Want to talk to you now — want to talk to you now on the subject of knowingness.

For an individual to give a lecture on the subject of knowingness is at once adventurous and, well, perhaps even conceited. To talk about knowing about knowing is an adventurous thing to do. But having done it for years, I've had a lot of practice and my qualms are today minor regarding saying anything about it.

But the fact of the matter is today I feel a little more 'umble concerning the subject than I did once. Now, that's very peculiar, isn't it?

It's rather interesting to look at the tremendous urgency with which people study, which they learn various things, the agony they go through in order to acquire knowledge. For instance, I feel enormous respect for somebody that speaks five or six languages. I think this boy is really, really something. Of course, he might be just restimulated in five or six lives but I nevertheless — I nevertheless do feel considerable respect for him because I know how hardly won this material was.

And in view of the fact that we do engage in teaching, it is rather interesting to observe that knowing could be the end-all of everything, but isn't. There's a scale. It is called the Know to Mystery Scale. And that scale goes as follows:

Know, meaning a totality of. Not knowing a datum, but knowing a totality. Not-know is below it.

Below Not-know is Look, which we mean as perceive.

Below perceive — there are, by the way, about fifty-four perceptions of which four or five are important to us — below this there's emote, Emotion.

And below Emotion, there is Effort, which includes at its bottom band Solids. And below Solids is Think.

And below Think is Symbols. And a symbol of course is something that has mass, meaning and mobility. And if anything has mass, meaning and mobility it is a symbol.

And below that level we have Eat.

And below that level we have Sex.

And below that level we have Mystery, which is of course the reverse of Know.

The way we discovered this particular scale is to note that people went progressively through these subjects. And rather routinely when you audit somebody on something like old Opening Procedure by Duplication, you would find him going upwards, first scatteringly and then in a rather orderly fashion, right straight up the scale through these various subjects.

It's rather disheartening to note that all processes that would be thought to be germane to a thetan — who is a thinking being only, we think — end and stop at Think.

And what most of us think of as knowing is really Think on the band. Knowing data is at Think on the Know to Sex Scale and that is the knowingness that most of us consider to be knowingness. Thinkingness — knowing data, memorizing the parts and nomenclatures.

Now, an odd process fits right in there. "Inventing something to know" is about the key process right there. Inventing something to know. Thetans do this all the time. Here's a body walking around, it's perfectly all right. Nobody is worrying about it particularly and then all of a sudden somebody invents a lot of Latin names to describe what it is.

Now, men do this because they try to get a stable datum into a confusion. And when they're trying to understand a thing, they like to talk about it and if they're going to talk about it, they have to invent nomenclature. And then they can discuss what they're talking about. And we've dropped at once to Symbols, haven't we?

But inventing something to know about is probably one of the top games that a thetan has played. It's interesting, in Scientology, that we are transcending this point possibly for the first time in a couple of thousand years, see? We're actually not inventing, here, something to know about. We are inventing nomenclature and we are discussing these things, which is quite remarkable, and we are doing these things. We're using thinkingness, knowingness, its apparatus and so forth and symbols and so on to go on up into the upper band. And in doing that, then we handle and can handle actual solids, efforts, emotion, real perceptions and the general idea of just a total knowingness.

Now, this whole problem of upper band should be of the greatest importance to you when you look over just such a subject as hay fever. Here's one of the most persistent, cussed, mean, dribbly things that anybody ever got connected with. Comes on, what are you going to do about it, take histamine and get an electric shock? What are you going to do? It isn't going to do you a bit of good. Even sometimes on older processes you could get it audited out and next summer it was gone, but the summer after that it kind of sniffled back into place again.

This is one of the wicked things. Why? Why is it so hard to handle? Because it depends on a thinking being, man (and I assure you that man is a thinking being), jumping all the way upscale to perceive. And on perception, this thinking being, man, is almost a total effect. And until he can mock up pollen, face powder, other things which are solid enough to be used and to work, he will of course continue to be the effect of smells, won't he? Emotions will continue to be automatic until he can synthesize them.

We have all the way down there, at the bottom of the scale, we have Sex. Well, that means "sex as practiced." What about the emotion, the feeling or sensation mixed up in sex? That's up in the emotion band. And a man will continue to be the effect of sex until he can simply mock it up — that sensation, that emotion. If he can mock up that sensation or emotion, he, of course, is causative on this subject. Until he can do that, you might say, he is to some degree an effect.

This is why some chap like Freud, I think his name was, something like that, from Hungary or someplace, a chap that wrote way back there in the Dark Ages. Let's see … Anyway, he said that all of man's aberrations stem from sex. Well, if the fellow had gone further and looked, he finally would have found that he had a piece of the puzzle. But there's something very strange about this — there's something very strange about this: having cleared up all the sex in everybody, they still weren't well.

Now, if you want to totally clear sex out of somebody, you would of course, oh, make him a eunuch or something like that. And you find out this doesn't help his psyche a bit. Freud didn't look around and apply his theory to the practical universe.

I received a letter the other day from Copenhagen on the subject that I wrote, something called "A Critique of Psychoanalysis — I never felt brave enough before to criticize psychoanalysis. Now I find the ten various tenets of psychoanalysis are, all of them, calculated to spin somebody in — I'd better start talking about it. I'd better start saying, "You Scientologists better not do any of these things, because look what happens — you will wind up with psychoanalysis." Anyhow.

When you look into this subject you find that somebody in Freudian work flickers from sex up to figure, back to sex to figure, back to sex to figure. And they just go in a little cycle there.

This chap from Copenhagen told me I was all wrong in writing this essay. I was all wrong because actually "The beautiful, noble" — what did he call it? — "sublimation of sexual urges into perceiving sexual objects didn't mean that Freud had everything nailed down as being caused by sex." I read this over again and you can listen to it over again on a tape or something of the sort and it makes just as much sense. It's fake, see?

In other words, Freud was unjustly accused of putting everything into the sexual band and this is unjust — and analysts tell you this all the time — because he really didn't mean sex, he meant "sexually social." It was "sex in its society was sociality" or something. In other words, they never quite come off of this point. Why? It's a major effect, certainly, but it is not the answer.

In research and investigations you should never, never, never get yourself hung up on a figure-figure which is some little tiny part of a whole and say, "Well, now, we're stuck right here and we're not going anyplace from this point." And try and find out if there's just a little bit more somewhere. I do that all the time, it winds me up in an awful lot of trouble — you keep getting your techniques changed and so forth.

Now, this band — the only reason I've introduced this is because the world at large didn't accept psychoanalysis but a lot of intellectuals did. They could realize that they were being the effect of a certain type of action. And so thoroughly were they being the effect of this type of action that they were convinced that it must be the total effect possible. That only takes place when people are well below even clear-cut think. See, they have to be below that point. That tells you that the people who did this would really be incapable of origin of symbols, think — by the way, they wouldn't be able to eat well, somewhat. But, origin of symbols, think would be above them, and very certainly, wow, solids, effort, emotion, perception, the ability to forget, to not-know something and actually the totality of knowingness would be out of their grasp. Be out of their grasp so thoroughly that they would never be able to understand that they had ever existed.

Get that very clearly because someday you're going to talk to somebody and that somebody is going to be all dug in at Mystery. He's going to be a priest of the Rosicrucian Holy Empire Synagogue or something. You know? He's going to be really something. And you're going to talk to him — he's stuck at the Mystery band. He can't have sex, he doesn't eat, symbols are horribly dangerous to him and think is something you must not do! You see how that scale works out?

Male voice: Yeah.

Be, do and have was placed alongside of the Know to Mystery Scale by an auditor and he found that people were trying to do — you placed the be, do, have alongside of where they were on the Tone Scale and you could predict their actions. You could find out what they were trying to be and what they were doing and what they had. They have mystery, why, they're trying to do sex and they're trying to be food. Got the idea?

It's quite amusing commentary, but he said this is invariable and he did quite a bit of work with it. I was quite amused to read his essay on it when he sent it to me, because it certainly describes a priest.

People, by the way, one of these days may look at the lot of you guys as a bunch of priests or something of this sort, you know. Now, it's a remarkable thing that a person who can create a high level of effect does happen to be looked upon in an authoritative role — very authoritative. We're talking here very factually about — if you want to know the truth of it, probably, the priesthood of tomorrow. Whether you like it or not, somebody will elect you to that level. I won't elect you there, I'd rather be dead first, but people will. Why? Because you can produce a superior effect.

Now, we look this over, we find we don't have to produce effects with this kind of violence. We find the first effect that we could produce on man would be the effect of permitting him to know. In other words, let's let him graduate up from wherever he's stuck — stuck in his stomach or he's stuck in a bunch of figure-figure of symbols or it's all a big mystery to him. And we just tell him a few little stable data, one after the other and you find he comes way upscale, all out of proportion.

That's actually because we have taken his attention off from being the total effect of sex. You follow me? We've taken his attention off of being the total effect. We have shown him that there is something else in existence than what he is fixated on. Where he is sitting, it's all confusion. We give him some stable data, he feels better. Therefore, we can move men up rather easily, simply by teaching them upscale from where they are. So why should we go around brainwashing anybody? We can run a few basic courses and one of the things you'll do yourself in doing this is you'll inevitably overestimate the ignorance of your audience. A bunch of people will walk in for a little series of lectures — five, six lectures a night and you — you'll assume they're like we are here. You know, they're all hep, they're all in the know, they're gone Scientologists, you know. No, they're not. And you probably would err in trying to get the simplicity level that would be acceptable to them.

Their knowingness, in other words, would be way below, really, what you would expect. It isn't that they're not possible — their knowingness isn't possible, it isn't that their potential isn't high, but they are confused. And their confusion is such that you have to furnish a stable datum that will match that confusion. And what are they confused about? Well, they're confused about such a thing as, "What is life, anyhow?" You know? And you tell them, "Life is a cycle of action that starts with create, goes through survive and winds up with destroy." And they're very happy with you.

Now, you tell them the anatomy of create, survive, destroy and you're liable to have somebody unhappy in your audience. Don't try to challenge them, just give them some data that they can accept and bring them upstairs on that. And some of the very fundamental materials of Scientology — not the formula of communication anywhere near as much as ARC, its use in attempting to get a point across to somebody else. And you'll find they all of a sudden say, "(sigh) Oh. Oh, I see. You have to be nice to somebody to get him to listen to … Well, what do you know." Of course, this makes all of us just a bunch of bums to do this — that's dishonest. They have all sorts of odds and ends that they will unscramble from and it — actually, it might take them several weeks of going around to all of a sudden cognite on this data.

Well, amongst ourselves it has a quite different situation. I took one of our good auditors here short time ago and he — real good auditor, see? And I hadn't released modern games theory or anything of this character and — or any of the processes connected with them, but this fellow was going out on an emergency: he was going to a foreign country to treat somebody who was practically kicking the bucket. And we had pulled him in in a hurry. And I sat there for about an hour and a half or two hours and briefed him. I gave him some notes on what he was to do because he had to produce a miracle, and this was as close as I could give him to producing a miracle at that moment was to tell him what I knew. Well, I did that and it took me an hour and a half, two hours of briefing.

He sailed out of here — he was smiling at me and saying, "Yes, that's right. That's true. It's …" He — giving me the proper auditor acknowledgment and so forth. And he got across the Channel and got elsewhere and he was held up for a little while on going to his destination. And he all of a sudden wrote a letter in to somebody in the HASI, and he said, "I've just cognited on what Ron was talking about." All right. It took him three days to cognite on that material — and there was a very clever chap who was right straight across the boards with lots of experience. So — of course, he was thrown an awful lot of stuff, crash, a very short period of time. But three days later he'd cognited on what it was all about and the material was useful to him.

In the same ratio, somebody comes from a business firm and sits down in a PE Course you're giving or a group course, something like that, and you tell him, "Well, life consists of people living." This fellow two months later cognites on this. And he looks all around and he says, "What do you know! There's people living all around the place here."

And you, with your considerable — in the first place, you wouldn't be here if you didn't a have a considerable ability to understand. This is very odd. Scientologists fight amongst themselves sometime and claw each other's eyes out and yap-yap about how they've done in other preclears, and they have a good time finding opponents amongst themselves. But the strange part of it is — the fact that Scientologists are otherwise than the higher strata of intellectual in the world, it happens to be a lie. We have grooved with IQs and background the people of Scientology and we find that they belong to the upper ten thousand of Earth. That's very remarkable.

Your audience of people to become auditors is somewhat limited. See, you, in training people and so forth, will find that you have limitations. The reason the person came to you in the first place … I'm not just handing you a sop of one kind or another, I really grooved this out. I wanted to know why everybody in the United Kingdom and the United States wasn't at least a practicing auditor tomorrow, see? Why weren't they all in there pitching? So we carefully went over cross sections of population to find out what was the level of knowingness of these people basically and we found that we were already dealing with the upper crust of intellectual. And this is a fantastic thing. I mean, it's a sad thing. I mean, I look around me and I say, "Well, gosh, there's no hope for man at all." (That's a dirty trick, telling you like that.) No, this is a fact — this is a fact. There is hope for man, because you're here.

But the truth of the situation is that man's level of knowingness is nowhere near where you think it is. And, boy, that's the first thing you ought to learn — the level of knowingness of your preclear is nowhere near where you think it is.

Somebody comes in, he's got an IQ of 80. Wow! Wow! Take you three days to teach that person to spell cat. And you're going along and you're going to process him on something you're supposed to get cognitions on. You'd probably have to audit them for two days for them to find out they were a preclear. I mean, just to find out that they were there being processed. I don't mean a cognition on present time, but to find out analytically the way you think people go from an analytical cognition to a basic cognition when something blows in the bank. That is not the case. The person actually would have to wander around before he had an analytical cognition that he was a preclear in the joint. You understand?

This knowingness is always something that is very, very — not very difficult to estimate, but it's always something that's very easy to underestimate and overestimate. You're always shooting around on this basis.

Only a stupid man conceives that he knows more than anybody else anywhere about everything. That guy is dumb. I can tell you that he's stupid.

Before I got anyplace on Scientology, I had to find out I was about the dumbest guy that ever lived. That's the truth of the matter. I had to break down and admit that I wasn't smart enough to know what man was all about. That was the first pretense I had to break to flinders. It hurt my pride to do it. Because I was an author and I had been writing about man and his reactions for many years to a very interested audience.

And as time goes on, I find out that the further one walks in that direction, the further one has to continually assert his own brilliance. So that an individual who is teaching people merely to assert his own brilliance or to overwhelm them with his knowledge will never teach them. And the best thing that you can do when you're teaching somebody is try to find their level of confusion, rather than their level of reality and flipping a stable datum into it.

Every once in a while you can be talking to somebody and he all of a sudden looks at you and says, "Well, what do you know?"

See, he's given you a cognition. And you search back to find out what you said. You said it was usually best to eat breakfast in the morning. This produced a terrific cognition. He realized this afterwards.

So, on the subject of knowingness itself, if you're dealing with a total knowingness of everything at the top of the scale, it must follow that you can deal with, mock up, be cause with as well as effect with, everything else on the Know to Mystery Scale, otherwise you're mucking around in the garbage of nirvana. Rather soupy walking, I must assure you.

The road up and the road out is the road through. And one of the steps on that road, which is above most of the actions of the human race, is Think on the Know to Mystery Scale. Until a person can do this well and do this clearly and do this as a cause-point — he can think about something because he wants to think about it, he can know about something because he wants to know about it, only then is he ready to mount the rest of the stairs.

And the road to total knowingness is of course also traveled through an attention to games condition. There are some processes which I could give you on this particular line that would knock your preclear's silly head off. But this is a talk about theory, not a talk about processes.

Knowingness processes are usually above your level of your preclear to tolerate — real knowingness processes. But solids can be processed today, they should be processed today and they gradually shake your preclear out of the lower band. You can directly attack solids today as a processing target. And as such, you can then know about thinking long before you would have otherwise as a preclear.