Thank you. Thank you.

This is the fifth lecture of the 18th ACC, July 19, 1957. Right?

Audience: Right. Yeah.

This moment I would like to take the opportunity to correct a couple of corrections which I've recorrected. I said that this was the first time since Buddhism that anybody had done anything about it. Buddhism was the last time anybody had done anything about it and then I told you last night that this was in the tradition of all the philosophy between then and now. That's right, isn't it?

Female voice: Yeah.

That's fascinating, isn't it?

Both remarks are true. Philosophy didn't do anything about it. They just talked about it. Just like most of the intellectuals you get into your group will do. They just sit around and talk about it. What you want to do is go down to the docks and pull up some longshoremen. They'll do something about it. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? But actually the smart ones at that level, the clever ones at that level have actually been denied their proper level in society. And out of a large number of people like longshoremen and so forth, why, you will get several of them that could give cards and spades to Einstein. It's fantastic but they will do something.

All right, now the last time anybody did anything about it was Buddhism. That was 2,500 years ago.

It must have been pretty good because it has established the tradition of everything that has happened since. And that is why we are in the tradition of the best philosophy possible.

Now you're going to challenge me and say, "Well, Greek philosophy did not spring from Buddhism." I don't know that it didn't. I don't know for a moment that it didn't. One would make that statement on the fact that nobody traveled way back when. Of course, there were few people who traveled that also wrote, since writing was not in vogue.

But there's a fellow by the name of Marco Polo, he got around quite a bit. And you hear him remarking every now and then in his works about other travelers who went back and forth on the same routes.

In the days of Tamerlane when Samarkand was the capital of the world, we hear of an Arab writer by the name of Ibn Batuta who wrote about the peoples of Earth, and he'd just been all over the place.

And man today has an unhealthy attitude toward man of yesterday. He thinks that man of yesterday didn't get around. And man of yesterday got around most alarmingly. In fact, the silk trade and so on between Italy and China was simply interrupted by the creation of the Ottoman Empire and cut much of the travel that was done. What — we even read in the days of the Greeks of nearly everything that Marco Polo wrote about later. Quite fascinating.

In other words, Buddhism wasn't something that was totally located and entirely localized in the middle of China; it was not at all. The lower Tibetan plateau spilled its knowledge out into China proper, a tremendous distance away. It's an enormous distance from lower Tibet over to Peking. I'd hate to walk it. I'd hate to walk it. I haven't; I almost did once — check didn't arrive — but that's another story.

The Buddhist monk took civilization out across an Asia which up to that moment was very barbaric. The Buddhist monk went out with reading and writing and painting and pottery making and wearing shoes and he even got some of the Chinese to stop eating other Chinese by this route. It was a wild, mad, barbaric scene into which Buddhism moved. They took the Chinese writing, for instance, to Japan, which up to that moment had no writing at all. And to this day, the writing imported by the Buddhists into Japan is the writing of Japan. It's quite remarkable; it's a total Chinese character system, the basic writing used in Japan, with little tiny wiggle-waggles — katakana — up at the upper right-hand corner of the characters to tell you how to pronounce the character because they are not pronounced the same in Chinese as Japanese, you see? So they have to tell you how to pronounce the character. Japanese newspapers are quite fantastic.

But anyway, Buddhism took practically every civilized art Japan has to Japan except two: boating and fishing and killing other people. And these three arts — two arts and one pastime — were just about all that was native to Japan. Well, its civilization rose from that point and it ceased to be a total barbarism, became a civilized nation to a marked degree.

Well, along about the time this was happening, nothing was walking around in Europe but something in furs — you know, thrown over the shoulder in an abandoned fashion — and one had a rather difficult time going to nightclubs in Paris because of the wolves that roamed in the streets. Of course Paris wasn't founded for ages and ages afterwards; myself and a couple other guys got up there . . . Well, that's a different story. It was . . .

But here was Europe — here was Europe, actually a sponge for culture. The culture came to Europe on a comm lag of some duration. There had already been some people sweeping down from the north that had taken over Greece and they brought a lot of new ideas with them. They upset a matriarchy and these people with their new ideas were quite remarkable people. They — blond, blue-eyed people. And they took over that section of the world and had a communication line back to where they came from and actually their — one tries to find what could have cut man's urge to travel between Asia and Europe rather than, "Did it exist?" It was almost impossible for it not to exist. It's pretty easy — there are sea routes and all sorts of things.

But we don't find any of the sentiments of Buddhism sweeping into Europe. You think I'm — this is all I'm going to talk to you about tonight but it's not, I'm just building up to something. Actually I'm talking to you while I'm trying to think of something, that's all.

The people were very much in motion, a lot of information was being carried back and forth of one kind or another and we find the religion of Buddhism sweeping into the Roman Empire and Europe somewhere around the time of Julius Caesar. And the sentiments of love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek and so on were buildups from this same basic philosophy and they swept into Europe on that route. There isn't much doubt about this. The — even the early Christian chronicles tell how long Christ studied in India. It's not a remarkable fact at all.

But — point something out to you: that this particular activity did not build up Europe but tore it to pieces. Here was a strong, powerful empire with good justice, good roads, good people, into which was introduced a revolutionary philosophy known as Christianity. And in just four centuries there was nothing left. My evidence of this is on very good authority: Edward Gibbon, who wrote the most monumental monument on this subject that has ever been written. And the only reason it perseveres until today the way he wrote it back around the last part of the eighteenth century — the only reason it perseveres is because it's got big words in it. And ignorant people, the kind who censor books, couldn't ever get past the first chapter. And it is simply there by ponderousness.

But it tells this story of the destruction of an empire. From a time of fine — fine troops, good police, freedom of a sort, citizenship, on down to a point where the Roman legions not only would not wear practice armor but would go forth into battle with a cross tattooed on the chest and run like hell. And they were practically lower than the barbarians. They had been swept away by recurring waves of barbarism. They could be swept away because they themselves had been rendered pitifully weak.

What had rendered them weak? As far as I could establish in very cursory investigation, it would be a philosophy which taught that all force was bad. A philosophy which taught that all force must be ignored. And as far as I can trace that philosophy, it seems to be the worst of Buddhism drifted through.

Now, Buddhism was not necessarily good. But its intentions were good. And all it told man was that he was a spirit and that the universe was constructed more or less around this fact. Now, regardless of what Buddhism taught or didn't taught or what its sects or cults taught, this was a new message in the world. But Buddhism did not teach that when one dies he goes up and finds some pearly gates with somebody playing hotcha on a horn. Nor did Buddhism teach that if one was bad he promptly sunk through the forty-mile crust of earth and boiled in the lava inside from there on out.

No, these factors are the earmarks of an operation. And the only reason I am talking about this, the only reason I am risking giving offense to those people who are still saying their Ave Marias — and they have a right to — some people are brave, some have Ave Marias — is simply this: you can take any philosophy and make a control slavery operation out of it. Do you understand this?

Therefore, I am saying to you here that the next resurgence or compilation of knowledge concerning the spiritual nature, actions and behavior patterns of man and this universe coming up at this time could again be roped, hogtied, smothered and used for a control operation.

The first sign of this would be secrecy concerning one or more of its essential parts. It would have to be made into a mystery before it could be made to accomplish slavery.

Slavery and mystery are almost the same thing. Look at the CDEI Scale. Curiosity becomes desire becomes enforce becomes inhibit. Mystery. Dispel the mystery and you've dispelled all.

Now, for understanding, a thing called trust may be substituted. This is true. They're two slightly different things: understanding and trust. Now, trust can very, very easily be made over to enforced faith. And any time anybody tells you to take something totally on faith, they are trying to pervert your sense of trust. There is no reason you, at any time, any place, or any period of the universe should have to take anything on faith.

Now, therefore, any resurgence of philosophic knowledge has to be valued as itself. It is all very well for one to negate his own role or part in this. As a matter of fact, since last night I have had several complaints concerning the fact that I told you that I wasn't responsible for Scientology and several people have come around and kicked me in the shins but good on this subject.

They claim I'm trying to get out from under responsibility concerning the thing. All I was saying was I couldn't have done it without a tradition. So I'll have to take over the responsibility a little bit more just to get back a few friends.

But the point is this: authorship of something is unimportant; very, very unimportant. The point is, a great deal of revealed truth can bring about a tremendous change in the culture of the world. It can bring about a much more highly civilized state amongst barbarisms or amongst what people fondly believe are civilizations.

Now, the ability to make goods does not create a civilization. The ability to wear silk does not make a lady, nor the way to pat a top hat make a gentleman. These are different things.

We have today an interesting state of affairs. When we sum up the actual personality of national governments — and you should understand that nationalism is a brand-new thing on earth. People used to owe their allegiance to their land and to a king or some leader of this type. And now we have this whole thing moved out into some nebulous thing called "nationalism" which was invented back around the time of Cesare Borgia.

This whole subject of nationalism is becoming more and more and more ingrained in man. But unfortunately, he fought himself out of belief in it in World War I. World War I saw, really, the end of fervid nationalism and the beginning of tolerance broadly across national boundaries, just as it saw the actual end of Christianity. Too many nations fighting each other were all fighting, each fighting in the name of God. And the soldiers of those various nations went back home and said, "This is not logical" and that actually was the cave-in. It — later centuries I'm sure will remark that period as the cave-in of Christianity. Everybody was fighting everybody in the name of God. "Gott mit uns."

Now, nationalism does not make for a wide civilization — it only makes for this: legality of crime on the part of a nonexistent being. The nonexistent being can commit crimes which are not permitted to the individual citizen. Kidnapping is legal on a nationalistic basis. In other words, although you cannot put the government in jail, the government can put you in jail and hold you for ransom: bail. That's kidnapping. That's perfectly legal. And so many other things are legal on a nationalistic basis.

Now, this makes and sets a stage. It's not something I am railing against. I'm just trying to show you with some truth the stage that is set here in the middle of this twentieth century. It is a stage and it is set. And it is quite fabulous to discover that it is waiting for an Armageddon or a civilization.

People are no longer fervently upholding national governments. They would rather tend toward a philosophic approach to politics. Now, whether we like it or dislike it, communism is a philosophic approach to politics of one kind or another. Crude as it is, it's still a figure-figure thinkingness of one kind or another about how we should all go about running the nation; do you understand that?

Now, democracy never has been that, and somebody who says democracy versus communism is saying something like apples versus buffalo. Because democracy is a system of government and communism is a philosophy of government. And these two things, then, are not at war. But communism could very well invade the world at large and some form of socialism or another could be established and has been struggling into a level of establishment since about 1900. That's fifty-seven years ago. They got — the income tax amendment was one of the first actions of socialism in the United States, and that was 1911. In other words, this has been going on for a long time, these social philosophies of one kind or another.

Now, you have to meet, to some degree, spears with spears. Wooden hand swords do not accord well in a battle with spears, don't you see? You have to have impacts of comparable magnitude before there's a conflict. So don't be puzzled that socialism and socialistic trends are winning today in the Western world. They are unopposed. A system of government cannot oppose them because these things can exist, woven into this system of government. In other words, the system of government can sit right there, democracy, and everybody is a socialist. And there's no dispute between these two facts.

Nobody is very aware of this: that the doors are wide open, that almost any political philosophy of any kind could sweep in today upon these great nations of the Western world. And anybody who lifts his head with an opposing philosophy of existence has raised a spear in the face of spears. Do you see that?

Now, the Russian says that he is out to conquer the mind of man. Yes, that is very true, he is out to conquer the mind of man — something on the order that you would shoot bear.

This philosophy is alive today in the world. It is not necessarily good or bad, it is all whether or not the men who use it make it so. So far it has proven very evil. For instance, Russia herself under this philosophy is not able to progress. She has fallen a quarter of a century behind all of the European nations with which she was once abreast. She's having governmental shake-ups of all kinds. But this means nothing. The philosophy is still being exported of one kind or another just tells you that this philosophy, being a sort of a slave philosophy and having a pitch, is bringing with it destruction. Therefore, destruction would be the end product of any slavery, supercontrol operation, whether it be communism or Christianity or anything else.

Now, these things basically found themselves on truth. And then somebody comes along and for somebody else's good, feels that it would be best to pervert this truth, give it a little curve, omit a couple of things, add a couple of saltshakerfuls of mystery and this is for the good of man. At no time will this ever be for the good of man. There would be no way to temper or reshape the philosophies contained in Scientology so as to fully breast the philosophies of communism.

If Scientology were to win, it would win on all fronts, not merely against some oh, pig-eared ideology that somebody in a cabbage patch thought up when he was drunk. Shows the world's pretty bad off that that is what they call philosophy today. "Woikers of the woild arise."

Something wins, however, to the degree that it assists others to exert control over their own environments. Those things which solely seek to control and nothing else, don't win. They just — this little group here is going to control all those groups across the world. And that — that just doesn't win. The only way a win is achieved is to use what you know to better somebody else's control of his environment.

War comes about because nations — meaning nationalistic nations — weaken the control of other nationalistic nations by propaganda and trade and other things. They don't bolster the control, they weaken it. And sooner or later they drive another nation mad and war occurs. That is the phenomena of war. It's just you weaken the control of somebody somewhere and he gets angry and upset.

Now let's look at this much more personally. If we wanted to handle a police officer, our course of action on a very short-term basis could be to take away from him his ability to control the situation. See now, that's a short-term basis. Criminals do that when they shoot one. You see, they sweep away his ability to control the situation. A citizen does that when he says, "Well, you haven't any right on my front porch, get off of here." It's quite remarkable. He always drives the police officer down into the misemotional bands and the police officer hits reaction. Well, it's quite amazing how easy it is to make Americans hit reaction these days. It is. It's quite amazingly easy; it's too easy. Frighteningly so.

The thing to do in order to handle him would be to get him in better control of the environment he's supposed to handle. In order to solve the difficulties with police, we do not need more barriers on police, what we need is more assistance for the police to handle their jobs. They only mishandle them when they can't.

If we wanted to make a good police officer we'd have to take him out of being worried about the criminal mind and a lot of other bugbears that have been mocked up for him these days. Quite amusing that people dream up things for police officers to worry about. Criminal mind is supposed to be an actuality — it's really supposed to exist. Well, the thing to do for a police officer would be to teach him how to handle the criminal mind and then the funny thing about it is, he would be able to be nice and pleasant and lawful with the other citizens. The wrong way to do it would be to reduce his understanding and control of the criminal mind and this would cave him in. Is that right? All right.

On an international scene, it would be necessary to bolster the Russian government's ability to control the Russian nation, to prevent war with Russia. Sounds incredible but you follow the same chain of logic out and you'll see that that is correct. Of course, we're sort of mad in that direction or something of the sort and we say, "Well, we just ought to knock the rascals out and cut them all to pieces and get it all revolting in all directions and so forth." No, that would not be the right direction.

Now, there would be a danger in partially assisting their control, right? Just partially assisting their control. Because they might come up to 1.5. So you'd have to keep punching this assistance through until he got through the blow band. You see that? You'd have to bring him up there. In other words, you'd have to assist him enough so that he would have enough reality on it so that he would come up above the level wherein he would be dangerous. Is this correct? Do you see this well?

Male voice: Yeah.

Well, because people were never willing to assist enough, they would run people up toward the blow band and then they decided that assistance and helping others control things was wrong. Do you see that? In other words, they didn't do it quite long enough. They didn't do it quite well enough and so they never learned it.

They would always fall short of it. The fellow would start up Tone Scale, he'd get to 1.2, 1.3 and they'd say, "This is dangerous, throw a net over his head."

We had a preclear up in New York one time; it was very interesting, every time an auditor would audit her up to 1.5 where she'd start cursing her brother and sister they would promptly get hold of her and take her into a hotel room and tie her down on the bed until she went into apathy again and this hurdy-gurdy-sandy-andy went on about five or six times. The auditor would build the girl up and so on. We finally had to have a consultation on it where we would — we shot this girl up through the anger band, didn't let her sit in it anyplace and after that, why, they thought this was fine. They were not very good at observation, they thought she was still in apathy.

Now, here we have numerous examples and I have to set them forward in this wise: the first thing I'm trying to tell you is the use of any technology to place another being into duress brings about a disaster. It doesn't matter whether it's on a large, civilized plane or individual to individual or group to group or nation to nation. And you haven't realized it but all this time I've been talking to you about a thetan.

Now let's get down to facts. We said what was Scientology addressed to. Oh, we could say generally it's addressed to other life forms and bodies and banks and the physical universe and it's all these things — it's just all of those things.

No, I am afraid we have to be factual; very factual. That thing which is the observer of the universe and other forms is a being which we call by the mathematical symbol theta or a thetan. And other people have called this thing a soul or a spirit but they got into a condition of where "my soul is over there" or "I have to take care of my soul or it will not go to heaven." In other words, they reversed on the situation. I don't know where "their soul" was. And the whole subject has been so grandly misunderstood that we have to take a fresh approach and it would be very difficult for us to take an approach without better semantics.

Even amongst ourselves here and there, somebody every now and then says, "Spirits? Oh, just the thought of having to study anything about spirits just is terrible. I mean, why do you have to bring that up?" Well, I'm sorry I have to bring it up; it would be deadly if you just sat there and looked at the subject of spirits all the time — conceiving a static. But I don't think anybody in the last 2,500 years has taken the subject up. And therefore they've got all these wild ideas about spirits and souls and religion and all kinds of other nonsense. And all of these wild ideas have made them avoid entirely this signal, single datum: that the only thing you can do is assist a spirit to control his environment. That's all you can do. You can't do anything else but that. Because anything else but that is destructive. And because you are part of that environment, you'll get included in.

And if you want to keep any kind of a show on the road in life at all, don't go around planting guys in their heads, hoping that they will then be stiff as pokers and not bother you anymore, because you'll keep falling over the corpse.

Now, to assist the ability to control his immediate environment: in this is a tremendous — a tremendous lot of technology stems from, is grouped with that single statement.

What's a thetan? Well, we have this example which I have used a couple of times before and which I'm going to use right now. Scientology is of course addressed to the material universe and I invite you to take a look at that, would you? Would you look around and find out if there is a universe here right now.

Male voice: Yeah.

There is one here right now. Is that right?

Audience: Mm-hm.

All right. That's fine.

Now, I wish you would observe at this moment that you have a body there.

Do you have a body sitting there?

Audience: Yeah.

You got one there really?

Audience: Yeah.

All right. That is a body. Now, Scientology is addressed to the physical universe and is addressed to the body. You're sure about this body now?

Audience: Yeah. Yes.

All right, that's fine.

Now shut your eyes and get a picture of a cat. Any old cat, doesn't matter — or any picture. Got that?

Audience: Yeah.

All right, now, that picture is a mental image picture which in aggregate consists of pictures of the physical universe or pictures of the thetan's own universe and so forth. But it, in its aggregate, is the mind. You got the picture of the cat; all right, that's the mind.

All right, now we have the physical universe, got a body. And I call something to your attention: you've seen both of these so far haven't you? You've got a reality on both of these — and the mind, you've got a reality on that. Mind — so that's three. The mind isn't anything else, you know, but just what you just looked at — a mental image picture of one kind or another. And now let's get the picture of the cat again and answer the question, "What is looking at it?" Now, you can say "me," but just what is looking at it?

Audience: Thetan. I am.

You are. You are. And that's a thetan.

Now, this is the totality — multiplied, it is true — this room and many other parts of the universe. You know, other rooms in the universe or other minds or other bodies or other beings. Now, you have a subjective reality now on the physical universe, a body, right? A mind, and you certainly should have a reality on the fact that something was looking at it, right?

Audience: Yeah.

Well, that's all we mean by a thetan. Please. Because that, in essence, is all we can demonstrate 100 percent.

Now, these subjects as given to you, physical universe, body, mind, thetan, are each one, then, capable of a reality. Now, you heard everybody say, "Yes, I am looking at the cat," didn't you?

Audience: Yes.

So now you have a secondary or agreed-upon reality of the fact that there were other thetans in the room, right?

Audience: Yeah.

All right, now that is your closest approach to a reality on another thetan at this time. Let's just sort this out and see what we know about this subject, all right?

Well now, something mocked up or created or did something with something to have a universe, right?

Audience: Yeah.

And something or somethings made a body or bodies, right?

Audience: Yeah.

And something is perpetually making a mind, right?

Audience: Yeah.

All right. That's total objectivity right up to that point. Demonstrable as can be. But we said something made this. Now, it would be very, very limiting on our parts not to assume that you didn't have some share in this. Do you understand? That would be very limiting. See, if we said, "Well, everybody in the room but you had a — had a share in making this universe," you know? That — make a fellow feel kind of funny doesn't it? Makes him feel pretty good to get the idea, well yes, it's rather factual he did have a — he moves a body around in it, he at least shifts the scenery in it. Yes, he has some sort of a hand in the going thing called a universe. And for us to check out one person out of the whole of people and say, "He didn't" would be nonsense, wouldn't it? That would be nonsense. So we must assume that we all had a hand in it, one way or the other.

Now, this doesn't justify us in saying that nothing else anywhere had no hand in it. This doesn't justify us in using ourselves as a totality, does it? There might have been other beings or another being or any other way you wish to look at it, who also had a hand in it who are not at this time classifiable as thetans.

But let me point something out to you. If you never shake them by the hand, you will not have communicated with them. If you haven't communicated with them directly in all this time, the chances are pretty thin that you'll ever meet one. Pretty thin.

Now, you have met human beings and you do have, as Scientologists, a reality on the fact that they are thetan plus mind plus body plus their environment, right? Well, do you know there is no reason, to handle a problem, to assume anything else but these four factors? We don't have to go into a bunch of speculative stuff about whether or not there is an eighth dynamic or whether or not you haunt hotels after you're dead. We don't have to go into this at all. We can progress from this reality almost in the first moment of conversation with anybody we care to talk to on the face of Earth. In just exactly the order I have just talked to you.

He said, "What is this Scientology?"

You say, "Well, it's the stuff that handles all this."

And he says, "All what?"

And you say, "Well, look around."

And he says, "Well, yeah."

And you say, "You got a body there?"

"Yeah."

"Well, get a picture of a cat."

"Cat."

"All right, what's looking at it?"

"Well, I am."

"Well, all right, that's the four factors of Scientology and those are what we handle. Thank you very much."

There isn't any place — any reason to go anyplace else. There's no reason to go into broadcloth altars or silk vestal virgins. There's no reason to go into necromancy or magic. Nor is there any reason to be appalled by any of these things, since we have found no answers that lay outside the communication level of the four things we have just talked about.

Every once in a while we run into a spook thing. Something that is a little bit — well, we're not — we don't like that too well. But do you know what it always boils down to? Thetan, mind, body, universe. Well, we say maybe we ran into something peculiar, well, it was a thetan who had never picked up a body yet or something peculiar like this. Or it was a whole track between-lives operation where thetans were given a bunch of pictures and a bunch of pictures taken away from them or something of the sort. We run into this phenomena.

Well, let me call to your attention that this does not fall outside what you have just been looking at. It is comprehensible. The only thing that stands between you and totally comprehending it is an interjection of the mystery factor, usually for purposes quite remunerative, apparently, to somebody else — which will pay him off not at all. Somebody's dropped the blinds on it and when we peek around back of the blinds, we find ourselves once more looking at thetan, mind, body, universe.

Now, just because this one seems so solid is no reason there isn't another one. This would be an "only one" proposition. I used to be appalled at the fact that when I was going to school (when they could rope me — they used to every once in a while; I took pity on them) they used to say that Earth was the only inhabited planet. I've read that! At the time I read that I was just appalled. I looked at this and I said dzzz! How come anybody would think that? The fact that there are other stars kicking around would rather indicate that it would be a freak indeed that would make only one planet habitable around one star! And I tried to argue this out — great lack of success.

Now, what — what would we have to do in order to get a reality on another sun and another planet and other races? And now we run into really the fifth factor and that fifth factor is elsewhere. We have to be able to assume an elsewhere. And now we have left the realm of solid reality and are in the realm of the abstract. The abstract is composed, evidently, only of elsewheres plus somebody's ideas concerning the four things we've mentioned and the elsewheres.

But when we've gone that far, the data can be so many and the proofs so few that we soar up into the most grand confusion anybody ever wished to look at. We find men who all they had to do was sit down and feel the floor, look at the wall, find out if they had a body, find out what did — the mind consisted of and wonder what it was looking at — to find, practically, the substance or the generality on anything there was to confront. And these men, with all of that to study, to look at, to realize, could actually sit around and discuss how many angels could dance upon the head of a pin.

So the study of the mind has been the study of elsewhere. And I'll tell you something. When you exclusively study elsewhere, you never get there. If you only study those things beyond the range of your experience, it is doubtful if you will ever experience them.

Now, a thetan is a thetan and we know what a thetan can do. We know that these mental image pictures have, actually, mass. There's an interesting experiment on that. You have a fellow mock up things and shove them into his body and before you have him do that you weigh him on the scales and after he does that you weigh him on the scales and you'll find out he's increased in weight. And if that doesn't prove the mass of mental image pictures, which is the only thing that's happened in between, why, I'll go back and take psychology. Anyway. . . I'm taking it now, but quite another way. Anyway. . .

Now, there is the woof and warp of experience: the interweave of these factors; the complexity which can be discovered in the physical universe; the differences of forms; the aesthetic evaluation of what you are looking at. Rhythm, cadence, senses of time, all of these various things can enter in and make the picture adequately complex. But do you know there are people around who won't confront things just because there's nothing to confront. They think to confront something they would have to go to a war. There are fellows around — I knew a stage manager one time, he actually directed the Rockettes — interesting job, you would admit — who was begging me to go with me on an expedition to look at savage peoples so that he would have something to look at. Now, he had a bad case of elsewhereness, didn't he? I would say that was almost fatal. I tried to give him the expedition and swap jobs with him, but he wouldn't — he wouldn't do me that dirty a trick. He was too good a friend of mine.

So that we find people incapable of conceiving anything worth looking at where they are. They always have to be somewhere else. But in view of the fact that they can't actually be somewhere else while being where they are, they never look at anything. And I'm afraid that's all there is to it. That's basically all there is to philosophy. It's how to be elsewhere when you aren't.

Mathematics is always telling us that the end product will be elsewhere. That's the one constant answer. The barrel will fill up in twenty minutes. That's an elsewhere in time, isn't it? The barrel was full last year. Elsewhere, elsewhere.

Most mental systems, then, are elsewhere systems. What is happening over there or what will happen or what has happened. Now, in view of the fact that the past, for most people, is imperishably recorded on thinnies, they have to be able to be elsewhere at will, or the auditors will, in order to confront the past. But then how could they possibly confront the future, which isn't yet, is it? Or is it? That's a fine question, isn't it?

Now, that's about all the abstract I can use at the moment, is: is the future or isn't it? I get upset when I start running the preclears into the future and telling them, "Make it a little more solid" and they tell me what the stock market is going to read day after tomorrow — I mean, this is upsetting.

Another thing, sending preclears into the past and having them pick up and turn over and read the other side of newspapers which they didn't, then, is also upsetting.

So I would say this is just about all the mystery a fellow could use at the moment — without going elsewhere. Because this mystery is right where you are. Now, if you're stuck in the past, why, the mystery is there in the past.

Now this, fortunately, is a solvable situation. It is an observable situation, it can be confronted and processes exist which permit it to be confronted and auditing drills exist which permit preclears to be audited and so confront them. Right?

Well, there's a lot more about things I'd like to tell you, but if you look it over very carefully, you'll find the end product of them right about there.

Now, we extend each one of these things. The physical universe you see; we could then conceive, because it is, the fact that there could be other universes.

Now, each of us has a body — except those two thetans up in the corner of the room — each of us has a body and ability to perceive that there are other bodies around, right? Well now, this becomes very observable that there are other bodies around. It's more observable than the fact that there may be other universes around. Got that?

Now, you can see your own mind rather easily and you can work with and get a communicated reality on somebody else's mind, can't you? But there's just one mind that you really look at, right?

Now, you know that you look at the mind, experience the body and experience the universe, right? And by communication, you find that others do the same thing, right? But that was by communication.

Now, three of these factors are then, by themselves, only-ones, and only expanded by means of communication. Is that right? In other words, thetan, mind, universe — they're singles, aren't they? So that bodies are plural in the reality, right? You've got a very plural reality. Now, how in the name of common sense, then, do you think there could be anything wrong with a body? I think this shows the highest form of inventiveness of a thetan. This is the one thing on which he has an observable reality, blunt and factual: that there are other bodies. That's correct, isn't it?

But there's only one universe that he experiences uniformly and routinely, one mind and one self. So there are three only-ones, aren't there? So you'd look for your biggest difficulty in those lines. But in view of the fact that his singularity actually doesn't bother him, except as it impedes him to conceive the multipleness of other minds — you see, if there were lots more of him, he would then be able to see lots more minds and maybe lots more universes, maybe. It's a limiting factor, the singleness of himself. Nevertheless, I don't see how he could have any trouble with himself.

He is observing, in some fashion, what he is observing. And he must be in an elsewhere state about what he's observing, not to be able to observe what there is to observe, don't you see? So if he could observe what there is to observe, then he wouldn't be in a bad state at all. It's only when he observes what there isn't to observe that we say he's in a bad state.

So we limit the things that could be wrong, then, to the mind and the universe. I seriously doubt if there's anything wrong with a thetan or a thought. I don't think, at a cursory glance, there's any such thing as aberrated thought. I think there would be an aberrated confrontingness, an elsewhereness. He is looking at something else while he thinks he is somewhere else.

So this boils it down to the fact that the mind, then, must be somehow or another at fault here. He must be able to have the mind in several places. But if that's the case, then the other factor at fault would be the physical universe around him — this would be at fault then too because of its singleness. But the mind has been carefully taking pictures of this in order to make it multiple. Which comes down to the singleness of the physical universe as the single aberrative factor. Therefore objective auditing is always more successful than subjective auditing or auditing directly addressed to the thetan.

And if you don't follow that very clearly and if you haven't got that entirely straight, how by the singleness of the universe . . . See, the mind has multiplied that universe and so itself has a multiple factor. The only singleness we find is the singleness of the thetan, the singleness of the universe. So it must be a fight between the thetan and the universe and there's lots more of the other things. Got it? So the only scarcities there could be would be the scarcity of the universe and the scarcity of self. And I don't think there could be very much wrong with thinkingness. Thinkingness doesn't audit very well. It either audits totally, which is to say, you just get the fellow to confront what there is to confront and that's that, or it really doesn't audit at all. You just change the things it can confront and it has a better opinion of itself.

So it boils down to the fact that Objective Process is the best processes. And if you haven't gotten this straightened out, why, play the lecture back. I'm not sure that I understand it myself.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.