Now, just as I was describing what Scientology embraces, so might also be described the main theta body and subtheta bodies. Theoretically, you could graph this so that up here [marking on blackboard] you have the — thinking of the material universe — up here you could have the main body of theta. Here is theta. Now, down here, perhaps, you have several material universes. Could be an infinite number of material universes, or an infinite number of parts to one material universe as far as that's concerned. We don't care particularly about that.

But we do care very much about this manifestation when we start tracking back preclears. The discovery of the existence of memory filed complete against time was in itself a considerable discovery, because it started to lead in toward a discovery of the source of individuals and individuation. An exploration of this line, of course, would naturally parallel to some slight degree any other search ever made on the subject. It would parallel biology, it would parallel religion, mysticism. It would to some degree parallel anybody or anything that ever thought along this line — the difference being that now we had a tool, we had a precision investigation tool. We had an application — a technique of application which could sort out delusion from actuality and which could recover any and every incident in the entire life span of the individual.

The advent of this tool was a long time ago — about fourteen years ago, actually, and it was not in very full use, really, until about five years ago, and then it was in VERY full use. And the more it was used — the technique of discovering the recalled memories of an individual — the more was learned. And understand, it was being learned for the first time on a precision-tool basis. That is a bit different than other parallel lines of research.

Now, you take mysticism. Mysticism was a HIGHLY valid line of research — HIGHLY valid. It, however, contained many speculations, and in itself said that it contained many speculations, and when employed would quite often throw the mystic into a very bad state of disrepair. As a consequence it was not a particularly safe tool, but it was a tool.

The line of Religion was to some degree also a tool. I would hardly know where to define or divide mysticism and religion, except perhaps religion is a codified mysticism — codified and handed out sort of by rote.

You couldn't expect a population at large to be able to understand mysticism. It is a highly complex subject — VERY complex. It has many schools. But religion could be handed out, so perhaps — just a codification of what were considered to be good points of behavior, optimum behavior, and good catch points that would catch people's imagination or attention. These things put together in a package could be considered religion.

There have been many, many, many religions — oh Lord, just hundreds of thousands, millions of religions. The religions which we happen to be operating on, on earth today, are most of them about two thousand years old, oddly enough. Those in India are older than that. But all these religions are really very young. Compared to mysticism itself, they're all young.

Mohammedanism, Christianity, Buddhism, to name three, are remarkably parallel. As a matter of fact, Christ is one of the prophets in Mohammedanism and is given joss for being so. Buddha paralleled quite remarkably and preceded, Christ.

Another religion, and way off from Christianity and the rest of it, is Confucianism. It's actually a philosophy of how to be a conservative citizen who is supposed to keep his nose clean. Let's be very colloquial about it, because there's no reason to treat these things seriously. This fellow Confucius said, "Well, let's all be mild and down Tone Scale and we'll all get along." And this philosophy pervaded China. Very remarkable. I think, probably since communism came in there, they've stopped it. But for many, many, many centuries the civil servant of China had to go down into the Confucian temple in Peking, and he'd sit there and read these enormous tablets and he'd have to know them all by heart. And if he knew them all by heart, then he could handle the post office inkwell or something of the sort. Rut that was more a philosophy than a religion.

Now, you start talking about religions, I've seen some interesting religions in my day, very interesting. All through the — in this life — through the South Pacific down to the south of here and so on. There are lots of them in existence. And always, the top bracket, the boy up at the top of the religion who was busy monitoring it and handling it for the populace, was a mystic. So, you see, there is where I draw my conclusion that mysticism sort of overlies religion.

So here is a line of research, but nobody was willing to take this line. They would take religion. It didn't require any understanding; it just said, "You've got to have faith, fellow, And if you have enough faith, you've got faith, and && that's fine. Now just step up here to the rail, drop your nickel on the drum" and froth a little bit, and && you're all set," As a matter of fact, it works. It works.

There's no sense being light about it particularly, because it was a terrifically necessary tool in handling civilizations where one had no real insight into what made the mind work. You could take religion and you could say, "Well, we may not get you in this life, fellow, but we're going to get you in the next." And that would make fellows pause.

Now, for instance, any area which was punitively religious might be considered by you to be a very holy area. Hm-mm. An area was given religion to the exact ratio that it was bad, wicked and evil. And the more wicked it was, the more they gave it religion, until religion would look like a tidal wave after a while, trying to hit this place and knock it flat.

You take the accounts of the early days of America, and you'll find a thievish, cutthroat existence being lived by our Pilgrim Fathers, the like of which would sound awfully awfully bad to a Boston censor. And how did they get to him? How did they get to these fellows? Well, they got to them with religion — crush! Their punitiveness was actually an effort to make a civilization by codified laws. And that was the use of religion. And that IS the use of religion. And any thinker or philosopher back through all times agrees with that definition. It's not my definition. Religion is a mechanism for the control of the people. It is not an effort to promote understanding. Mysticism, however, was an effort toward reaching an understanding. That gives you some separation of data in the matter.

Now, I don't know of very many more routes of understanding that were punitively followed or pursued, beyond mysticism, magic. Magic, by the way, is a very precise study. Most people think of magic in terms of stage magicians or something of the sort. It's not. Magic is not. It is a method of producing effects by using, for cause, the supernatural. And there's spiritualism, as something which is not mysticism. These are routes, routes, routes.

And what are all these people studying, and where are they trying to go, and what are they trying to get? They're trying to get the source of man and trying to discover the extent of, and recover the use of, all of his latent powers of personality. And that, actually, is the complete goal in this search. Not necessarily to uncover the gods and shake them by the right hand. Let's recover man and find out if man ever was a god. And if he was, why did he stop being a god.

An effort to discover what is an individual: Is there such a thing as a relatively pure individual? If so, and if there ever has been, how did he get debased? Or, if there is a debased individual at the source, how do you purify him and raise him up?

These are very serious studies, and these have been studied by man through all of his days, however many millennia that is. These things are actually studied by the Australian bushman, as primitive as he is. And they are studied by the head of a corporation in the United States, no matter how big and materialistic that is. Oh yes, he studies them, he very definitely does. He wants to know how to get good personnel and make them better. Oh, he hires people to give them tests and he hires morale experts and he hires this and that and so forth. He works on this ceaselessly: how to make these people better, how to make them cooperate better and so on. In other words, it's a material study, or it is a spiritual study, whichever way you want to look at it. But that's what you're studying in Scientology.

And I'm trying to bring it home to you that it hasn't been very long that we've had a tool by which to recover some actual data. In the first place, it was not known too well that man could pick up these memories, these facsimiles, complete and in their entirety, that they were all on file. Techniques for picking them up and examining them minutely were not known. As a result, man's knowledge lacked the sense, measure and experience factor.

Therefore, what I tell you about this from here on is based on study using a new tool. The laws of delusion and the laws of actuality have been looked over very thoroughly. You can tell the difference between a delusion and an actuality; any day, you can tell the difference between the two. Laws of delusion follow certain definite laws, and laws of actuality follow certain definite laws. Sorting out carefully, and more carefully than was ever sorted out in the past, all hallucination and delusion from this body of data that can be sorted out from it, we examine, then, nothing but that which remains as actuality.

And we discover something that looks like this: We discover that there is a main body of thought, just as there is a main body of potential knowledge. That thought and knowingness are themselves equivalents; they are more or less similar, they're the same order of thing. Data and knowledge, and the very thing on which one records experience, are similar things.

Now, here we have this, what we call, main body of theta. Now, we find breaking off from this main body of theta (which, by the way, has no space or time) — we find breaking off from it and entering upon, to some slight degree, the track of time, a small bit of the whole universe. In other words, more or less the same thing, but on a smaller edition. Now, you — it's very hard to use words like smaller and bigger because, you see, something that has neither space nor time is neither small nor big. It doesn't either have portions as we know them in the MEST universe, but this does not mean that in its own universe it does not have portions.

So, we take this little bit here, and all of a sudden it stands out there — it breaks away.

Now, it inherently knows, it is cause, it is a high state of beingness, it is a pure theta entity.

Now, many of these break off, many of them break off. There are lots of them. Lots of them break off, And each one at that moment of breakaway is in the first stage of its individuation. It has entered upon the track of time, and at that moment it becomes an individual to that extent that it is separate from other individuals. It possesses the potentiality and capability of animating and motivating matter, energy in space and time. And so it breaks off and enters upon this time track here, and it becomes a little bit of MEST to the degree that it is entered upon MEST.

But it never ceases to be anything but what it is. But that it enters upon MEST merely means that it's being recorded on by MEST, not that MEST becomes a part of it. But the more recordings it gets — the more recordings it gets from MEST, the greater the effort it makes to align and straighten out the chaos which is the material universe, the more turbulent those recordings look, until it itself no longer completely knows. It knows less and less and less and less, the more and more and more it experiences.

Now, where it goes from here, one is not quite prepared to say, after it leaves this MEST universe at the end of ALL of its existences in this MEST universe. One is not prepared to say at this time, but one can guess. It either joins a new pool of theta over here which is changed somehow, or it simply goes back and joins that one. Now, we haven't, at this time, been there to that point where it finishes this line. So let's just talk about it from a time standpoint.

Here we are in time, and we find this entered in upon the material universe. How long does it stay there? Well, it stays there for a long, long time. And it becomes more and more individual; it becomes individuated. As it comes down Tone Scale, it becomes more and more individual.

Did you ever read anything by Charles Dickens? You will notice in those books that actually he doesn't characterize anybody. He uses an eccentricity, an aberration, and this aberration sort of walks around through the story and is a funny character. And by the way, watching this aberration parade through the story is very amusing reading. But there is individuation by aberration. The more and more aberrated it becomes, the further and further it separates, why, the less and less it has in common with its original intent and the more and more individuality it has, until it passes a center point — a low point (it's not center point, it's low on the scale) — and after that sort of reassumes a similarity to all other entities. And then — means it's just too deeply pushed into the MEST universe and it is mostly, if you looked at its recordings, just MEST universe.

That's somebody below 2 on the tone scale. They aren't even eccentric, really, below 2 on the Tone Scale. They have a horrible degree of similarity. Where you get your eccentricity, where you get your actual individuality, is between 32 and 2 on the tone band. And there's a terrific differentiation and difference in individuals along about 8 or 10. There's where you get your highest demonstrated individuality, actually, and below that it sags off pretty badly.

Now, its modus operandi — that is to say, the way it works along the space-time line — is quite simple. It has prepared for itself at the beginning of time a genetic line — a protoplasm line. Life has worked up protoplasm lines. It could even be a different — slightly different form of this theta works up these protoplasm Lines. But it knows enough to work up a protoplasm line, and so you get procreation — get and beget, and beget and get, and get and beget, and so forth, column after column. And this protoplasm line goes along through time. The funny part of it is, is there's a terrific desperation on the part of an unknowing theta which has lost its individuality to keep that protoplasm line continuous, keep it continuous.

And actually, it is a reservoir or a treasure of structure — to a large degree it's inherent structure — and what has been learned about structure carries along this line. The horrible part of this is, however, that the protoplasm line, evidently, could be cut off sharp and theta, on one world, could begin all over again and still keep it rolling. And it probably wouldn't take it very many thousand years to have it back up to the present form you're in now. It would not be very disastrous, in other words, to have an enormous change. For instance, the surface of the earth could change so that it was uniformly 150 degrees Fahrenheit; it'd wipe out all life immediately. Wouldn't be very long before theta had readapted itself to the point where it had 150 degree capability in the organism.

Now, the point is, then, that here you have line one, which is a genetic line. Now here in this physical universe we have this genetic line. [marking on blackboard] This genetic line goes from conception, birth, procreation; conception, birth, procreation. Doesn't include the death line. Conception, birth, procreation — that is its cycle. That is strictly genetic. Genes, chromosomes, sperm, ovum, XY factors and so forth — that's a good solid line that keeps going there. Now, it's sort of the stuff that the theta line uses to build its houses.

Now, over here — over here paralleling it, is a theta line, and that's a theta body line. Now, this is the original stuff here. [tapping on blackboard] It's gathering all sorts of its knowledge. And its cycle — its cycle is preconception — severa1 days preconception — conception, birth, procreation, death — jump-off; preconception, conception, birth, procreation, death, jump-off. You know, I mean your death factor comes in there every time, so that your order of cycle is different.

Preconception: it joins the line before conception. And by the way, you can run almost any preclear back into several days before the conception sequence, several days — oh, usually on either side. And you run them up to conception, then it runs on up the line; birth, runs up the line; procreation, up the line; death. That's the theta line. Then a NEW preconception — joining of the genetic line — and so on. In other words, this theta line is wandering along here in and out on the genetic line, and the genetic line is sort of like passengers getting on and off a railroad train. The genetic line is a consecutive railroad train and the theta line is a passenger line.

Now, oddly enough — oddly enough, not all of this theta does a departure on death. Very strange manifestation. You'll find this in preclears quite ordinarily. They do a departure, all right, at the moment of death, with most of the theta. I say "most of the theta." Some attention is still being placed on the body, and there is still some interest on the part of this theta body in the body that's being buried. And so you get another line, which is the dead man line. And there you have actually some attention still in the corpse.

And it's a most remarkable thing. You start to run some poor unsuspecting preclear back up the line — and all of a sudden he runs the death all right and then keeps right on going — in the body, in that body. And there he is in the casket and they bury him. And twenty-five years later what's happening to him, then, he's probably being troubled by seepage. (laughter) And then they run it along a few years afterwards and the chest bones cave in, and "Now, what's happening to you?"

"Well, I've sort of turned to dust now," and so on. And I've picked up — have picked up funeral orations, & remarkable funeral orations & — and all sorts of bric-a-brac.

Theta, in other words, is still keeping an eye on that body. Of course, there's no limit to what theta can keep an eye on or what it can give its attention to. And it actually isn't anything trapped in the body; it's just the fact that this theta line, having lived through that body for one lifetime, is accustomed to keeping an eye on it, so it just sort of — on the side, sort of keeps an eye on it.

And you find some poor little kid five years of age, and Mama says, "Now, you have to sleep in the dark."

Well, he's still got some of his attention, without knowing, you see — because individuation is a separation from knowingness — without knowing it, underneath his level of monitoring, he's got an eye on his old corpse. And "Mama, I see skeletons!" he will say, and he'll have horrible nightmares about it. And she'll come in, of course, and turn off the light and lock the door on him and punish him if he keeps this up. The point of the matter is, he is — he's lying there in a coffin someplace in East Yardsborough and seepage is troubling him, or something.

One naval officer ran his mother, and lo and behold, way back someplace or other she had gotten stuck in a glacier. And the theta body had had so many facsimiles of trying to get her out of this glacier that a LOT of attention stayed on this body in the glacier. And mama was having chills and fever and chills and so on, and he never did get it completely run out, but he said, "That's all right. She's been stuck in it for the last couple of thousand years. Who cares?" (laughter) And Mama, by the way, was quite perplexed — quite perplexed to find herself a dead body in a glacier.

Anyway, you can run anybody through this sequence if you want to fool with it. You'll pick up some very, very touching things. You'll pick up the widow coming to the grave and putting flowers on it and so on. Although the fellow is six feet under, you see, he can still perceive, because theta — it does not have a location in space or time. It just thinks it has.

All right. I ran one, one time, of consecutive Confederate Memorial Days. Year after year they all came around and they give the same powwow about "our brave Southern dead" and so forth. So one day I wrote down the whole oration. It didn't vary. Boy, was that histrionic. God! It's no wonder I never wrote with that prose line.

But don't become mistaken on the fact that theta cannot do a consecutive line, because it definitely can — a simultaneous line, a parallel line, and so on. Because it doesn't have location in space or time, it can be in more than one place at once. Because "one place," you mean that, that's MEST universe, and theta isn't in MEST universe, you see? At no time is it ever in MEST universe, so therefore it can be in body one while it is still in a grave with body minus one, while it is still on a genetic line or willing or ready to take off on another genetic line as another body. And even so, it can go over and do a life continuum for somebody else simultaneously.

It can do all of these things. It just means a great complexity to it. Problems. In other words, too many facsimiles don't jibe with enough facsimiles, and so it starts getting confused. It doesn't know — doesn't know what it's supposed to be monitoring in the physical universe, and it gets confused about what it's supposed to be monitoring.

Now, the more it learns and the more it knows, the easier it is for it to control and monitor; the more it can coordinate. The more data can be brought together into the same package, the same bundle, the more it knows. And this doesn't say that it immediately becomes just one individual. It just knows more about who it is. And if you had somebody really cleared up the line, he could probably think as any one of three or four individuals and think in the past too, and he would not even be faintly confused about it.

But what — when he doesn't know that he is anything or is anywhere else than where he is, he gets these strange things happening to him and he gets very confused; he doesn't know where they come from. And as a net result, he can demonstrate far more aberration than he can demonstrate if he just knew what was going on.

An unknown datum can produce aberration. And when theta — a theta body does not know what is going on, it definitely can exhibit very aberrated behavior. But if it knew for sure and with good reality that it was, for instance, inhabiting ten bodies — it was ten people simultaneously, right there — if it just knew that and if it knew for sure what its track was and knew more or less where it had come from and knew more or less what had happened to it, and knew it with some security, everything would go up Tone Scale for that theta body without running a single incident.

Now the test of this — I have been giving you as a study or a scheme of theta — a test of this is does a person come up the Tone Scale and become less aberrated by just knowing about this and experiencing it himself? And the fact of the matter is, he very definitely does, So for my computations, this has worked out and past theories have not.