I want to talk to you now concerning the steps in Route 1, continuing with these steps on Route 1-8.

Here we have, in exteriorization, the main difficulty on the part of an individual in perception. He believes that it is dangerous to look; this is his main reason for not seeing. He believes that it is dangerous to hear, which is his main reason for not hearing.

Actually, there is a slightly better reason than these two main reasons. The main reason is he's a problem to himself if he can't see, and he's a problem to himself if he can't hear, can't smell, and so forth. We learned that under two-way communication, didn't we?

Well, he turns off his perception and this makes a very, very nice problem. And under Route 1-8, however, we discover most thetans have gotten into a condition where they believe that it is now so dangerous that it has ceased to be any kind of a problem. It's just simply very, very dangerous to perceive anything.

And so this is simply a process which, when the individual is exteriorized, gets him to change his consideration.

You must realize that on somebody exteriorized all you have to do is ask him to change his consideration and he is then capable. He can change his consideration that he is capable; he can change his consideration that he isn't capable.

Actually, aside from coaxing him to deal with energy masses and perceptions, the only process there is to a Clear is ask him to change his mind. That's all the process there is: he changes a consideration. We drag him out of the field of mechanics, in other words, and as soon as we've got him out of the field of mechanics, why, he processes simply by getting him to change his mind.

If a thetan exteriorized cannot change his mind, he is still very, very enmeshed in the whole theory of mechanics. And being enmeshed and immersed in mechanics, he feels that these mechanics are going to smite him one way or the other. The biggest deterrent to somebody getting into this state is fear of the environment, and the energy masses and spaces contained in it. That is the biggest deterrent to his changing his mind.

As an individual gets smaller and smaller and goes on down the dwindling spiral, he believes that exterior forces are more and more dangerous to him. Now, the saw which is inserted at this point is really more of a saw than an axiom: A man is as sane as he believes himself to be dangerous to his environment. See, that's a very low-level look, isn't it? But he is as sane as he believes himself dangerous to his environment. That's very true of man.

So this is Dianetics, mainly, we're talking about when we say "man," "dangerous to his environment," and so forth. People come up through a tooth-and-claw strata before they get up into a sanity.

"All roads lead through force;" that is another saw. "All roads lead through force." Anybody who has seen the now-nonextant lecture charts of the Philadelphia sixty-four hours of lecture will recall that one of the last lecture charts there has a big "Force" inscribed in the middle of the chart. [See lecture chart in the Appendix of this volume.]

And then low-level aspects of the Chart of Attitudes are below this huge word Force, and the high-level aspects of the Chart of Attitudes are above this word Force. And, let us say, Distrust is below Force, you see, and Trust is above Force. But to get from Distrust up to Trust, it is necessary to cross the bridge of Force. If there's any bridge involved here anywhere in Dianetics or Scientology it is a bridge called Force. An individual believes that forces are greater than him-self. He believes he himself cannot cope with the forces around him. And we discover that an individual is very prone to believe that all forces are greater than he is.

Actually, he would never have to be afraid of force at all unless he him-self were being a mass of some sort. Force can only impinge itself upon mass of one kind or another. A thetan either mocks up a little piece of mass to receive sound waves, and so hear, or he is no mass at all and the sound wave goes straight through him. Well, he could do either one at will; so he could hear or not hear. There isn't any mechanical action, by the way, to hearing, really. One simply postulates that he hears and he hears; and he postulates he doesn't hear and he doesn't hear. That's about all there is to that.

But as long as he's down below Force, as long as he feels that he is op-pressed by the enormity of space, by the savageness of electrons battering him by explosions, and so on, as long as he feels that he can be injured by force of any character, why, you will find him below this level of Force on this chart. He believes all force is dangerous to him. He does not believe that he himself can emanate force which would be dangerous to anything or anybody else.

Now, the only reason a word or symbol has any effect on somebody is because he's below the band of Effort. Now, similarly, the common denominator of all people who are having any difficulty in life — similarly — that common denominator is inability to experience effort. In other words, they can't work, they can't play, they can't move and so on. They're afraid to experience effort.

In other words, force is outside someplace, threatening them. Now, the only reason a symbol has any effect upon an individual — for instance, the only reason you could criticize somebody and have him feel bad about it — is because your verbal criticism is associated by him with times when he has been hit, invalidated.

Now, invalidation, criticism … Criticism is the lowest level, and then we get outright, overt invalidation, and then tight above that we get this rather more understandable thing of the lightning bolt, see. And a fellow could only take criticism to heart if he were afraid of lightning bolts.

You see, he's got as criticism, actually, a symbol of force. If he's afraid of criticism, then basically he's afraid of force. Invalidation converts immediately, as you come upscale, into force. "Invalidation" means to be hit. But if you could impress somebody by invalidating him — telling him he really didn't think that, or he really didn't believe that, or something — it's because he's afraid of being hit. You see? And he associates the little criticism that you give him, or the contradiction that you give him, with force. He has been taught to avoid. And when even the symbol of force shows up (criticism), he then backs off. So he is below the Force band.

He is actually in conjunction with a body which is extremely liable to wreckage by reason of force. He's extremely tender. A body goes two miles, three, four miles in the air, it starts to notice it very badly. If it went ten or twenty miles up in the air, it would probably die — I mean, it can't survive up there. If it went five miles in toward the core of earth … That isn't very far, you know. If earth was reduced to the size of an apple, you wouldn't be able to find five miles thick with a microscope. And he goes down toward the center of earth just five miles, and it is much too warm and intolerable. The body is a frail mechanism mainly. And he is trying to protect this body.

And so, as he is protecting the body — he'll eventually start hiding the body, by the way — but if he is protecting the body, he is protecting it from what? He is protecting it from space, from force. You see? And a thetan gets himself associated with a body very thoroughly, and thereafter he becomes afraid of force because he knows the body can affect force.

Nothing can affect a thetan. Remember this: Nothing possibly can affect a thetan. As a matter of fact, as ultimate effect he cannot be affected. As ultimate cause he actually cannot himself be an energy bolt; he can only say he is. And here we have cause and effect. And as far as a thetan is concerned or an awareness of awareness unit is concerned, he would be at either end of this line, and he would have to have some kind of an energy mass at both ends of the line in order to be cause and effect, you see. There'd have to be some energy in there someplace. Well, he'd have to be protecting or holding on to that energy. He would have had to have postulated that he was some section of this energy to be affected or, actually, to begin some type of cause.

In order to be thorough cause, for instance, he could postulate a bolt of energy out in front of him. But he would have to postulate also that he was connected with that to even get the idea that he was being affected by it.

One of the most difficult things a thetan faces is really trying to affect another thetan or to be an effect himself, or to actually overtly discover the cause of anything. You see, the cause, the real cause of anything, has no mass and so can't be located in space. All right.

So this thetan must have postulated that he was something, that he's being something, before he can be the effect of force. Do you follow that now? Overt-motivator phenomena, all these other things, can only take place if the individual has postulated that he is something that can be the effect of force.

And so, one of the best ways I know of — if somebody has very poor perception — one of the most effective things that you can do with him to improve his perception is just ask him, "Now, look around you and find some-thing that it is safe for you to look at." "What is there in this room that's safe for you to look at?" you say to him.

Oh, and some of these thetans, they'll look and they'll look and they'll look and they'll look, and they'll finally opine that there probably is a dust particle under the couch that it would be really safe for them to look at. Ah, but that's an improvement. "Find something else that it would be safe for you to look at. Something else it would be safe for you to look at." And get an answer each time from him. "Something else it would be safe for you to look at. Something else it would be safe for you to look at." And do you know the environment becomes plainer and plainer?

And now you could go out the same line, and you could say, "Give me something now which it would be safe for you to hear." And he'll get a condition or a concept at first: "Well, somebody could say 'Hello' to me, you know, or 'Good day' or 'How are you?' That would be safe to hear." He means the idea would be safe to pay some attention to.

You want a beam of energy of something that it would be really safe to hear. But you just ask him this and he'll improve his consideration. The simple auditing command is "Give me something which would be safe for you to listen to." That's while he's exteriorized, you see.

Now, you could run this process interiorized, too, you see. But it really is a Route 1 process, or exteriorized process. "Give me something that is safe for you to look at." Now, there's Straightwire questions which are used on an interiorized basis: "What wouldn't you mind looking at?" You see, that's the same sort of thing. "What wouldn't you mind listening to?" "What would listen to you?" "What wouldn't you mind looking at you?" Something on this order will pro-duce a considerable change on somebody whether he's inside or outside.

But the basic question of R1-8 is: You tell him, "Now, look around. Now, what is it safe for you to look at in the environment, in your surroundings here?" And just get them to name item after item after item after item. "Now, what is it safe for you to listen to?" And if you wanted to go the rest of the way on perception, "What would it be safe for you to smell?" "What would it be safe for you to taste?" You see? And he gradually has to improve his consideration and he realizes that he can experience force — that there aren't forces immediately surrounding him here which are going to murder him, mow him down, blow him up.

A lot of people, the first moment they exteriorize, will hear the auditor's voice while exteriorized, and it will scare them half out of their wits. And they will go back inside — boom! — you see, and then you have to dig them out again. Hearing something outside is very startling to them. That's because you're asking them to take on more than they can.

You've got to let a thetan learn that he can safely experience any force phenomena in this universe before he will cease to be trapped in the universe. As long as he is going to be afraid of force phenomena in this universe, he is going to be trapped in this universe. Do you follow me?

The only way you make him trapped in anything is get him to be afraid of the force phenomena. The greatest thing a thetan is afraid of, of course, is unknowns. But that's also taken up in Route 2; he's afraid of not-knowing. But then afraid of not-knowing is the consideration back of the consideration of force.

Okay. Now, do you understand this Route 1, part 8?

Good.