And this is December the 7th, 1953. This morning we're going to talk very rapidly on several very important things.

The first of them is knowingness. We're going — about knowingness. Where the preclear is hung up and the reason he's hanging on to data is because he didn't know about something. And this is remedied by double-terminaling the fact that he doesn't know. It's a very tricky, easy idea.

Only thing that can be really wrong with a thetan is to convince him he's wrong, and he — that's even better, being wrong, than not knowing whether one was wrong or not. So you just take care of this "doesn't know whether he's wrong or not." Several ways to take care of it — most elementary, which almost anybody can understand — almost anybody, is just match-terminal the fact, "I don't know whether I was wrong or not." Simple. All right. You'll find out that a great many persons' (quote) "adventures" (unquote) with relationship to other thetans are hung up on this one fact.

Next thing on the line is the invisible barrier. The invisible barrier is very important. We dramatize the invisible barrier. Would somebody please point to an invisible barrier for me right here in this room? Come on, let's point to an invisible barrier that's in this room. Oh, boy!

Male voice: The air.

You know, the Hopi Indians have what they call "enterprising ponies." And they give an IQ test to their ponies and there's about — oh, I don't know, about fifteen or twenty knots with which you tie up ponies. And all of the ponies are tied with the knot they can't untie; that is to say, one knot — one more complication than they can untie. So you can always know the IQ of the horse. It's what kind of knot he's tied with. Well, then, a pony that can untie all the knots is known as an enterprising pony. We don't have one here. Anyway . . .

Next on this is, what's that thing over there?

Male voice: It's a barrier.

Yeah, it's a barrier. And furthermore, it's a class of invisible barrier. What are you wearing on your nose? Invisible barrier. What are you wearing on your nose? And then you guys wonder why you go in and out of your head and back and forth and around and round: you're hepped on invisible barriers. That's what we got to have — we got to have more invisible barriers.

Now, a fellow goes skyhooting across space in a spaceship, something of the sort. He's standing on the bridge. He's piling up blackness as far as he can see, but it's all piling up against an invisible barrier. You'll find out this invisible barrier is just so many feet from the individual, or so many inches from the individual.

Where a person's had an accident and come into severe collision with glass, he is very befuddled indeed, because he's collided with something that looked like nothing. And of course, there's the biggest maybe on the track. You just — he's collided with a something which looks like nothing — invisible barrier. You can understand that, can't you?

Well, what you doing hiding behind eyes? The eye is an invisible barrier. You exteriorize a preclear and he tries to take his eyes along with him. That's so they'll get hit first. Anybody who is difficult to exteriorize is afraid of being hit. I mean, that's a very flat statement. He's afraid of several things that can also be flat statements. And one of these flat statements is, he's afraid of being hit by the mest universe. He's afraid it'll cave in on him, afraid it'll smite him, smash him, do something to him and go out of plumb suddenly and collapse on him and so forth. How anything can hit him in the first place, that's the biggest idea he's got. Nothing can hit him anyhow. But he's behind of an invisible barrier. Anybody who is using a pair of mest eyes is using them simply to be that far from a point of impact. See, the eye is an invisible barrier.

Now, as you run this you find out the individual is ostensibly looking — in the case of an occluded case — he's ostensibly looking at nothing. And, you see, he's looking out there at nothing through something and ignores the something.

Now, there's another way this works in. A person is most aberrated by that thing which he overlooks. You know, that thing to which a person gives the least attention, you might say, which is giving lots of attention to him — that's very aberrative. Something giving the guy lots of attention, he's ignoring it. You know, he's aware of it but he's overlooking it and he's gone out beyond it. And by that you'd get the whole dwindling spiral.

Now let's take a look at this invisible barrier thing. As long as you — the idea that glasses can correct vision is commercially sound for an optician, but it doesn't happen to be correct. In the first place, an individual is not using glasses to look through. He's not even using eyes to look through. This is real idiotic. He's not looking through eyes. He's using a couple of viewpoints.

And by the way, let's straighten up a piece of nomenclature right now: We've been saying "viewpoint" as meaning something an individual puts out to look through and the point the individual looks through. Let's classify it as that thing which an individual puts out remotely to look through. You know, a system of remote lookingness. We'll call it just "remote viewpoints" as a specialized kind of viewpoint. And the place from which the individual is himself looking, we will call, flatly, "viewpoint." And we'll get this differentiated, because you're going to run into people — their main trouble is remote viewpoint trouble.

Now, we have the invisible barrier. He's trying to get a remote viewpoint. And he's just scared he'll be hit, that's all. That's — his trouble is with havingness. That's right. What havingness he has is liable to be unhad by things hitting him, and — the way he works it out.

Now, we look this over, we find out that the individual is very sold on invisible barriers. He sits behind the invisible barrier of an automobile. He sits behind the invisible barrier of glasses. And every Homo sapiens on the face of Earth is busy looking through an invisible barrier called an eyeball. And therefore — he is not looking at the eyeball, you understand. He's not giving any attention to the eyeball. Therefore, he isn't giving it any attention, it's just going to get thicker and thicker and bigger and bigger and on and on and on and on. Because things are giving it attention, but madly. Every photon and so forth, as he conceives it — as the body conceives it — everything that's hitting the eyes in form of light and so forth are smashing up against the face, the eyeballs and so on. Well, he's looking through this.

Now, the body itself, therefore, is an invisible barrier, as far as the individual is concerned. He doesn't really see it or pay any attention to it. He's looking from inside it. And with this invisible barrier, he goes around and wonders — once in a while somebody calls his attention to himself. He says, "Put your attention on yourself." That's the favorite method. That's what teachers do, what mothers do, fathers do, wives do, husbands do, is "Oh, yeh-yeh-yeh-shmayeh, put your attention on yourself." It all boils down to that in the end. Put your attention on yourself, put your attention on yourself, put your attention on yourself — all the way up and down the track. In other words, less space, less space, less space, less perception, less perception, less perception. Don't look, don't look, don't look. I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared, so you mustn't look. That's the way it adds up. All right.

This is wonderful because an individual after a while is sitting in the middle of an invisible barrier which all of a sudden becomes visible. But it becomes visible in the form of occlusion. It just gets so piled up on it he can't look through it anymore because barriers have become so real to him. Barriers are now so real, he can't look through barriers, so there he goes.

Next thing I want to talk to you about is competition. People think they're in competition with the mest universe. They think this stuff is something to be in competition with. That's mainly because they've been trying to win with mest for a long time and they never have won with it. And it keeps winning, so they're in continuous and consecutive competition with it. And they have a tendency to save those things with which they have won in this competition with MEST.

Now, people would much rather look at people than look at mest. And when you start a preclear out looking for his aberrations, he immediately looks to people. You, as an auditor, immediately look to people. You will not find the basic aberrations connected with people. That's down there on the third dynamic. To hell with it. The only thing people can do to you is lie to you. In view of the fact they don't know any of the truth, this is inevitable. But if it were just a question of people, you could eat them up, chew them up, spit them out. There wouldn't be any trouble with it at all. You could just go on a high-handed rivalry on the subject and you'd win and you'd lose and you'd win and you'd lose and you'd win and you'd lose.

The only ally people have against you is the mest universe. The MEST universe is the only effective one, because this is you, too. This is the past. And the past has snuck up on you into a solidity. And so people divert your attention from the mest universe, whenever they can, to people. They divert your attention to the mest universe whenever they can. In other words, they shift attention — and there's the sole trick that people pull on people.

Did you ever try to fix something and have somebody take it away from you? Well, there you have immediately the most aberrative person in the bank. Just like that. This person was nuts. He couldn't let you fix a tricycle or use any washing powder or wash your hands or shave or comb your hair or something, without immediately climbing onto the fact and shifting your attention from it, either on the basis of "Let me do it," or "You're doing it wrong." A failure, in other words, to let you have any liberty with mest, consistent and continuous.

Now, there's the one operation people can do. When they get very degraded, they feel that they're out of competition and therefore, they kind of got to pick on everybody one way or the other. And they just shove their attention around this way and that.

The one thing people won't look at is present time. If you take a little child, and if you were to argue with the little child over the subject of parents for a very short time — talk with him — you would find yourself arguing on this basis: "They can't relax. The — somehow or other, they just can't relax. There's something terribly wrong with them, because they shift their attention continually into the past or into the future. And they keep shifting my attention into the past and into the future. And they just don't look at what's going on."

And if you were to really boil it down, a kid can make a terrifically simple statement of this. They aren't looking at now. All of his complaints boil down to that fact. They're into the future, which is consequences, which the invisible barrier permits them to dramatize. And we're right back to the invisible barrier.

Now — "Look beyond." Everybody's got just blooey on this. I mean, they're just — nyah! Look beyond. "What is the significance of. . . ? Let's go into the future. Let's go into the past. Let's do everything but look at what we're looking at. And let's look beyond, look beyond, look beyond." There's a pair of — two, three pair of eyeglasses here. "Look beyond," they're saying. Look beyond what? An invisible barrier.

So you get the idea, "Well, there is an invisible barrier somehow, somewhere." Well, that's because thetans don't happen to be visible, and because they can jump you and pull the God trick on you. All right.

What, then, is this business of significance? What's this business of computation? What's this business of circuits? What's this business of people into the future too far and into the past too far and so forth? It's just this business of "look beyond." See, they've got to look beyond it.

What is mathematics? Mathematics is a system by which rather aberrated people can look beyond obvious facts with unobvious symbols. They're looking beyond. "Let's all figure, figure, figure, figure, figure, figure."

All the answers to the universe lay straight out ready to be instantly and immediately viewed. Every answer there is, can be viewed directly. The motto of this society at this time is "Think, don't look. Think."

They used to yammer and yammer and yammer at me in Dianetics, "Why don't you validate some cases, you know?" Sensible people — "Why don't you — why don't you do something and so on, and validate some cases (mumble) . . ."

"Why don't you just look at the subject matter?"

"Why, no, you've got to have some validated cases one way or another, you know, I (mumble) . . ."

"Well, all right, we have some validated cases."

"Well, they won't do, they probably haven't been observed long enough. Heh!"

Oh boy! Oh boy! Wonderful! That's the way it goes. They want you to — they want you to provide something at which they could look so they won't have to look at it.

You think there's any end to this — there isn't any end to this, as long as you have a dependency on agreement across the boards throughout the universe. And where everybody's got to agree that — what you're doing, before you'll believe what you're doing, you'll never get anything done. Perhaps the single difference between myself and my work, and other people who've worked in this same line, is I don't give a damn whether anybody agrees with me or not. I know what's right and what works and what doesn't work, and I'm perfectly willing to look. And I'm perfectly willing to overlook people who aren't willing to look. You see, there's the big difference. I admit this.

So you used to talk about somebody going out and finding that ninety-ninth sheep that strayed from the fold, and he went on straying from the fold and so forth, and the most wonderful thing there was to do was to overlook all the sheep in the pen, see, that you had. You had ninety-eight sheep. And this ninety-ninth one, he'd gone out way over the hills and he was lost. Well, the honorable and wonderful thing to do of course, was to look beyond by finding this ninety-ninth sheep. The hell with him! We got ninety-eight. See, that's the practical as opposed to the scientific or the superreligious syllogisms that have gone along the line. These are wonderful, but they don't lead us to any results.

Now, let's look at this business of looking beyond. You'll find preclear after preclear after preclear after preclear doing just that. Just doing that — they look beyond. You try to get them to release a lock and they look beyond the lock. And you try to get them to release that next lock, and they look beyond that next lock. And they're just looking beyond. You try to release their blackness, their occlusion, in some fashion, and they're immediately looking beyond.

Now, why did that little technique of the concentric spheres of blackness — if you've used it on an occluded case, and you've used it well, it's worked — why is that so effective on a black case? You're letting him look beyond. You're putting up a barrier before you put up each new barrier, you see. You just "Put up a sphere. Now, put another sphere on the outside of that. Now, look through the first sphere at the second sphere. Now, put another sphere outside the second sphere. Okay. Now let's look through the second sphere at the third sphere." What are you letting him do? You're letting him look beyond and expanding his space. First time he's ever done this.

Now, you could do this with eyeballs — just that. And with people with glasses, you let them, "Put up a pair of glasses. Now put a pair of glasses outside that pair of glasses. Now look through the first pair at the second pair. Now put another pair of glasses out there and look through those pairs at the new pair. But remember, look at the glasses. And now, let's put another pair of glasses outside all those pairs of glasses. All right. And let's look through the last pair you had at the new pair." And here we go. We're just extending their barrier. The person is trying to look beyond.

A person who has glasses sometimes takes them up merely to appear scholarly. Because scholarliness is the process of looking beyond. It's "Never be content with what you're looking at; always look at something else." There's a sort of an anxiety and nervousness goes about looking beyond. This is demonstrated in many people who — in a geographical way — they always want to see what's on the other side of something. They're never content, and probably could not tell you what's on their side of it. It's a big joke up at the Explorers Club, is that explorers routinely get lost in New York. All right.

Now, let's carry on just a little further with this. I told you a few days ago that the most fixed thing, of course, would be a mass of energy which is condensed into an object, but that energy and objects and space were all very well and that a thetan could duplicate or create any of these things. But the single difference which you could put your eye on and you could realize — the single difference you could realize — between a living being and a piece of mest or a machine would be ideas, his ideas. In other words, an idea is the one thing which a thetan can originate.

Now, he doesn't have to be in the middle of a thinking machine full of data in order to get an idea. As a matter of fact, that man who has the most data gets the fewest ideas. This is expressed in terms of imagination and here we're directly processing imagination — ideas.

A thetan is different from the universe around him to this extent: He can get ideas. He can have ideas. Do you see that? That life differs to that degree. And life is as alive as it gets ideas; not as alive as it moves mest.

So let's look not at the condensed thinkingness which succeeds each effort band as we go down the DEI cycle, but let's now look at knowingness and ideas.

Did you ever know a mechanic who could look at a car and then fix it? Well, you won't ever find any other kind of a mechanic that could really call himself a mechanic. He's as good as he can get an idea of what's wrong with the car or what's right with it, see. He sort of looks it over. Now, more and more he agrees with society, and people keep saying to him, "Now, why did you think that ignition wire was busted?" And he says, "Well, I…" and then he'll get some explanation for it. He's being challenged continually — this idea of his knowing anything about the thing.

Well, you'll find him after a while blundering to this degree: He goes all over the engine and he adjusts all sorts of things and he knows all the time that he should just test out that battery, see, and get that ignition wire straight. Finally, he comes around to the battery and the ignition wire and straightens it out and says, "Why didn't I do that in the first place? Why did I do all these other nonsensical things?" Well, the reason he did all those other nonsensical things is, he was trying to agree that there was some kind of a mechanical system of knowing, such as examining the engine and tracing this and doing that and hoping and so forth, instead of just knowing what's wrong with the motor.

Now, the odd part of it is that motors will run for some people, and won't run for others. Now here we're getting off to the edge of the immediately explainable to the general public. Why motors run for somebody, and they don't run for somebody else. This used to baffle me. I have never failed to be incredulous on this line, to this degree. I have had some of the smoothest running motors you ever ran into, see. I've had people come up and, you know, they'd just — they'd throw the switch and they'd push the starter button or give the flywheel a crank, but nothing happened. And they'd grind and grind and push and grunt and snarl and do things and kick it and then they'd keep saying — they keep — most of their cant is, "I get so mad about this. I get so mad about this." You try to say, "What you doing?" you know, and they just tell you, "Well, I'm doing — I'm getting mad." That's what they're doing. They're not starting a motor.

Used to try to write up in one of the less civilized portions of the world — the Puget Sound country. And back up in the deep, dark, rainy woods. They have woods up there and they're very dark and they're very rainy. You'd think this was a very good place to write. The only trouble is, the raindrops block in too little space. They're always making too little space. The nights are very black. And — but mainly it's because there's nobody to talk to. If anybody in Puget Sound were to hear that statement, they would contest this, because these people talk all the time. But I — what I mean is "talk to," you know? I mean, you have an interchange or a communication system at work. You go over — even at Seattle, they have some bright newspapermen over in Seattle, they're relatively bright, but you can't even really talk to them. They go on some kind of a pattern system, you know, their — no ideas is what we're into here, you see. You haven't got any ideas connected with anything they're doing.

Well, I found that part of the country, more than anything else (this is downright slander because there are some nice people up there, there's no doubt about it) — and I never failed up there to have a motor and never failed to have people around who couldn't start it. These people can't start motors.

You know, they — tsk! — it's just fatal. You have any kind of an engine, any kind of a motor, I don't care how new it is or anything else, you can give the guy your ignition keys to the car, or you give anything, and it's — he comes back in a little while and he says, "The motor won't start."

And you go out and you turn on the ignition and you touch the starter and the motor starts. And you say, "What's this?"

"Well, I don't know, I did everything you did."

He sure did. Only trouble is, he can't start a motor.

Now, what is this? What is this, when it begins to operate to that level? Did you ever know somebody who couldn't start a motor or run a simple vehicle? The automobile manufacturer is going to be very surprised in a few years. His motors are going to start less and less and less, in spite of the fact that they get brighter and brassier and newer and more sure-fire. Because he's running out of people who can start motors.

Now, this sounds very, very esoteric and supernecromantic. But the living truth of the matter is, you must have some of the ability within yourself to know, before the mest universe will run for you. You've got to get the idea of things. You know? You look at something and here's a strange piece of machinery: you've never seen it before, you haven't any idea what it's for and you look at it and you get an idea of what it's for. And you look at it a little longer and you get an idea of how it runs.

And why is this? What is a machine? This is a machine society. They turn men into machines, and machines into machines, and there are more and more machines and less and less men. Although the birth rate keeps increasing and the death rate keeps decreasing, that's still true.

Now, one of these days you'll look out here, and (it's almost true now) these people walking up and down this street that you see past this building here — this is in the East — and you see these people walking up and down the street, they might as well be wind-up dolls except they aren't painted that nice. I mean, that's a bitter statement, isn't it — really brutal. No, they're worse than wind-up dolls. Wind-up dolls are predictable, and these people are busted pieces — real broken-down.

Now, you wind them up and they don't run or they do run. But all of a sudden, somebody can come along and run the machine. You know, all these people have a — they're fitted someplace or another, in some factory or in some office or in somewhere. And they go in there and they go through these jerky, routine motions. And it files that inventory slip under "B." And it gets its hand out of there and it goes over here and it gets another inventory slip and it looks at it. Then it puts stamp "C" on the inventory slip. And it puts it back in file "C." And it comes back here. This is work. It's what they call work.

People keep these zombies alive. A&P down here has fuel for them. Get that — fuel for them. Fuel for a being? Heh-heh! Oh no, this is not possible. Yes, it is. You tune on the radio, TV, advertising, you find out "Get more pep energy! The thing to do is to eat Boggy-Woggy cereals and you won't bog. Less bog per pound." And if you just hog enough of this completely incomestible mest, theoretically you will run. You will see babies in a few years being born with slots in their heads so that you can drop a quarter in. And the government will collect the quarters.

What are we doing? We're going further and further and further from an idea, and more and more and more toward a fixed idea. An adding machine, in essence, is a fixed idea. An automobile is a fixed idea. It is an idea surrounded by and trapped in mest. See that? A fixed idea. How are you going to fix an idea in the mest?

Well, that's quite a trick and that's why people can't start cars. You have to sort of know it goes before it goes. That's the truth of the matter. You go down and know a car won't start, it won't start. If you know hard enough that an automobile is a broken-down wreck, it's one. That's a little bit hard to do with a Cadillac because aesthetics get in your road and so forth. But I stood alongside of a Cadillac one day, and I just knew it wouldn't run. I just knew it wouldn't run. And I stood there and knew it wouldn't run for a few minutes and so forth, and its owner came out and stuffed himself behind the wheel and stuffed his head into his hat and turned on the switch — and it didn't run. Huh-huh! Nothing mechanical connected with this Cadillac. In other words, I disconnected no spark plugs or anything like that. The Cadillac just didn't run.

Why didn't it run? Well, he didn't know it'd run, either, see. He didn't turn on the ignition with any idea that he was starting a Cadillac. He turned on an ignition because he was a wind-up toy that turns on ignitions, which is then motored down the street by a motor.

Honest — robots can't run robots, not worth a nickel; unless the robots are made to run robots. You see? Now, if you have a society where all the robots are running all the robots, this is all very well, but somebody's going to come in someday and everything's going to be in — half-filed under "C." These machines will be sitting at their desks, right there, stopped dead. They won't be dead, they'll just be stopped; because there's nothing to die when a person has no ideas left.

Now, this is not a tirade about the society at large. It is an effort to try to show you something. Your greatest ability is getting an idea. And your next greatest ability is keeping it fluidly, consecutively spotted or fixed in one place. Now, that's the next biggest step. Trying to fix an idea in one place. How do you do that? Well, that's very wonderful. I mean, how can you fix this thing called an idea in one place? Well, everybody has to agree that it's there and, of course, there isn't anything there, not even the idea anymore. But — and so it'll stay fixed in one place.

But, trying to fix an idea; now, that's what your teacher in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, each time — that's all they were trying to do, was to fix an idea in energy. How can you fix an idea in energy? It's just not possible, you see. You can't fix an idea in energy. You can mold energy so it will symbolically represent an idea — hence, an automobile motor. See that? It will symbolically represent an idea. And if the symbol is good enough, it'll run for almost anybody. But if it's not good enough, it'll run only for a specialist.

For instance, in the old days there used to be airplane engines that would only run for a chosen few. World War I was fought with airplane and tank motors which only ran for the very, very artistic. It was a triumph, a puzzle-making and unmaking, to get them to rotate for a consecutive hour — but one really didn't do it. There was a race of pilots, once upon a time, who simply kept airplanes aloft because they knew they flew. That's all. People came along who didn't know they flew, and they didn't fly, either. No accident about this.

Now, a cranky piece of machinery could be an old piece of machinery; it could also be a new, unagreed-upon piece of machinery.

Now, I'm not trying to tell you that the only reason a motor runs is because somebody looks at it and knows it'll run. But motors don't run very mechanically. True. They don't run for people who don't know they run. For instance, there was a Japanese lieutenant and a squad of men who beat a car with switches — beat a jeep with switches — to make it run. The Japanese must have really found him up in Hokkaido — he must have been back of beyond educationally — because they're pretty bright about machinery. But he did beat a jeep, and his squad beat a jeep, because it wouldn't start. Most people will do that. They'll beat a car. They'll kick its tire, or so on. Some people get so mad at them, they'll dump them in ditches and do other things like that with them, and get furious with them.

Well, an engine is a fixed idea. A communication system is a relay of fixed ideas in such a wise that they become ideas in motion. And there you have a beautiful illusion. You have a number of fixed ideas which seem to present something in motion.

What's a preclear who can't get out of his head? Invisible barriers aside, what's a preclear that can't get out of his head? He's a fixed idea. Now, how he, the source of ideas — hey, this is wonderful, you see — he's a source of ideas and how we can get a source of ideas being fixed, geographically or any other way, is a marvelous thing.

This is the greatest single tribute that could be leveled at our modern culture, that they have been able to accomplish this fact. They have been able to convince the source of ideas — the thetan — that it is fixed in one place. Well, they do that on a gradient scale. They get the individual to start fixing ideas in one place under compulsion. Not because he wants to — he always desires to do this; this is just wonderful recreation, always. What they do is compel him to do it. They say, "If you don't do so and so, then some terrific penalty is going to accrue. You are going to suffer from pain. If you don't know the mest universe well, if you don't know the habits and customs well of those things around you, then you're going to suffer losses. And we will just make sure that you don't misunderstand this, because you're going to suffer losses. Because all of this is terrifically desirable and you can't make it."

So therefore, after you can't make anything, you can only lose. You see, once you stop being able to make things, you can't win. That's impossible to win, the moment that you stop making things. You start losing at that point, simply because there isn't anything being made for you except what is being made for you, by you. So you stop making things, you start losing things.

Now, it may take you a long time to have your clock run down. It may take years for your clock to run down after you stop making things. But it normally doesn't — it's about two seconds max. Bing! You stop making things and all of a sudden you don't have the right corner of the room.

Now, depending on somebody else's opinion is your idea that there is such a thing as a fixed idea. You see, you look at all these other people and they are running around and they're obviously sources of ideas, so you get the ideas that all these ideas are fixed. You see? You look at the machine, not at the source of ideas which runs the machine. And because the machine is fixed in place, you consider then that ideas can be fixed in place. And you go ahead, having made that basic premise and postulate, and build up all the automaticity there is. See how you do that? You look at people and consider them sources of ideas, and so therefore, ideas are fixed.

The idea of a fixed idea is the most marvelous idea of all, because it gives you such a thing as the mest universe, for one thing. The big idea that makes it possible to have this big idea called the mest universe is the idea that you can fix an idea. Now after that comes fixed perceptions, and all of that sort of thing. But first you have to have the idea that you can fix an idea.

Well, this would all be very hopeless if you weren't able to process it correctly. And let's look at a very senior, senior, senior process, but let's first talk about it in terms of invisible barriers and let's talk about it in terms of energy. That thing which moves the preclear through space comes to evaluate for him. That's a basic law. That thing which moves a preclear about — moves an individual about — comes to evaluate for him. That thing which changes his position in space, evaluates for him. Now, that is the most fundamental law connected with space, next to the law of a fixed idea.

Now we've got a fixed idea, now we've got a change of idea; now we have our first instant of overcoming a fellow's idea. You see, he says, "The tree will now not hit me" and it hits him. That's an inversion. What he said there, in essence: "The tree will remain fixed and I will remain fixed right here." Crash! So the tree has evaluated for him and the universe has evaluated for him. It changed his fixed idea by making it unfixed. So that thing which can unfix a person's ideas or shift him in space, of course, has a bigger idea than he has — he thinks. It couldn't have a bigger idea than he has — it just couldn't have — if it's a piece of mest, because it has no ideas. So he conceives himself to be up against some greater being than himself.

His only vulnerability is that he's fixing ideas. Of course it has a seniority to him on the basis of fixing ideas, because it is a fixed idea and he's not. You follow this? He is not a fixed idea. He could have no vulnerability. Nothing could evaluate for him, unless he first got the idea that he could fix ideas and had to fix ideas in various geographical locations and positions. He had to assume this in order for an idea fixation to overcome him. See, he had to take the step — willing step — forward.

Now, the idea of a fixed idea is that an idea can be enclosed in space and energy. It can be bounded with space and energy. And it requires this fault — this premise on the part of the individual — requires that premise directly to permit the individual to be overcome by mest. He has to assume that: that an idea can be fixed in energy and space. But now, after that, things which can change him in location — things which change him in location — can evaluate for him. Mother, for instance, the one (this is, by the way, one of the subjects of the PABs) — Mother carries the child around and then you wonder why it can be evaluated for by Mother.

What is this unreasonable idea that everything Mother says is completely, absolutely right? A child will throw away every idea he has of the past and trust to the extremely faulty memory of a mother. You'll get more preclears who will tell you, "Well, so-and-so, and that happened and the house burned down when I was three."

And you say, "You recall that directly?"

"Well, no — no."

"Where'd you get the idea that the house burned down when you were three?"

"Oh, my mother told me about it."

And, "Gee, three years old and — can't remember back to three," you say to yourself. "Well, well, well." This case is black, by the way — can't see anything, can't feel anything, doesn't know it. All right.

And they say, "And when I first started into kindergarten at seven . . ."

"Now, do you remember starting into kindergarten when you were seven?"

"No, no. My mother told me."

"My mother told me, my mother told me, my mother told me — who the hell are we processing," I'll eventually ask them, "your mother?" There's no sense in getting cross about it. It's that Mother evaluated for this thing called a body long before the preclear contacted the body at the Assumption.

So what's the reason for this? What's the most basic and fundamental reason for occlusion? Well, there's two or three dozen things happen in occlusion. But — there's the invisible barrier with blackness standing outside it; there's all sorts of things. But here we have this idea of being moved around by something. Mother moved the body around and had evaluated for it adequately before the thetan ever took it over. In what color was the body being evaluated for? In the whole prenatal bank. And that's all black, all the way back. So we have all of this strange blackness coasting all the way back. Now, that body has been moved around in blackness by a person who thereafter probably evaluated for it like mad.

The next stage was that the individual actually throws a remote viewpoint into the skull of Mama, Papa, Grandpa, Aunt Nellie, to look with — because they know. You see that? Throws a remote viewpoint right back of their eyes. And then they disappear or are dead. And they go into a coffin or something of the sort and the preclear's still carrying a remote viewpoint in their skull — that viewpoint on which they have depended so implicitly and explicitly. They've actually looked through their mothers' eyes. And you'll find this uniformly. You'll find this constantly with preclears, if you just start looking for it. The whole visio of the childhood scenes and so forth, and all the facsimile bank and so forth, will be from Mama's viewpoint or Papa's viewpoint. We used to call this "out of valence." Well, it's a viewpoint parked in the skull of Papa or Mama, using their eyes, and now they're gone and it's dark. And so a person doesn't see with it anymore, and he goes around and he tells the auditor, "I'm occluded." Well, understand that anything which has moved the preclear around in space is able to evaluate for him.

Now, just please — although we're talking about fixed ideas, you want to unfix some of your own ideas, let's get this one fixed. And that is: those things which have moved the individual around most in space are most likely to evaluate for him or those things which have kept the individual most fixed in space can best evaluate for him — either way, either way, either way.

So, the process indicated is to have the preclear move through his own space those things which have evaluated for him — namely, space and energy and blackness. And preferably have him do it behind him. "Now put a block of energy in San Francisco and one in New York. All right. Now let's take the block of energy in San Francisco and move it to New York. Now let's take what you've got in New York and move it to San Francisco. Now let's move it to New York. Now let's move it to San Francisco." This is Change of Space Processing on a remote energy. The preclear processes the chunk of energy or the cubes of space or the distances by moving them through space, preferably his own. But much more important than that is the idea of an idea being moved in space, just like that. All right.

Let's move the idea of trying to fix an idea: "And let's put that idea of fixing ideas in Seattle. Now let's put it in Los Angeles. Now, let's make sure you move the same one to Los Angeles. All right. Now take the idea of fixed ideas — take just fixed ideas, now, in Los Angeles. Now let's move to Charleston, South Carolina. And preferably do it behind your back. Now, let's take North Pole of Earth. Now, get the direction it is from you as you sit there. Now, you got that carefully aligned? Now make it be ninety degrees different. Now let's use that from here on as the North Pole to which you're going to move things." You see? Then you sure have the preclear's own universe; you're not using mest universe coordinates.

The idea of distances and directions are themselves fixed ideas, and the preclear who is buttered all over space has been fixing ideas all over space.

The whole gradient scale, the Tone Scale, the ARC scale, the DEI cycle — all of these things have to do with the fixed idea. The bottommost rung is the most fixed idea. Now, this is attention on the idea.

Now, there's an overt act — pardon me, a motivator-overt act mechanism. Now, that idea itself is moved around in space. Let's get the idea of consequences. That's looking beyond: consequences, you see — looking beyond. That's looking into the future, we think, perhaps. And so we have the idea of fixed ideas. And we must have these fixed ideas and we must look beyond these fixed ideas, too, which gives us further fixed ideas, and we have logic.

Now, a symbol — a symbol is a fixed idea. But it is a piece of machinery aborning; a word is a piece of machinery under manufacture. It is the lightest level of an idea in energy. You see, a symbol is a piece of energy. I don't care if it's written down on a page or it's a word which is vibrations in the air, or — I don't care what it is, it is a symbol of an idea. Well, it could only be a symbol of an idea by being surrounded by space and energy of a certain pattern. And so we put that up instead of the idea, we're on our way, right away. We're on our way right on down Tone Scale. Because that'll get heavier and heavier, and one day there will be a machine called "and." You listen to people as they speak, and this machine called "and" is very visible. You tell a preclear to double-terminal a couple of words and they're concrete or steel or something. That's because things that have an idea fixed in them are better than things which don't have an idea fixed in them. Namely, just a beautiful piece of MEST.

So, now let's say that some fellow has been working a lathe for a long time. If you'll just have him pretend he has the lathe in back of him and have him move the lathe from the North Pole to the South Pole — but disorient the poles, you see — and move the lathe from the North Pole to the South Pole, to the North Pole, to the South Pole, to the North Pole, to the South Pole, to the Moon, so forth; now he's evaluating for the lathe, the lathe isn't evaluating for him. You're not trying to run anything out, you're just reversing the whole idea.

Now we have him take space, and get the space in such a way . . . All right, now let's get directions. Of course, everything which tells the preclear what the direction is, is evaluating for him. But this could only be done because it's fixed ideas with regard to space. Space itself, in the mest universe, is a fixed idea. So you just have the preclear start in lying to you about directions. You have him point south and say, "There's Canada," and you have him point north and say, "There's Africa," and get him really oriented. And the guy will go into revolt after a while and he'll say, "Well, what the hell, I don't have to know which direction these things are. I don't anyhow." And so, now there's an indicated process.

Now, we'll find that ideas such as sounds — sounds. And they — somebody has his sonic off. Well, that's because sound has evaluated for him. So have him not emanate sound, but have him move sound.

"Now let's get the squawk of a hen and let's put that at point 'A' in your universe. Now let's move it to point 'B' in your universe. Now let's move it to point 'A,' now to point 'B,' now to point 'A,' now to point 'C.' "

The guy says, 'Well, where's 'C'?"

"I don't know; it's your universe. Find 'C.' All right. You got 'C.' Now put the squawk of a hen to 'C.' "

First thing you know, all the squawks of hens in the bank will turn on — every time he's ever heard a hen squawk, such as the last time he was at the Metropolitan Opera. (audience laughter)

Now, we have a — we can do this with anything, because essentially any perception is basically a fixed idea. Now, a terrifically effective method of doing this — and we combine all these things together — we get the idea of not knowing what the perception means. And, we can shorten that to not knowing the perception. Now, how would you do this? The most elementary way to do this, of course, is just match-terminal the idea: "Don't know what the perception is."

"Don't know what I'm looking at," match-terminaled. "Don't know what I'm smelling. Don't know what the heat is. Don't know how hot it is. Don't know what I'm feeling. Don't know if I have strength. Don't know if. . ." Just "don't know," that's all, see. Well, the symbol of know itself will start to run out and evaporate on the whole bank if you do it that way.

But a more effective method is to shift unknown smell from San Francisco to China to Russia to the Moon, so forth. And what do you shift there — the smell? No, just the idea of an unknown smell. And we just shift it all over the place. You practically gas a preclear, by the way — he's holding all sorts of these things in suspension in the bank. Unknown smell, unknown sight, or dangerous smell or dangerous sight — but mainly "don't know." See? "I don't know what the sight is." "I don't know whether she really did it or not," see, is what's basic on that. It's only the times not — that a person's been tripped up that count.

Now, what do we have here on this "don't know"? What — how does this tie in all of a sudden? When a person doesn't know something on a low echelon, it's because he can't locate it. And on a higher echelon, it's because he doesn't have to. So, let's try and just break through the barrier, the invisible barrier, between the need of geographic position — and break it on up further. Like "Don't know what the blackness is." Now just start shifting that idea, and make sure it's lineally, consecutively shifted from Diddy-Wah-Diddy to Moerdijk. And just keep shifting it back and forth, back and forth. But preferably behind the person. Well, why behind him? Because I'll let you in on something — that's where most of his ideas are fixed. Because he as a thetan has run so many bodies from behind that most of his automatic machinery is set up between himself and a point about seventy-five feet back and above the body. And there is the mass of fixed ideas on which the individual's running. He thinks of himself as kind of a hollow shell in that direction, if he thinks it over at all.

And the most solid fixed idea is his face, of course, because that's his identity. And then that becomes very unsolid and starts disappearing. Now, you have preclears all over the shop who — everything's disappearing on them. They're just disappearing, disappearing — you know, their body tries to disappear and everything's trying to disappear. If you'll just shift through space the idea of uncreation — just handle the idea of uncreation — you'll start physically moving about the machinery of automaticity. Because it is impossible for an idea (I don't mean that this is improbable; I mean it is — I don't mean that it is occasionally done) — it is impossible to fix an idea with space and energy. And the only way you could make somebody believe that he was doing it would be to get him to get, practically of his own volition in the first place, that he had to fix an idea in space and energy in order to have something — and if he did that, then he can go into competition with the universe.

Now, another technique for these people that are real bad off — real, real bad off (this is all rough case stuff that I'm giving you, but this is also run on a thetan exteriorized as one of the steps, we won't go into which one now) — "The walls are in competition with me."

Now, you run all those with the fellow's eyes closed. "The walls are in competition with me. This is in competition . . ." You'll find out that horrible emotion called jealousy is a sort of a black, unknown competition. And that's the dwindling spiral. So if you have somebody put jealousy in the walls — black jealousy in the walls — and have the walls in competition with him, so forth; you have somebody put fear in the walls, and you have somebody put the idea of fixed ideas in the walls, and each time move the idea. Move it. Move the emotion after he's put it in the wall rather than just let it sit there. That's your next step up from stationary implantation of emotions. You'll get an astonishing gain of case on individuals.

So he's occluded. Well, have him take a patch of blackness behind him and have him start moving it. Have him tell you where he wants to move it to and from. And then just make sure he moves it to and from, to and from, to and from — only make him reorient it and put it in some other direction than the thing actually is.

The idea of a fixed idea must precede the idea of aberration of any kind.

Okay.