effects, effects, effects, effects, and you find 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 "Ah," and they note it down carefully: "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 goes so far that a leading scientist of the day — an Einstein — says that all an observer has any right to do is look at a needle. If they were just going around observing effects, eventually they could build an atom bomb, and say "Well it isn't my fault. I'm not to blame." The few scientists who did feel badly about this and joined organizations to try to do something were promptly fired by the government. They had some responsibility.
Axiom Eleven: The considerations resulting in conditions of existence are four-fold.
And here they are in exact axiom form: (a) AS-IS-NESS is the condition of immediate creation without persistence, and is the condition of existence which exists at the moment of creation and the moment of destruction, and is different from other considerations in that it does not contain survival.
Axiom Twelve: The primary condition of any universe is that two spaces energies or objects must not occupy the same space. When this condition is violated (perfect duplicate) the apparency of any universe or any part thereof is nulled.
Alfred Korzybski in General Semantics was very careful to demonstrate that two objects could not occupy the same space. In other words, he was dramatizing "Preserve the universe, preserve the universe, preserve the universe". Now this statement 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 repetitively: "What object can occupy the same space you're occupying?" he'll work at it and he'll 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 — 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.
He's an object, and his body's an object, so the two can't occupy the same space.
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 a 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 point the perfect duplicate but it's enough just to say that two objects are occupying that space — identically occupying that space — and poof, it's gone. That's the way you make things vanish. That is to get its As-is-ness, and this is why As-is-ness works and why things disappear when you get their As-is-ness. This is an important Axiom.
Now here is the oldest thing that Man knows: Axiom Thirteen: The cycle of action of the physical universe is: create, survive (persist), destroy.
Now, that's the oldest thing Man knows, that it went on the basis of death, birth, growth, decay, death, birth, growth, decay, death, birth, growth, decay and so on. He knew he had time involved here, on a linear line. The odd thing here is that 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 of existence. We find this by the way in the Rig-Veda. It's been with Man about 10,000 years that I know of and we find that this is the cycle of action of the physical universe — create, survive destroy.
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 this has two other parts and those are create and destroy. Create, survive, destroy. And survive merely means persist. So all of these things are based on time, and we have underlying Axiom Thirteen this primary consideration that there is time.
Now we can go on and find that the conditions of existence fit these various portions of the survival curve. And this would be given as follows: Axiom Fourteen: Survival is accomplished by alter-is-Ness and Not-Is-Ness, by which is gained the persistency known as time.
That's a mechanical persistency. In other words we keep changing things, saying they aren't, and changing them, and then pushing them out and re-forming them and trying to vanish them. Using energy to fight energy, we'll certainly get survival. We'll get persistency.
Axiom Fifteen: Creation is accomplished by the postulation of an As-Is-Ness.
Now all you have to say actually is: "Space, energy, time, As-is. That's the way it is, and, it's now going to persist." You've added time to it. If you immediately after that simply looked at it and got its As-is-ness again it would vanish. All you had to do is get it in the same instant of time with the same time of postulate and it would disappear. You could create it again and it would disappear. It would As-is.
Axiom Sixteen: Complete destruction is accomplished by the postulation of the As-Is-Ness of any existence and the parts thereof.
Complete destruction would simply be vanishment. You wouldn't have any rubble left. When you blow something up with guns you get rubble. Ask anybody who was in the last war. There were certainly an awful lot of broken bricks lying around. 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-is-ness of the situation and it would have been gone and that would have been the end of that. If he'd wanted to declare the whole As-is-ness of a country, if he'd been able to span that much attention and trace back that many particles that fast to their original points of creation, he would of course have a vanishment and that is complete destruction. So complete destruction is As-is-ness, and As-is-ness is simply a postulated existence.
What we're looking at most of the time in this universe is: Axiom Seventeen: The static, having postulated As-Is-Ness then practices Alter-Is-Ness and so achieves the apparency of Is-Ness and so obtains reality.
In other words we get a continuous alteration, and we get this apparency called Is-ness.
Axiom Eighteen: The static, in practicing Not-Is-Ness, brings about the persistence of unwanted existences, and so brings about unreality, which includes forgetfulness, unconsciousness, and other undesirable states.
Quite an important Axiom and a very true one.
Axiom Nineteen: Bringing the static to view as-is any condition devaluates that condition.