I want to talk to you now about Homo sapiens. This is definitely in the field of Dianetics. I could talk to you a great deal about life in general. I want to talk to you about Homo sapiens as he applies one of the particular facets of life. Life has a certain pattern it follows in the organization and perpetuation of a species. And this is definitely applied to Homo sapiens. It's applied to Homo sapiens in a little more detail than in other forms of life.

The habit pattern or training pattern or genetic pattern or whatever you want to call it is best exemplified by the cat, which, a few days after it gets its eyes open, washes its face. You take a kitten, take him away from his mother, take him away from other cats — while he's still blind, right after he's born — and let him grow for a little while, and you will find him sitting there washing his face. Why? Anybody tell him to wash his face?

This is true of the entire animal kingdom. Actually, a little alligator, the moment it breaks from its shell, without any contact with the exterior environment, will go through certain definite patterns of combat. It will fight immediately. It is completely cognizant of the fact that the world is a hostile place, and it just starts fighting right away — it breaks through its shell, and it's to war it goes; has definite methods of fighting. It's a curious thing, isn't it?

I call to your attention that a cat is a less-evolved animal than an alligator. An alligator has more time, as a form on the time track, than a cat. It isn't that the cat therefore would demonstrate the habit pattern later than the alligator, but the fact that the cat is not at all sure the world is a hostile place — the alligator is. And the alligator has been on the time track longer, hasn't he? There is a direct coordination between these two points.

But what we're talking about is habit pattern, training pattern and behavior, as it applies immediately and intimately to Homo sapiens. Once in a while you get a Homo sapiens female, a little "sapier" than others, who hap-pens to have studied psychology or something like this (is very learned in this line), and you will get this astonishing, this utterly incredible think: that man doesn't have any of these patterns! Unlike the remainder of the animal kingdom, man has none of these training patterns like a cat washing its face. Man is the subject of conditioning and other bric-a-brac.

Boy, I tell you, a baby sure can cry when it's hungry, and it knows how to do that right away. And if that is not a training pattern or a habit pattern the same as a cat washing its face or an alligator starting to fight the second he breaks through his shell, I would like one of these plowed-in, psychological, magic, exteriorly determined computers to tell me what the hell it is!

Now, if you were to take a baby and put him aside and let him grow without observing anybody walk, that baby sooner or later would walk — you know, a couple of years, something like that, maybe, but you'd find the baby walking.

Now, let's take something else here. Let's discover something very peculiar: That an orphan is never as well-advanced in life as a person who is born and raised with his family. This orphan, who is maybe born in some strange place and is immediately orphaned in some fashion or another, and then goes to a home and lives with other children, you know, equally orphans, and so forth, carries on throughout the remainder of his life until — oh, of course, he could break it up if he wanted to — but carries on, to some slight degree, less of an advanced condition. He is not quite in the same state of advancement as his fellows.

Well now, here you've got two factors: you've got the native pattern of the individual compounded by these training patterns. Now, this person who's going to be an orphan will go through all of the training patterns which are basic on his genetic line, but he will not add to them. And that's what's important; he won't add to them to amount to anything. Why? We'll get around to that in a moment.

This man here, this Homo sapiens, goes along, generation to generation, as a form which is relayed, generation to generation, and is changed and improved or deteriorated, generation to generation, and in each generation you are then dealing with the genetic pattern of behavior and response plus the observed that-generation training and response. And what determines this? Is there some factor that determines this? Yes, the factor that determines this is survival.

I don't know much about the life of Darwin, but I daresay he had familial difficulties, because Darwin was all too willing to assume an accidental forward motion of the entire line. You can tell how well-developed a science is at any time, by simply finding out how much they attribute to accident. And a science is as well-developed as it attributes nothing to accident, and is as cluttered and as unworkable as it attributes things to accidents.

Take your biologist. There is nothing sorrier than modern biology. It's a sad, sad thing, if you want to look it over. In the first place, it's in disagreement with cytology, which is its parent science. Cytology, the study of cells, happens to be, in its basic premises, in disagreement with biology. And these people can't tell you why or how. They can't even really determine. They don't know that you can train cells in one generation. They don't know millions and millions of things that they should know if they call themselves a science. Because they say, "There was a big ocean, and it was an ammonia ocean. And there was a spontaneous geewhumpawhump, and out of the mud came life." That's "How inverted can you get?" In other words, they take this great big incredible accident and use that as the assumption point of a science.

Now, remember that every science has its assumption point. Physics has its assumption point. Physics assumes as an assumption point several things, but amongst them that the physical universe is here, and it's actual. It assumes that immediately.

And biology assumes this big accident, compounded of ammonia and professorial ink. And out of this complete swindle they have not been able to do anything in the field of biology except graduate biologists. And after they graduate them I suppose they have gotten some advance in making bread molds. They have made several bread molds which are of some importance.

And there is a subject of industrial biology — not to be confused with educational biology — where they get together and make molds and things that create dyes and do various things. They fool around with this. But that's a very practical application. These individuals are only interested in the work-ability of the subject, and practically none of these individuals would even argue with you as to whether it was ammonia or mud; they're only interested in whether or not they can raise better molds or something — they're industrial biologists.

Let's compare, now, the techniques, workability and training of the auditor, not to biology, you see, but let's compare it in the same way that industrial biology would compare to it. We might have this terrific panorama and pattern of life — we're only really interested in what belongs in the workable category; you know, what can we do with this material? We have a premise of action with this material.

All right. And for that reason, it isn't enough for us to stand around and speculate. This is all right for a biologist or psychologist or something of this sort, but they sort of remind you of a guy standing in the middle of the yard, figure-figure-figure-figure-figure, and you come back a hundred years later and there he is standing there in the yard, figure-figure-figure-figure-figure. And he'll give you a lot of stuff; you can pull the lever or push a button and you get a lot of data, but you wouldn't be able to do anything with this data. It would be curious, amusing, funny, but you're interested in the workability.

So, all right. Let's see, though, if we can't advance a little bit higher than these so-called sciences. And let's get up to a basis where we have theory and workability joining hands. And that would be quite unique, wouldn't it, in the field of genetics, in any other such field — the field of behavior, training patterns. And we could apply this so that we could make workmen healthier and we could make people better off. In other words, this is workable theory, if you want to call it that.

And that is simply this: We postulate no accident, but we do postulate a hostile universe. There's no accidents about this hostile universe; it's there. But it's there and it is conceived to be hostile in exact ratio to the length of time it has been inhabited. It's hostile to the length of time somebody has been in it. In other words, if you've been in this universe seventy-four trillion years, why, you're seventy-four trillion years on such and such a planet, and your experiences are so-and-so, and so-and-so — well, the duration of time, you might say, that you've been on the track is an influencing factor because the universe is set up as a deteriorating universe. It's apparently deteriorating — all the time conserving itself. And it sets the model for a life form to deteriorate.

This universe says "deteriorate" more than anything else. It doesn't say "improve." Every time you look around here and see a life form, you see something trying to improve things, one way or the other, trying to grow. And every time you see rocks and that sort of thing (unless life has handled them and organized them in some fashion or other), you see something that's just sitting there that's going to deteriorate. And that's that.

Any rock out here is going to erode a little bit further. Any mountain is going to become a little bit lower. And if there's a sudden disruption on the part of the planet itself, so that its crust splits and a new range shoots up in between, and so forth, boy, that sure raises hell with the crust, doesn't it?

In other words, almost any action undertaken by the physical universe on the subject of energy, and so forth, may begin with a creation — by eruption or some such thing, or an explosion, like a nova — of the new form, but then you see that form simply congeal and then start to go to pot.

Anything goes into this curve. Well, that's a strange thing that things follow this curve of create-survive-destroy, isn't it? Because this postulates that the longer you're out along time, why, the more you get toward destruction, doesn't it? And yet that is the curve of this universe and is the fundamental curve of this universe.

But is it the fundamental curve of life at large? I'm not saying this universe is separate from life. But is it the fundamental curve of life? Evidently not. Because everywhere you see life, you see it striving one way or the other — it dies to live again; it organizes material, and so on. Anything that you see which is really creative in this universe can be laid to life directly.

All right. Here you have this progressive thing united to a deteriorating thing — progressive thing, life, and so on. Well, life begins to be cautious, be-gins to be very cautious as it goes along the line. It gets more and more cautious, and then it gets afraid. And it gets more and more afraid, then it gets rather apathetic, and it just lies there. But up to the point when any identity does this, it is still trying to improve or organize.

It's only when it gets into the no-identity lower end of the scale, and so forth, that it starts to agree with the physical universe to a point where it won't create anything and just lie there. You know, you see them — catatonic schiz in an asylum, something like that. This person has had a number of incidents occur, and they decided to give up. Give up what? Give up organizing the thing or keeping the show on the road. That's about all there is to that. And, that's … Of course, you as living beings object to people doing this. You object to life betraying life simply because there's so darn much universe and so darn little life.

Now, it looks the reverse to many people. They think of this tremendous quantity of life, you know — particularly writers on this subject. Life, life every-where striving, and so forth, and they look on it as a rather hostile thing.

Schopenhauer, for instance, considered this particularly, personally anti-pathetic to his own survival — that life kept on surviving on every hand. But that is a MEST attitude; that's an attitude that a rock would take toward life, if you could call it an attitude at all. See, here's something that wants to die versus something that wants to live.

Now, your preclear doesn't reach this wants-to-die or wants-to-quit for an awful long time. I mean, life is just amazingly resilient. But it will finally get to a point where it wants to quit.

Now, representative of that is there's thirty-eight points on the Tone Scale from 40.0 on down before you get to 2.0, isn't there? There's forty divisions on the ARC Tone Scale. And you've got thirty-eight of those divisions — life is trying to survive all the way on down until it gets to 2.0. And about that time you say it's quit. See, it's quitting; it's giving up; it will start to destroy. Now, from 2.0 on down it's agreeing with MEST and it behaves like MEST. Newton's laws of interaction, and so forth, are followed by it; all kinds of curious things it does. It considers that energy has to consider before it considers. If it reads something in a book, it then believes it. You get the idea? All its material has to be relayed through it.

These former sciences we're talking about are actually in a deteriorated state. Biology, at one time, was a very live, speculative, interested science, and is today a sort of a limp thing — we all came from mud. Anybody could have done better than that.

All right. What's this got to do with behavior? Well, survival of the fit-test was Mr. Charles Darwin's darling. And I know a story which is a scientific application of this principle. There was a cat, the cat had nine kittens, and eight of these kittens had about one fit a day, and the ninth kitten had three fits a day. And these kittens were in pretty bad shape. And as the days went on the eight kittens that had just one fit a day, they all died. And the one that had three fits a day survived. And this illustrates the principle of survival of the fittest.

I'm afraid I'm making just as much sense as a biology professor, only he doesn't know he's kidding. They get up and utter these profundities.

Natural selection has nothing to do with it and is an erroneous principle which should be abandoned. That's a blunt statement, isn't it? You mean, everybody's been worshipping at this shrine of natural selection for a hundred years. But it hasn't led anyplace, gentlemen. It's led nowhere. They know no more today than they did before.

Why? Because they believed in natural selection. So there must be an erroneous principle. So let's take their central principle and throw it out and see if we get anything.

It's by planning, based on experience, with the goal of being safe, that causes these forms and behavior patterns. They plan to survive with fore-sight, and so forth, and they fit more and more experience into this survival. And when they hit 2.0, they're fitting nothing but experience into this survival. Now, you follow me? They're fitting nothing but experience — no planning is going into it — it's nothing but experience, and that is expire, on out.

The moment when you take nothing but experience to determine your form and behavior, you're done — you're dead. You just sort of lie there, gaaaw, thereafter.

Why do people keep these engrams in restimulation? They keep them in restimulation and keep them around, and actually start making them, the moment they determine that experience is necessary in order to contest and combat this universe. As soon as they've determined this, they start making these engrams and keeping energy masses around and doing various weird things — letting experience determine their behavior pattern.

And after a while it becomes a completely unthinking, unquestioning thing. And you want to know what's the most unthinking and most unquestioning thing we have? MEST. And the direct dwindling spiral could be attributed to many things. But this one is the most interesting to us as workmen in this subject, not as speculative philosophers: That from 40.0 on down to 2.0, new planning, creativeness, foresight, envisioned future, postulated goals or dreams are part of all livingness — down to 2.0. And at 2.0 we depart from, finally — see, it's getting less and less all the way down — and finally at 2.0, we depart completely from future goals, sentient planning, hopes, decisions and postulates.

You run somebody below 2.0, he will not be able to decide when he can touch something and when he can let go. It'll drive him mad trying to make that one decision. Therefore, when you're getting preclears, don't ask them to make up their mind when they're going to be processed; simply tell them to come in. Because you'll find the bulk of them below 2.0.

All right, 2.0 is the point where an individual ceases to add new planning, creativeness and postulates to life and starts to ride as part of the mechanism of life itself, and is simply a stimulus-response mechanism. And from 2.0 on down, experience is all there is. And experience is kept in terms of engrams and locks and secondaries — just as you read about, first book — and these engrams, locks and secondaries comprise experience.

And why are they kept around? Because an individual decided at one time or another that they're safe. That sounds real strange, doesn't it, that somebody could find a Fac One was safe. Well, what they've been taught is it's safe to have things but it's not safe not to have things. So they just take anything, you see, and they're safe now, because they've got it,' haven't they? Follow me?

Anything they have around, anything they're doing, any form which they're occupying is held, used and redone again because it has been found to be safe. And that's true of the genetic line, all the way along the genetic line; generation to generation they accumulate these securities, this safety. They're trying to survive and they have to be safe in order to survive.

And that's the most erroneous thing in the world that anybody could learn. You can't help but survive! It's impossible not to survive. And yet they think they have to be safe in order to survive. And right there is aberration — right at that point. And the entering point there of facsimiles and everything else is "have to be safe in order to survive." It's a lie. It's a big lie. The ultimate truth for a thetan — completely aside from what ultimate truth is, which is a static — the ultimate truth for a thetan is that he can't help but survive.

And one day he decides he has to be safe in his survival. And after that he starts to defend and interact in order to discover safe forms to have, to be, safe things to do. And it comes right on down the line and starts making forms, forms, forms, different kinds of forms, experimental forms of one kind or another. Finds that this one endures, so that's safe — and safe, safe, safe, safe — and generation to generation adds new improvements just because he's discovered that's safe. And all these are planned, every single one of them is planned; not one of them is an accident when it's really a development.

He's found out it's safe. He's figured out that's the safe thing to do, and time then tests and proves it to him: that's the safe thing to do. See, it's planned, postulated and formed, and then time tests it and says it's safe. It isn't whether it's fair or not — it's whether it's safe. That's all. That's all there is to it. You got a head because it's safe to have a head.

You know what the basic building plan was of the human body? Thetans dreamed up the fact that a piece of seaweed did very well, and when they got up on land, and so forth, they already had a safe plan. Get the idea? Safe plans.

When you start to run a preclear on engrams, and so forth, he will present to you to be run out, those things which aren't quite safe. But they're still there because they're almost safe. He won't really let go of any of these real safe forms. There is no form that's safe!

Now, those things which tend to persist are not admired. Those things which are not admired tend to persist. That tells you that safety and security is not admired by a thetan. It tells you that he'll look at the circus performer performing on a high, seventy-five foot high wire with great admiration, but he won't look at a pedestrian glued to the sidewalk by gravity, walking along in great security. He doesn't look over and admire that, does he? Not an ad-mired form, not an admired action. It's the dangerous action that's admired, it's the big action, and so forth.

Well, he gets completely out of these big actions — doing dangerous or ad-venturous or wide things of any kind — and comes down to a point where he's doing nothing, except things that are safe. He's passing that band, on planning, at 3.5 to 3.0 on the Tone Scale. Everything he plans is planned safely. A lot of experience is being added into his planning. And he gets a little admiration but not very much. Then he goes right on down the line and goes over the button. Why? Because he's doing the safe thing.

All right, let's say training pattern, and let's just interpret that and just look at it for processing of preclears. The training pattern in which the pre-clear is engaged — which is to say, both his aberrative pattern and any other pattern you happen to be able to observe about him — is there because it's safe. And that seems to you to be absolutely outrageous. And that's what aberration is — outrageous.

A person is in an insane asylum because he's safe — safe to be in an in-sane asylum. A person fails because it's safe to fail. A person takes strychnine or blows his brains out because it's safe to take strychnine or blow his brains out. You follow me? There's no planning or sentience or anything going into this at all but experience when he's doing these irrational things, and that in itself is aberration.

All right. Let's make up a little law which you can put in your hip pocket and apply in any way, shape or form to any preclear. Let's just knock accident out of this thing. It isn't worth observing, accident isn't. You know, the idea that a lot of ions knock together and finally make an eighteen-cluster diamond — you know, star or something. Naah! Actuaries … The boys who invent this kind of thing are not mathematicians. They don't realize that the chances are so many billions or trillions (it's an unmentionable figure) against an accidental combination of form on the part of MEST doing anything that they just — it just avoids them. They're not actuarial people; they've never been trained in mathematics.

So the other idiocies like "natural selection will bring about a form" .. . They think that the MEST universe sort of molds a fellow until he's in a safe form. And if he happens to get into a safe form, why, then he will continue and survive. You see how limp all that is, huh? Isn't that nice and limp, huh? You know? "Man must adjust to his environment. Let's all go die." I remind you, the field that believes that has never been responsible for any gains for man — just no gains at all. As a matter of fact, I wrote the Better Business Bureau today, asked them to outlaw and help us outlaw people who are not trained in helping the mind, and asserted that that was their prime principle — to protect the society, and so forth — and asked them, therefore, to outlaw medical doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists as being insufficiently trained.

Now, back on this security. Here we have this whole idea of security. You notice how all these characters out here go rushing in all directions to get themselves some security. And you notice that they go to Bell Telephone, and they go to General Electric, and so forth. They go to work on a job for security. They go to work for the streetcar company or a traction company or something like that, or drive a bus for security, for security, for security, for security; got to have more security, more security. What the hell is it? Is it a commodity that you spoon up? It sure is. Security is composed of ridges and engrams. It's doing what is safe. And when an individual is driving along this line obsessively, he is in this interesting state: he is being told by his environment what's safe, exclusively, and he himself is not planning his own security.

Actually, your ability to create is your sole guarantee of survival as a form, if you want to survive as a form. But remember you can't help but survive. So you really don't even have to plan on this thing. But, the main thing that people get into is this thing, "I've got to do the safe thing. I've got to do the safe thing." Well, they go to work for the traction company; they always come around to you when they're fifty or sixty and complain. Because what did they do with the traction company? The traction company, they had a thirty-six year, thirty-eight year retirement plan. And when they reached the thirty-sixth year, why, they made a mischange for an old lady, who complained about them, and this was taken up as a very, very horrible thing by the company, and they couldn't put — the bus driver or somebody, he can't quite figure out why this is so important. And he never really dares credit the fact simply that he's within a year or two of his retiring age that causes this to be such an important incident, and he's fired! And there went his pension.

I've read directives for these corporations, and so forth, directing overtly that they must start to look for inefficient things, and so forth, on the part of people who are getting close to retirement age. "Clean them out. Clear them up." See?

Security! What the hell security is there in an organization which is simply sort of interlinked with other organizations in a sort of a "let's all take in each other's washings and maybe we will make enough money in or-der to survive"? That kind of a proposition is never secure. Do you think it's secure for somebody to go out and work for ten dollars a week for all of his youth or something in order to have a … Oh, no! No, this is the most dangerous thing they could do. But they never notice this.

If they want to survive as a form, they will put themselves into a position, individually, in life or in a profession, where their own abilities, and so forth, can be utilized; where there is some sort of a future; where . . . You can look it over. I mean, if you looked this over and simply planned what sort of a future you should have, why, that would be a different thing.

Now, there isn't any reason, by the way, to plan any kind of a future. There is no real reason to plan a future. But if you've got to get a form surviving, why, to some degree, you'll have to plan a future — unless you like a game. And if you like a game, you can, of course, plan a future. But never fall into this category here of only using things that are safe — see, I mean, using this stimulus-response. This entrance-point in there is "I've got to do some process or remember that process or some level in some fashion, some set of communication system interlocks in order … And this is the safe way to go about it." It's all very well for somebody in a body or using a body to know the safe way to open a ten-thousand-volt transformer. I mean, he should know certain things about it. He should know the communication lines. You pull this switch, you know, and you disconnect here, and then you bleed the juice out of the thing, and so forth, and then you open it up with the proper wrenches — it's all right for a form to know this, but this does a thetan no good. He can go in and ride right on along the power line. If you wanted to open the thing up, I guess you could put a prying beam on the handle and pry all right. Ten thousand volts? What's he doing, unable to generate only eight thousand volts?

Anyhow, I'm not talking here in a discursive fashion. I'm just trying to give you the conditions which arrive at this point of below 2.0 in aberration. And it's simply that the people are doing things that are safe and the environment is telling them what's safe; they're not planning what's safe. See, they don't look it over and make the plan and say, "Well, this is the decent thing to do, or the safe thing to do." Until Dianetics, by the way, they didn't have any formula to arrive at the right solution in life. You know Dianetics has the right solution in life? It is the optimum good on the greatest number of dynamics. And if you figure out what your solution is with that formula, it'll be the right solution. See? It's that you can't do an ultimate good, you know, because good and bad is a consideration, but, you do an optimum good on the greatest number of dynamics and you've got a proper solution. That's a good solution.

Well, when the environment just is telling you, then, all kinds of things become safe — such as failure and cyanide and blowing your brains out. See, this is all safe. The safest thing to do is to have birth in restimulation. That's the safe thing to do.

Well, on the genetic line — which is below 2.0; it is, definitely — below 2.0, takes its security or its safety, as far as its form of behavior is concerned, in two different divisions; two subdivisions of its security. One is the genetic-pattern line and the other is the current-life line, the present-life line — in other words, its training pattern (what it learns in the present life, which is momentarily applicable), and what it learns on the long look. And that's what it learns, you understand, as safe. And that's the long look which is taken.

Well, all right. That would mean that you'd get a lot of stimulus-response conduct that would be real curious conduct, occasionally. You'd have some preclear and he'd walk in to be processed, and then he would go on being processed. And he'd just go on being processed and go on being processed and go on being processed. Maybe you're being ineffective — an auditor would have to be awfully ineffective to do this today — but he'd just have to do everything all wrong and backwards. But actually, in any preclear, he is to some degree overcoming this one: It's safe to be sick; it's safe to be aberrated.

I knocked a preclear into a cocked hat not too very long ago. I'd gotten tired of this preclear. I get tired of a preclear awful quick these days; not because I can't duplicate: because I know about when they're going to get well and I haven't got any time to spend on them.

I ran myself out of a practice here almost entirely, in August. And I've had a little bit of a hard time cleaning up, because I had to have a practice, you see, that was out and beyond the borders and fringes of Scientology, in order to see what the exact response was, not what they thought the exact response should be. And I got tired of this fellow. He'd been processed for four hours and wasn't exteriorized. And believe me, that's a hard trick to do. I'm not bragging about my auditing, but that's a hard trick to do if the auditor's plugging right straight at exteriorization, see — exteriorization and stabilization.

So I ask him, I says to him — there he was, completely defenseless, sitting there in the chair — and I says to him, "Who thought it was safe to be sick?" Comm lag, comm lag, comm lag, comm lag, comm lag.

I said, "What's you doing?" He said, "Well, I'm trying to pick out one." It was a familial computation. You had to be sick — everybody in the family; that was the safe thing to do — and to be treated ineffectually. And he'd come to me because he'd been told that Dianetics and Scientology were the greatest swindle known to man. That would make it impossible to get well, wouldn't it?

So I fixed his little red wagon. I was saying, "Spot spots where all this happened. Remedy havingness on sick bodies." And we just knocked that pattern of facsimiles galley-west. That's all. I plowed him out of his head and put him back there about ten feet and stuck him there, and let him go.

But this is an example of what you're facing. If you'll just add it up for man (as far as his body and these stimulus-response attitudes are concerned) that whatever he is doing he's doing because it's the safe thing to do, you will have him — and because ladies will hear this tape — you will have him by the back hair. Definitely will. Whatever he's doing, it's the safe thing to do.

And if you really wanted to make him happy, you would simply sound out — not well, you understand, but happy — you would simply sound out what his idol was and then convince him that that was the right thing to do in life, just exactly what that person did, without letting him in on the fact of how you found it out.

In other words, you could reconfirm some security course on which he is launched already and make that good and safe, and then kind of turn him around and face him north-northeast, you see, and let him go with the mechanical clanks which you've put into his being. That's what hypnotism does to him. The only commands of hypnotism that are ever workable or usable are those which accidentally hit this safety mechanism. See? They hit the security mechanism, "the safe thing to do." Now, we see this flagpole sitter, and he is standing on his head on top of a flagpole and the flagpole's cracked and dry-rotted and there's been ter-mites around the foundation of the building. And the whole structure, by the way, has belonged (during the war) to the navy. In other words, this place is really caved in. And we see him up there and we ask ourselves, "Now, why is he doing such a wildly dangerous thing?" There could be two reasons. One, he's pretty high-toned guy. See? And this is a wonderful way to get an effect. Only, we talk to him and we say, "How are you?"

"Urn … windy today, isn't it?" He's got a nice, crooked comm lag, you know? You know why he was standing on top of the building. His comm lag … If he had any kind of a comm lag at all and he was standing on top of that building on his head, you know he was doing it because it was a safe thing to do.

If he had a zero comm lag and he was very much on the ball and he was very quick, and he'd been standing on top of the building, you know why he was doing that: that was to get an effect. See? He was high enough toned just to do anything to get an effect. You know: interest in life; play a game; the hell with it.

So the flagpole would fall down or the building would fall down and he would have fallen on his head and killed him dead. He'll pick up another mock-up, so what!

You'd probably also find this fellow exteriorized. Most of the successful people, by the way, in a society are. They're already operating from outside, or have during the early part of their lives.

All right. We look over this problem and it becomes an interesting problem in two lines. There are, of course, a great many factors there which are genetic-training factors. And now are there such things as mental and physical factors? If anybody in this class or in Dianetics and Scientology believes today that we make a big differentiation between mental and physical, he's bad off.

As mental factors condense they become physical. A fellow who is unable to reprove his mother with his voice for having given him such a rough time during delivery will wear the birth as a sort of an overt act. But the very funny part of it is, he will only do it if it's a safe thing to do. He would only do it if it's the safe thing to do. Here's overt-act — motivator phenomena. But that is junior to safety.

He's got to keep himself convinced that he … There's a better one, see? There's a better motive behind the overt-act — motivator. The actual reason he's wearing birth — you could attribute many other reasons to it and so can he — the reason he's wearing birth is to keep himself reminded of when to pick up his next mock-up because he knows that he isn't going to have this one very long. He's convinced this one can't survive, so therefore he just writes the reminder down on the pad, and then has some reasons — other reasons — why he's doing it. That's complex, isn't it? You know, he's got reasons and significances why he's doing it.

But the real reason he's doing it is because it's the safe thing to do. Sup-posing he should exteriorize and go do a bunk or something like that, and forget that he was supposed to pick up another baby. Most people are wearing birth because they themselves believe they cannot survive. And naturally, it's the safe thing to do.

Well now, look, how many reasons are there? There's another reason why he's wearing birth — a terrifically valid reason why he's wearing birth, too: He's been married to three, four, five women, all of them sterile. There's an-other reason he's wearing birth.

But as these reasons compound in, they just solidify the birth engram, which is in restimulation, which is being worn for him in the first place to remind him to pick up another body because that's the safe thing to do. But is there any real rationale below even that level? We're just going downhill, see; we're getting deeper and deeper. We get real down here, at the bottom of the bottom line: Survive is the bottom rung. The way to survive is to wear a birth engram.

Whatever the "why" of it is, you see, is secondary. We don't even have to inquire into the why of it. We just know that it's the safe thing to do. We see this fellow with birth in restimulation, that's the safe thing to do! You get that? That will contribute to his survival. That's obvious.

Now, most of your other rationales are above this point. Today, as many years ago, survive is still your kingpin. It is still the kingpin in the philosophical machine of Dianetics and Scientology. It is the kingpin in the auditing of the preclear. You audit him in the direction of truth.

Well, he's trying to survive. How is he trying to survive? Well, he's doing the safe thing. He's being a cop. That's the safe thing to do. He's being a cop with ulcers. Well, he's being a cop because that's a safe thing to do; and he has the ulcers because the safe thing to have are ulcers.

See, you get all these compounded, solidifying reasons, and you'll just get all kinds of reasons why. But the second we say "the safe thing to do," we've got the central reason why, which just spans off in tremendous numbers of reasons why. And various phenomena occur; senior phenomena as far as anybody knew before, but actually very junior phenomena compared to this survive factor. See?

What has he got ulcers for? Well, he's got ulcers because everybody — every man in his family had ulcers. Because his wife feeds him food; because he has to have something wrong with his stomach; because he gets his compensation for having stomach trouble; because … Reasons, reasons, reasons, just by the ton, you see. But the fact lying underneath all this is: It's safe to have ulcers. This is really sure.

Well, we get around an old process known as 8-D. And this is a curious process. This is the doggondest process. It just goes on running. And I sup-pose you could run 8-D — if you picked up the wrong string on 8-D, I suppose you could run it forever. But, if you picked up anywhere near, vaguely, the right string, you'd always run with some improvement. But remember, this is a long process. I've never told anybody anything else about this 8-D. It's a very long process.

Its auditing command goes like this: You look the fellow over and you decide whose universe he's in, and so you ask him where that person would be safe. And just the whole idea of safety and security and so forth connected with that person, of course, will start running all kinds of things off of him.

If he's in Mama's universe, it's safe to be in Mama's universe. Then it must follow immediately that most of the things that are wrong with him are the things that he considered safe because they were wrong with Mama. See?

So you just start running this stuff off en masse when you start running 8-D. You just spot some spots where Mama would be safe. And he'll think it over and then he'll get a big certainty that she's safe over there. See? And you'll notice that way, way, way over she's safe, you know; way over there, and over there, and over there and there and there, and she's safe . . . (May be big comm lags here, too.) Then all of a sudden she's safe around where the fellow is. You see? And safe right where he is. And then safe out there. And then way over there again. And then in the middle ground. And then up where he is, is concerned.

You're getting terminal manifestation. These terminals are wide apart, close together, wide apart. You'll see this in many processes — tolerance of distance, obsessive distances of various kinds.

And the next thing you know, why, Mama is safe when she's drowning. And Mama is safe when she's being burned alive. And Mama is safe when she's being eaten by cougars and tigers and so forth.

Well, maybe he's just talking about all the mamas he ever had. We don't care what he's talking about. We've just asked him, where could Mama survive, really. But the way we phrase the question for 8-D is simply, "Where would your mother be safe?" This is quite an important process, quite important. Because it splits apart universes. And you notice that it's simply spotting spots in space. Isn't it? That's all it is, isn't it? But it's with this significance — and this is about the best significance that you could put into anything--"Where would it be safe?" Now, you could take somebody exteriorized and run this process and you'd have him pried out of his mother's universe, pang! And there go all of his mother's habit patterns. Well, that would be a valuable thing, wouldn't it? That would be a real valuable thing, wouldn't it?

Supposing the bulk of things that are wrong with this fellow were wrong with Mother, so they're safe with this fellow — because they were Mother? See, they're just safe with him because his mother did them. Well, they're safe with her because Grandpa did them. And they were safe with Grandpa be-cause his pop or mother did them. You get the idea?

So we get this concatenation of error, all of which is considered to be survival; and that is the genetic line and these training patterns which are given to the individual by his environment.

Now let us look at this again, and let's see it even a little more clearly. Here we have a cat washing it's face. You could be very, very goofy about this and say, "Well, obviously cats who don't wash their face don't survive as well as cats who do wash their face. And that's why cats wash their face." I'm afraid that would not be the same rationale line that you ought to be following on this. Cats are not washing their face for any other reason than "earlier cats have washed their face." That's the safe thing to do.

I call to your attention that there are many animals that have very, very unsafe things — like the antelope. You know, an antelope walks up to anything that he can't understand. He'll just close terminals with it.

Well, while you're talking about survival, and survival of the fittest, and "natural selection and genetics are in patterns because they're survival characteristics," and so on, remember that every one of these animals is carrying the germ of his own destruction. And as the race dwindles, the germ of his own destruction begins to get bigger than the germ of his own procreation. Remember that he is getting more likely to be destroyed than ever. He's just trying to find some safe kind of life.

The antelope will walk up and let the hunter shoot him between the eyes. A mule deer would kick his tail in the air and run, making the most wonderful target you ever saw in your life. I mean, any pack of wolves never has any difficulty following a mule deer: Up goes his tail; there's a white patch; there go the wolves. He might as well have run up some flags and said, "Here we are fellows!" See? That's not a survival characteristic either, is it?

So, the bulk of the phenomena in the animal kingdom was not explained by this whole theory of natural selection. It was not explained. Because they pack many more nonsurvival characteristics than they do survival characteristics.

And some guy who can't look could then come along and spot a few of these survival characteristics and say, "You see, natural selection." And not being able to look thoroughly, he didn't demonstrate all these other goofy characteristics that kill them off like flies. See? The animal kingdom has ten habits which kill them for every one that causes them to survive. And the answer to that is, is they die as a form every generation.

Well, then the naturalist says very happily, "Well, they die, you see, so they can make a new animal and go along that way. And that's why they . . ." Look, that's idiotic. Isn't it? Why do they die? Well, it's safe to die. They live by death — Mama died. Great Grandpa Wolfgang died. Everybody died he's ever run into. So that's a safe thing to do, of course.

So life spans get shorter and shorter and shorter, as a thetan goes down the line. Life spans get shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter, and they finally become the one day of the mayfly.

See, that's just a shortening pattern, smaller form, more errors involved, more intricate planning, more stimulus-response, more solidity for the mass that is there; all kinds of things to be drawn out of this. But the fact that they were getting smaller, that's safer.

Somebody comes along and tells you that the insects have better survival characteristics than the larger animals. Nobody . . . It never occurred to anybody that that's maybe where you wind up. Except it's occurred to the Egyptians, and a few older boys on the line — transmigration of the soul. You get over into these more debased forms. It just appears to be safer. And a thetan will jump lines. Don't think they won't. Because it's safer, obviously.

But completely aside from that, what's wrong with your preclear? He's so damn safe it's going to kill him. He's gotten into a dwindling spiral of security. He's doing the safe thing.

There are many other processes that you could work on this. "Give me some safe things that your father did." This preclear's liable to chatter for a long time, deriding all of the things his father did.

"Give me some safe things that you're doing; some safe things you're being. Give me some things you have that are safe to have." If you just keep plugging any one of those questions — "some safe things you're doing" — he'll all of a sudden say, "Oh, yes." There isn't any reason except that his mother did them, his father did them.

Now, the entering wedge of this examination occurred not too long ago when I noticed that children will not eat from the plate of people they do not like. They'll eat from their parents' plates, even though they're a little bit at war with their parents. And they will eat the damndest things from their parents' plates — just the darnedest things. But they will eat it, and they want to eat it in the same way. And also, they want to eat it the same way so that they have to eat it from a plate. You see? They won't eat from the parents' plate; they have to have a plate and have it on their plate, and then … You get the idea?

In other words, they have to do a duplication here. And the thing . . . The way to be safe is not to look around; the environment's much too dangerous just to look around. What you do is just do what something that's obviously surviving is doing, with no further criteria. Obviously it's the safe — what their parents eat is the safe thing to eat.

My mind was called back to the way pilots were trained in the last war. When they were knocked down in the jungle, they were trained to watch monkeys, and whatever the monkeys ate was safe to eat. Get the idea? What-ever some animal was doing in a survival line and so forth, that was a safe thing to do. In other words, they were asked to observe their environment. This was a piece of training that was given out to those people who were out on Burma, the South Pacific and so on.

All right. Here was the child eating anything his parents ate. Well, I went a little bit further than that. I gave my little girl some pepper. I simply put some pepper on — I put some on my own palm and pretended to lick it with considerable joy, and so I put a whole bunch of pepper on her palm and she slopped it up.

And you know, she went about a week eating pepper by the peck. Why, she'd think nothing of eating half an ounce of pepper. This was nothing to her. Must be safe to do — Pop did it. See? Only, I hadn't eaten any pepper. She finally realized that I really didn't eat pepper as a habit, and she's knocked off of it. That's over a long stretch.

But I've observed this elsewhere and in other ways. And I finally decided, "Hey, if this is this hot, let's see if we can't run a preclear, too, on it.

Let's find out what he's doing just because his parents did it. You know? Let's ask him an auditing question like: 'What are you doing that's safe to do?' 'What are the things you're doing?" "What would it be safe to do?" "What are you doing that's safe to do?' " And we all of a sudden started as-ising, and he started spotting members of his family all over the place doing the darnedest things: being sick, being cross, being the very things which he detested in people. See, it was safe to be cross, it was safe not to have any fun in life, it was safe to have an unhappy marriage. Get the idea? It was safe to always be cross before break-fast, it was safe to hate to cook, it was safe to have tired feet. It just gets all the way back to Mama and Papa.

And so it goes on, Mystery up to Know. It's safe to know what your father knew. It's also safe to be very, very diffident about your father. It's also safe to not particularly like the rest of your family. You get how all these factors combine in?

And so there are the two patterns: The immediate pattern of the environment the individual is in. The orphan lacks this. He doesn't know what's safe, so he just doesn't learn anything; he tries not to learn. He lets it coast till he has somebody to learn from. It's certainly not safe to be an orphan. They're all his age, so there's no test to survival there. You see?

And then there's the other, longer genetic line: What kind of a body is it safe to have? The kind of a body that somebody had. It's just a stimulus-response duplication, Q-and-A type of question.

And there, if you want to understand behavior, is behavior. If you try to understand it really any further than that, you feel your brains creak.

And the thing for you to do is not to have your own brains creaking, but to make your preclear's brains creak.

Okay.