Consecutive to what I told you in the last lecture concerning the impulse of life itself to work upon, operate with the physical universe, and the central meeting ground of this, which is of course biologic, we discover that a great many processes are possible which resolve the problem of an inability to think, an inability to act, a misorientation biologically, which is to say a psychosomatic illness, an inability to handle the physical universe, an inability to follow through various mental processes, an inability to look, an inability to feel; all of these things stem out of the difficulties between life's efforts to amalgamate with the physical universe. This amalgamation of course is a biological effort.

Now, let us trace the course of life itself in its effort to do this. And when I say life I do not mean now a cell. I mean a static. This static has the potentiality of creating space, of creating energy, of creating objects, and of making itself operable in the physical universe, but it is not itself dependent for its existence or its knowingness or anything else upon the physical universe. It has all these things inherently. Basically it knows all there is to know, basically. But it can become so concentrated, the attention of this unit, this static that we are referring to and which we call thetan, can become so concentrated upon one datum or another datum that it sets aside a great deal of its knowingness in favor of a solidity. And there we get identification.

A person's ability to contact space and what he suffers from in terms of identification are related. Differentiation is essentially something which permits space to interpose amongst data. And identification is something which makes all data in the same space.

Now, we get an enforced problem here where an individual, in an effort to assemble all data, to communicate with all data, eventually fixates upon a few data and, you might say, compresses those things into a unit-space. This is an identification. This is manifested in an individual by stupidity, just like that. I mean, there's no more complexity to it than that. An individual becomes more and more, you might say, stupid the more he identifies. The better he can differentiate, the more brilliant he becomes.

You can see how this is. An individual believes that a stove and a horse are the same thing. Well, that would merely be consequent of the datum of stove and datum of horse occupying the same space. Well, that's not logical to you and it's not logical to me. Actually, a great deal of data would have to intervene between a stove and a horse before you could get the two connected. You can connect these two by a gradient scale of data. You can say a horse is quite warm; he is actually a biological engine. He is an engine which operates at - I don't know what the normal temperature of a horse is but we will just call it 98.6 - and he operates on oxygen and carbon. In the army they call them hay burners. So you see actually the army could be said - to make a joke out of it by just jumping a few intervening data - and we say actually the army has long recognized the relationship of a stove to a horse since they call them hay burners. Now, you've got a relationship. What have you done here? You have put the data on a gradient scale, more and more space, you might say, between a stove and a horse.

Now, an individual begins to skip these intervening data, and he gets to a point finally where all of these data are the same data and they're all jammed into one space, you might say, and they're all mixed up with energy and pounded down. And at this point he is unable to pull these data apart. He associates, in other words, illogical things. He associates stoves and horses. He will associate such a thing as all women. Women are all occupying the same space as far as he's concerned. And maybe this space was originally occupied by Mother. And Mother was such a terror that he eventually says anything that even vaguely resembles Mother is bad, then anything which resembles women is bad and therefore all women are bad. And now his total conviction is all women are bad. And any time he looks at a woman, no matter what she's trying to do for him, his concept of her action is bad. You know, she tries to give him a drink of water when he's dying of thirst; this is a bad action.

You see people doing this in the society. You try to patch up somebody or make somebody a little happier or something of the sort and they turn on you and unsheathe their fingernails. Well, they're operating on some kind of a super identification of this character. They say, “All doctors are bad; all doctors are bad.” They've been hurt too many times by doctors or something of the sort, and you are practicing some healing art and therefore you're bad. And this would be totally irrational to you, wouldn't it? Yet, it would seem very, very logical; it would be a great certainty to this individual.

Now, there are two kinds of certainty involved here. One is the certainty that one gets simply by knowing - has nothing to do with space or impacts; space, energy, matter - and the other certainty is that which has to do with impacts. You can hammer and pound a fellow a long time on one datum and he will eventually conclude that he is certain of that datum. This is really the effort of modern education, or ancient education.

They put somebody in a closed room, which is a very small room, and then they pound a datum at them and say they have to be very, very sure of this data. Well, a hundred years ago they made very sure that they educated them because they took a rod to them, and if a fellow was unwilling to admit that one plus one equaled two, they would beat him until he did admit it. And thus you get the concatenation of data which sum up into things like arithmetic and so forth. Basically, these things are quite logical, but a school puts a great deal of attention upon very specific and specialized data in this field. Now, they have problems, however. One of their students is very bright, he grasps arithmetic very easily, and another student is quite dull and seems utterly incapable of grasping arithmetic. The second student could be said to be pounded too hard. He's been pounded too hard. He has too many things identified. He can't pull his thoughts apart anymore. His thoughts are all in a ball, you might say. And when you say to him… that is, it can be just in a… on a ball on the subject of mathematics, you see, nothing but mathematics, mathematics alone are this identification. He knew somebody who was quite smart at arithmetic, which person hated him, and he hated that person and this person beat him.

Let's say his father was an accountant. And he had a great deal of trouble with his father and so forth. Well, we get to a point where the fact that Father handles arithmetic is sufficient to cause all arithmetic to become first associated with Father and then totally identified with Father. And this total identification would bring upon a great stupidity. Trying to learn arithmetic would be like being beaten or ridiculed by Father.

There we have an example, a practical example in life, of what specifically happens to an individual. He identifies more and more and more things with the physical universe, with objects, more and more things, and eventually he gets to a point where he can no longer differentiate amongst objects, data, facts, people. And that he's had a bad experience with a small child is enough then to cause, first, him to be a little bit uncomfortable in the vicinity of small children, and then as he has worse and worse experiences (he's already elected, you see, to have bad experiences with small children) the next thing you know, why, all small children bring him actual physical pain. Just the sight of a small child is enough to cause him pain, physical pain, actually. Let's say as a small child he was very badly hurt. This is a dangerous age. Therefore small children have a tendency to restimulate this period of his life.

Well, in this you get differentiation decaying, really, into too close an association, and that decaying into a very close identification, and this is the same pattern as the descending of the static, life, which is not yet connected with the universe, to a total connection with the physical universe. And the meeting ground of that total connection is, of course, this biological pattern.

Now, the MEST universe - which is to say matter, energy, space and time - MEST universe has a curve or cycle of action. That cycle of action is a very simple one. It begins with creation, goes through persistence and progresses into and ends with decay or destruction. Creation, survival, destruction, that is the curve. It starts with creation, goes through survival and goes down into destruction. This is the time span, you might say, of the individual, of a planet, of a flower, of anything. That is the pattern, operation of the universe - create, survive, destroy.

Now, that curve should demonstrate to us a considerable amount of data right there. Actually, it's a very, very old curve. Stated differently, we discover this curve in the Vedic hymns. One of the earliest of the Vedic hymns says that things are born, they grow, they persist for a while, they decay and they die. And that is straight out of the Vedic hymns, and those things are probably in excess of eight thousand years old.

All right, so this is not a new datum, but let's codify it and let's look at it and let's see if that datum all by itself is of any great use to us. Well, it certainly is, because we have in an individual his impulses. And what are the impulses of an individual? They are divided up into three categories: the impulse to create, the impulse to survive or persist and the impulse to destroy, which turn over eventually into the impulse to be created, the impulse to be made to survive and the impulse to be destroyed. And here when we have walked into this last one we have walked into the death wish of Schopenhauer. Here we have actually, eventually, a death wish.

Now, an individual who progresses along this curve discovers this: At the point of creation a great many things are possible. For instance, it can be said even of a group that its highest ethic level and its highest level of ability is at the moment of its formation. This is quite true. In an individual if you start running the cycle of any action that he has been through which was disastrous, we discover that his view of the image pictures which he has of this action are three-dimensional at the start of the incident and walk on through to being a little bit tighter at the top of the curve, which is survive, and finally wind up at the end of the curve being totally invisible or black. They've gone through a process of being three-dimensional, then more or less two-dimensional and finally over to a point of nonexistent. That is just the image pictures, the recordings he has taken of the incident. We find this curve traced all through life.

Now, we find this static over here, the thetan, is totally capable of creation and destruction, and the odd part of it is, his survival is natively infinite. This whole curve is inherent in the individual, that is to say that life unit known as the thetan which is an energy-space, production unit. All three points on the curve are inherent in the thetan.

Now, what happens to him then? Well, he begins to concentrate upon create. He matches himself up and begins to depend upon the time of the MEST universe, and so drifts from create to a feeling he has to persist to a feeling that he is destroyed. And he goes through that curve. And he starts to mirror this in various ways just as himself; and then finally biologically, in association with bodies (which are, of course, merely life forms amalgamated with the physical universe) which are undergoing this cycle of action. And when he falls beyond the point of bodies, there is nothing left. He can't even have a biological expression which, of course, makes practically all communication impossible.

Now, what practical use is there of this. If these things are all inherent with the individual, why, what could we do, then, to change the individual? Well, there are two things to change here. Actually there are three things to change. You could change the physical universe. That is the study of physics. You could change the biological form of things. That's another study. And the other change that you could make would be the change of the life unit itself. Well, the life unit itself simply changes by changing its mind. That's very simple. But when it begins to believe that it is and when it is totally concentrated upon this biological line and has dedicated itself to the formations of cells and other such things, it becomes more difficult to change because it thinks the biological line itself has to be changed before it can change. Actually, All it has to do to change is change its mind.

It is totally composed, you might say, of postulates, which is to say statements that it makes, conclusions. And the biological line is utterly dependent upon a great many conclusions from a great many sources. And the physical universe is the most neatly arranged set of agreements that you could possibly rack up. They are very interestingly precise. You could say those are the postulates of God, and they consist of Ohm's law, Newton's three laws of motion, the various nuclear laws; all of these things are, of course, part and parcel of the physical universe. But are they necessarily a part of this static called life? No. It would be capable of making a great many such laws, and making them… and putting them into effect. It's capable actually of making a whole universe of its own. But when it's moved all the way across to the physical universe, then all it is doing is agreeing 100 percent with the agreements which it already found on the ground.

At that time all the determinism there is, so far as option and choice of the individual is concerned, all the determinism there is, is other-determinism: the determinism of the physical universe. On the biological line the only real difficulty the individual has is that a great many things on the biological line are otherwise determined.

So we have another scale. Over here the thetan is best off when he is self-determined. You know, he's making his own laws. And he is only mediumly well off when he is part of the biological line whereby he is using some of his own determinism, but a great deal of other-determinism for his postulates. And he is in terrible shape when he's gotten over to the physical universe side where he is totally dependent only upon other postulates and he makes none of his own.

There is the scale of other-determinism and self-determinism. Starts out with self-determinism, then a little bit of other-determinism enters in, and as it goes on down the line we have more and more other-determinism, less and less self-determinism, and we get a picture whereby the physical universe represents total other-determinism and where the thetan represents total self-determinism in his native state before he became fixated upon other postulates than his own. Therefore, we can say that the deterioration of the individual is the deterioration of his own determinism.

Well, this would have to do with another thing. It would be deterioration of his knowingness. He would become less and less certain of his own rightness and more certain of other rightnesses. And so he would become convinced at length that only the physical universe was right and that he himself had no right to be right.

Now, a great many operations enter into this, but an individual who is very bad off cannot be made to tell a lie. If he's terribly bad off, he cannot tell a lie about something that's happened in the past. He just can't lie, that's all. He's terrified of lies. Well, he's … In other words, he's terrified of making a postulate of his own.

You take a small child, look at this child. The child's having an interesting time. He can put battleships in the front yard and in the ceiling, and his pockets full of jewels and diamonds. He's perfectly happy about it. And we look over here at this same child when he has become aged and antique and sixteen, and we find out that he has begun to be terrified of saying something is different in the past than was. He says, „That is a church.“ And by golly, it's a church. He says, „That is a car.“ It's a car. There's nothing wrong with his calling it anything so long as he knows he's calling it something different than what other people call it. All we have here is an ability which is deteriorating, an ability to know what other people know and what he knows, too. Well, eventually it gets down to a point of he knows only what other people know and he doesn't know what he knows. So we get the deterioration of the individual.

Well, how to resolve this problem? Is there a fast method of resolution? Yes, there certainly is. Let's take a look at create. We'll discover as we process, treat individuals that they are most concerned really about their inability to create. They're most concerned about this. They get very upset. You find some case that can see nothing but blackness, cannot even see his own image pictures anymore. His main concern is the fact that once upon a time he could paint, once he could write, once he could get ideas in general, he could create. And we find that his greatest sorrow will be located on the basis he can no longer do this.

What's happened to him? He has begun to depend for the C upon the biological line; that is to say, for the create end of this cycle of action upon the biological line. The biological line now is carrying the burden of create.

And how is that expressed? It's expressed sexually. We have an individual who is having difficulty with creating his own thoughts and so forth, having difficulty with space, having difficulty with differentiation. In other words, the early part of the curve is gone. We find that individual has become dependent upon a system of creation known as sex. He has become very upset where and when he cannot procreate. He has become sold, you might say, upon this set of postulates known as biology. He has to depend upon various other factors such as the weather, temperature, water, other things have to enter in so that he can create, so that. .. and what he creates is now very limited. And that is to say, he creates another cell, he creates another life form.

Cytology says, „This unending stream of protoplasm which goes through time.“ Well, that is the most succinct statement that can be made, really, on the description of sex. It is an unending stream of protoplasm that goes through time. But it's, of course, adventurous to call it unending, because the destruction of the air envelope of this planet by some mad hatter who has completely bought an atomic postulate, and has forgotten that life itself can make postulates, would destroy every life form on this planet and would certainly end the unending line of protoplasm.

Well, this is an anxiety. This total dependence upon the MEST universe in order to create brings about this anxiety. When is somebody going to come along with an atom bomb and knock the whole thing off? An individual says, „Look, I can go along, I can carry on in life because I can cause bodies to create new forms, and I can make these new forms.“ And he becomes fixated on this and all of a sudden somebody says, „Well, let's destroy everything.“ And that will end your unending line of protoplasm in this area - „Let's destroy everything.“ That, of course, is what your nuclear physicist is saying today, aided and abetted by the military form of government which most countries now have.

Now, they, of course, are playing the other end of the scale. The cycle of action has come over to a point of where they think in terms of destruction. You say, „Well now look, you could take an atomic pile and you could run automobiles and you could do all sorts of things with it. You could run factories. Look, you could create enough water even to make California unthirsty, and just with an atomic pile; there's nothing to that.“

And yet we find that none of this was possible to people who studied the physical universe until a war came along and appropriated for the project of the atom bomb three billion dollars and Lord knows how many billions since. Nobody has ever appropriated five cents to find out whether or not an atomic pile could distill water. But kill men, yes. So you see the depravity which has set in over here when you get total agreement with the physical universe. You could say that this is a war going on between an effort on the part of the physical universe to destroy all life within it and an effort on the part of life to master and use the physical universe. And this war has its two extremes. The dramatization of the physical universe is death.

Now, your create-survive-destroy curve is very useful to you in processing since you will find your preclear located somewhere on it. Of course, you see, none of the people that you're really in communication with as preclears are yet totally in the biological span. They are closer to the static than they are to the biological span. The biological span is being carried on by, evidently, the same mechanism which has deteriorated down to a point where it can only make cells, and it really makes the cells. The people that you address and that you can still get in communication with are actually energy-space production units which are simply using this biological line.

This is very easily tested. You say to somebody who is not having very much trouble with this biological line, you say, „Be three feet back of your head,“ and of course, bing, he is. No trouble, he says, „What do you know. I am a thought production unit. I am not a body.“ This comes as a great surprise to him.

What you've done is interrupt his dwindling spiral where he was just merging right on down to the biological line, and he would finally wind up as doing nothing but make more cells, make more bodies. How do you combine the protoplasmic acids in order to do this, in order to do that? A terribly complex mechanism, by the way, making a cell, making a body, but he has come down to a point of where he would simply be part of this impulse. And you've interrupted that. You've said, „Be three feet back of your head.“ And he says to himself… He can still think, he still has some fluidity, he is not totally identified yet, and he says, „What do you know, I am a thought production unit.“ And you can go on and drill him with various drills which are very advanced in procedures and we find that this individual is capable of making space, we find out he's capable of creating energy, we find out that he can do a great number of things, and principally that his knowingness has been well restored.

But most people have a little bit of difficulty. They don't snap out of their heads with complete knowingness. They have to be coaxed into that knowingness. They're certain they are out of their heads, but they don't quite know what they're doing. Well, a few drills put them up into a condition whereby they can perform, too. They can see. They can see the physical universe just as well out of their heads as in it. And the individual who just has to be exteriorized and coaxed a little bit is not terribly difficult. Therefore the easy case that just… You say, „Be three feet back of your head,“ and he says, „What do you know, I'm me, and I know, and so forth.“ You say, „Be three feet back of your head,“ and he says, „Yes, I'm here all right, but, boy, this is certainly puzzling.“ And you have to drill them. Well, those people comprise about 50 percent of the people that you would process as an auditor.

Now, what about the remaining 50 percent? These people don't jump three feet back of their head. Well, there's a similarity there between this case level and the inability to create. There's a similarity there to a position on the curve. These people are trying so hard to survive that they have practically merged with the biological line. They think of themselves as a body. They think of themselves as totally incapable of doing anything but forwarding this biological line. In other words, they've come right in towards survive. And survive in essence is a persistence. And, boy, do their ideas, what those… ideas they have, do they persist. They cannot change their ideas at will, therefore therapy becomes rather difficult with them. Their persistence is itself the thing which is debarring their therapy because it's what they're persisting on. They're persisting on the biological line, which of course is rigged to do what? To make more biological line. You see? Biological line makes more biological line, makes more biological line, which means repair the body and depend upon sex - the unending stream of protoplasm - to make new biological lines.

So we find our people, as we process them, further and further along on this curve of create, through survive, to destroy. And when we get well past survive, we get to an individual who can think in no terms but suicide. He tries to kill himself and those around him. He would not even dream of getting, you might say, out of the body. All he can think of is being in the body and destroying things. He has bought the physical universe.

Well, we try to process this individual. We normally find him in sanitariums, and so forth, because he's no longer able to promote the biological line; and we find his anxiety on the subject of sex very, very great, but it's very destructive. It's not the type of sexual activity that would lead to an unending stream of protoplasm. Quite on the contrary, it would be a type of sexual activity which said „The unending stream of protoplasm must now end,“ which is to say homosexuality, other misconducts. And we'd find him over on the physical universe side of the ledger over here. And he would be very involved with rocks and solid masses of various things. He's really left the biological line.

Well, hardly anybody you process is way over there, because those people are almost gone; they're quite insane; they are no longer able to promote life in any form or shape.

The occluded case sets in before you have reached the peak of the curve. It's still over on the create side of the curve.

Now, the case then that you will process either steps three feet back of his head with great ease, or he's three feet back of his head with certainty but kind of puzzled, or he's three feet back of his head uncertainly and he can't observe anything or see anything but he recognizes there is some small truth in what we are talking about, or he's stuck in the head and totally sold on the biological line, or he's more pulled into the physical universe than he is into a body. In other words, he's even stopped being a body. He's more apt to be an object of some sort.

So we have the whole gamut. How do we solve all of these cases? We'll use a process known as SOP 8-DA. This process utilizes many, many factors. And we haven't time to review all these factors at this time. It's dependent mainly upon the curve create, survive, destroy. It is dependent upon the formula of communication. And communication is cause across a distance to effect, C dash E. And cause is merely a source-point of an impulse or particle, and effect is simply the receipt-point of an impulse or particle. And the distance traversed between the two is a space. And that is actually the way space is created. You just say C dash E, because space is a viewpoint of dimension. A fellow has to be there looking before there really is any space. Now, what he sees, of course, is E. But he is creating the space; he's actually the viewpoint at C. And all space is created from C. People seeing that there is space in the physical universe naturally believe that there has to be a God somewhere who is doing all the looking. A very, very religious person believes that God does all the looking, believe me, all of it. All right. He's creating all the space, and this C dash E has another thing. A perfect communication finds duplicated at the receipt-point what is sent from the dispatch-point, the source-point. In other words, E duplicates C. A perfect communication contains duplication. Agreement also contains duplication. A perfect agreement is a perfect duplication.

Now, we have a triangle known as the ARC triangle, and this at the top of the Tone Scale at 40 is a very, very loose triangle. I mean, it's very big, it's very flexible, and at the bottom it is an identified point. But the triangle is total other-determinism at the bottom, and it's total self-determinism at the top. Somewhere in between there is an optimum interpersonal relationship possible.

We have… ARC, of course, is affinity, reality and communication. Reality is composed mainly of agreement. Communication is simply the transfer one to another of impulses, thoughts, particles. And affinity is naturally that feeling of beingness which one shares with others. The degree of affinity. ARC.

Well, let's look into this and see if there aren't some very fast processes. Well, we find an individual when you first put your hands on him usually can't do two things. If he's very bad off; he can't do two things. And most of the individuals you lay your hands on will have difficulty with these two things. One is receive orders he's going to have difficulty with that - and the other thing is communication in general. He's going to have great difficulty with that. And he'll also have another difficulty, a third one. He won't like you or anybody else. See, he's having difficulty with A, difficulty with R and with C.

Now, but the two principal things which you will note are simply these, that he's having difficulty communicating in any … In other words, you say something to him and he doesn't quite apprehend what you're saying. And the other one is, he won't receive an order because this means he has to duplicate you exactly.

Well, there's another thing he's having trouble with, quite in addition to ARC, and that's space. Every case you process is having some kind of trouble with space. All right, let's combine these various factors then, and as we start to process a case, let's see if we can't get him into communication. Let's see if we can't get him talking or communicating in some fashion with us. That would be the first thing you would have to do with the case, and there are many ways to do that - we needn't go into at this time - there are many ways to do it. But just talking to somebody. „How do you feel? How do you think about the world?“ Just get him talking, a flow going both ways. You'll find out that this is a very necessary first step. The next one is to get him to receive an order and execute it in such a fashion that you know he's doing it. And so we have Opening Procedure.

Opening Procedure is the process of making a person move around as a body and locate various things. Make postulates he's going to go a certain place and then go there. Make a postulate he's going to do something and then do it. You give him an order to do something and he does it. In other words, an enormous variety of things are possible under Opening Procedure whereby you are simply delivering a communication or an order, and the individual is complying and you know he's complying because he's moving around the room doing it. This is necessary because the cases you're going to have a lot of trouble with will sit in that chair and do something else entirely different because you don't watch their mind in operation.

All right, this Opening Procedure then for SOP 8-C is quite complex, but in SOP 8-D it becomes very elementary. All you do is ask the fellow to go around and find points in space and put his finger on them and let them go and find other points in space, move around. He locates points in space and locates points in space until you're quite sure that, one, he can find the same point several times, and he is getting fairly comfortable about it, he doesn't get screamingly bored about it. If he starts to get awfully bored about it, this simply means that he is coming up against a stop, and as a result, you know, he's coming up against his inability to do it. You just make him do it a little bit more and that boredom will pass away. But you've gotten him over the main hump here, and you've let him tolerate space. You've let him see space without necessarily seeing an object.

Now, what have you… why did you do all this? Well, that's so he will follow your orders. There's no sense in processing somebody unless orders will be followed. But there's another thing about it and that is that Opening Procedure is in itself very, very therapeutic. So let's remember in doing Opening Procedure, do it thoroughly. How long do you have to do it? Well, you do it until he is comfortably accepting your orders and executing, and he's perfectly willing to duplicate many times. And that's how long you follow Opening Procedure.

As I say, there's wider Opening Procedures in 8-C, but this is a very compact process, this SOP 8-DA.

Next step, which is Step I. You ask the preclear to be three feet back of his chair. That's all there is to that step. And I've just talked to you about that. That you've separated him out of the biological line, just bing! He either will separate out or he won't. You don't care whether he does or he doesn't. You go on to the next step. You say, „Now, whatever you're looking at, at this moment…“ We get into Step II which is duplication. If there's something wrong with the fellow's communication, his ability to communicate, his ability to differentiate and so forth, there's certainly something wrong with duplication. He can't duplicate easily, so we go into Step II, and we have the preclear look at whatever he's seeing: the room, the body, the sky, the building. You say, „Be three feet back of your head.“ Well, maybe he just continues to see nothing but blackness. Well, whatever he sees, you don't care. You just tell him to get another one just like it, and then another one just like it, and then another one just like it. One at a time, you ask him to duplicate it over and over and over. And you do that step to him, you say, „What do you see? All right, get another one just like it, duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it.“

And after you've done that a lot of times, then you ask him to look around and find a nothingness. And ask him then to get another nothingness just like it. In other words, duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it. Duplicate a nothingness. You see, that’s one thing that a static has never, never done, and it's quite new. That's a perfect communication. If you're dealing with something here which is really a nothingness, in order to get a perfect communication you've got to have nothingness to nothingness. And as a result very often people will immediately snap out of their heads as soon as they start doing this. That's a case that's not very bad off. So there's two parts to that. One, whatever you're looking at, look at it, now duplicate it, duplicate it, duplicate it, duplicate it many times and get image pictures of it. And the other one is, the other part is find a nothingness, now duplicate that nothingness and duplicate that nothingness many, many times, duplicate, duplicate, duplicate, duplicate, so on. Okay, you see the direction of the thetan has always been toward making something. Well, this is never a perfect communication and will obviously wind him up sooner or later as being an object. See, he's never asked to make nothing. He always tries to make something.

Take your daily workaday world. You're always trying to make something. Of course, you get over into the destroy end, then you're trying to make nothing of something particularly, and that's quite different, you see, than just making nothing. You're trying to make nothing of Russians or nothing of cancer or nothing of starvation, but that's nothing of something. And of course that's after the fact. You just want a pure nothing and you're just going to duplicate it many times, and that's a perfect communication.

All right. We have then Step III. Now, we have the individual hold the two back corners of the room. We just have him sit there and hold on to the two back corners of the room. He sort of puts a beam out of wherever he is to each one of the two back corners of the room. And believe me it's the back corners of the room. It's not the front corners of the room, and it's just two of them, it's not four or six or eight. It's just two back corners of the room, and he simply holds on to those, and it's very important that he sit there and not think. And you tell him to do this, just sit there and don't think. And you have him do that from two minutes to two hours.

There's many a preclear has simply exteriorized after holding on to the two back corners of the room for a couple of hours. Now, what happens when it's not think? Well you see, he's been trying to think, the impulse is to think, to think, to think, to think, to figure, figure, figure, figure, figure, and you've just put the brakes on that impulse and you just reverse that flow. You just have him sit there comfortably and not think. And that is all there is to the third step.

Now, let's get into the fourth step. Well, now in 8-D itself the fourth step is a problem in universes. It is separating out various universes. There is a prime axiom here, „Any universe is subject to the postulates of the god of that universe. And it's only subject to that god's postulates.“

So let's take Mother, we'll say Mother has a universe. All right, that universe is subject to Mother's postulates. You see that?

Now, there are three classes of universes: There's the preclear's own universe, there are other people's universes and there's the physical universe. Just like that, that's all there are, that's three classes. All right.

Now, that's all you need to be concerned with certainly. Now, we have the individual who is unable to change his own mind, is in the condition that he can't change his postulates. But are they his postulates? No, they're not. He is, you might say, in other universes than his own. If he were totally in his own universe, he would be able to change his postulates at will. Well, he can't do this, so let's fix him up so he can change his postulates. How would you get him to do this? Well, in 8-D one simply goes down the line and finds all the persons he's been associated with since birth, looks at the E-Meter, finds the biggest dives and simply asks two questions. He asks these two questions many, many times, over and over. First he asks many, many times, „Where would Mother be safe?“ And the other question is „Give me some things that Mother doesn't own.“ Those are the two questions and there aren't any other questions. You understand that? There aren't any other questions, and where this technique has fallen down, it is someplace where an auditor has gotten too unbearably fancy for words. He can't be this simple, you see. He's gotta ball it up somehow or another by saying, “All right now, let's get where communications from your mother would be safe.” No, no, no. „Where Mother would be safe.“ You see this? All right.

Now, „Give me some things Mother doesn't own.“ Now don't ask him, „Give me some things that Mother does own,“ because it's not true that Mother owns a single thing that he'll ever see, because the universe that he will see is his own universe. Even when he's looking at the physical universe, he is seeing his viewpoint of the physical universe, and that's what it is to him. Mother doesn't own any part of any of this. So let's ask the truth, „Give me some places where Mother would be safe.“ Of course, Mother would be safe anyplace because she isn't anyplace. Mother would be safe anywhere, actually, because, oh well, she would not necessarily be safe as Mother, a composite form in the face of death and so forth, but as far as a thetan, a life impulse or series of life impulses, she, of course, is safe anywhere. So let's ask the two truthful questions. One, „Where is Mother safe?“ And the other is „Give me some things Mother doesn't own.“ Well, that's 8… SOP 8-D; that's the way that's run, E-Meter technique.

Now, we're doing though SOP 8-DA which is a modification. Many, many years ago a fellow by the name of Sigmund Freud adventured into the field of psychotherapy and established the factors of association, and many other things. He was a very, very brilliant man, and in 1894 he broke away from his earlier companions of philosophy and established a theory known as the libido theory. This libido theory stated that sex was the trouble with everything. Well, of course, his conclusions on this to us are very, very remarkable. They're very far afield, they're much too complex for our use. Nevertheless, in its finest essence this is essentially true for a certain level of case.

Let's look at a scale. Know deteriorates into look, look deteriorates into emotion, emotion - condenses, you might say each time, too - condenses into effort, effort condenses into thinkingness, thinkingness condenses into symbols (because symbols are just packages of thought), and symbols condense into eating, and eating condenses into sex.

A demonstration of this is you want to take a family of rats. Psychology did, by the way, contribute one thing to mankind. Psychology is a nineteenth-century subject, it originated and came to its peak in the nineteenth century. It originated this fact that you could experiment with rats. No further rationale about it, but you could experiment with rats. And it's found this out, and actually let's look this over and amongst the field of rats, let's just avoid being logical and looking at human beings because it's observable there, too. And we find out that if we take a family of rats and reduce their food to a point where they're almost starving that they'll start breeding like mad.

Let's look at India, and find out that there's very little food in India and there's a terrific amount of breeding. Where you reduce the ability of the individual to survive, you get a reliance upon sex. Next generation. Everybody starts passing in his checks and saying, „Well, see you in the next generation.“ Unending stream of protoplasm. Let's abandon these units right here. Let's just make sure that there's plenty of protoplasm lying up there and we'll survive someplace else some other day. And therefore you get sex at the bottom of all this.

Now, he studied this lower level and had a tendency to try to condense and compress everything into this lower level. It doesn't all compress there because knowingness is not resident in sex, and symbols are not resident in sex, and eating is not resident in sex, or anything else; but all of these things can be found there. Let's find the biggest point of irrationality in the entire culture of today, however, and let's look at sex and find out that sex is the point of entrance in any case that you're going to have trouble with. And SOP 8-D is something that is applicable to any and all cases, but it will still take a long time on the case that's having an awful time of it.

Instead of this, let's take one which is dedicated to the roughest case of all, but which will work on any case. It will work on any case but it's dedicated to the roughest case of all, and that's SOP 8-DA, real rough. And let's enter this Know to Sex Scale at the level of sex. Of course, you know there are solid massive steel objects below sex, and you'll find a lot of cases you have to solve those with. But if you run into a case that's that rough, why, you just better do Advanced Course Procedure, and let it go at that.

But let's take these cases that are occluded, that are hanging fire, and let's discover something very peculiar about these cases. Let's find out that if other things won't break them up one way or the other that SOP 8-DA will.

All right, what is Step IV then of SOP 8-DA? It asks just one question. „Where would (blank) be safe?“ It's the only question it asks. „Where would (blank) be safe?“ Now, what do you put in blank? And by the way, it isn't „Where would a communication line to (blank) be safe? Where would (blank) affinity be safe? Where wouldn't little curlicues on this question be safe?“ No, no, no. It's „Where would (blank) be safe?“ That's all, that's the total question: „Where would (blank) be safe?“ - unvaried, unvarying.

Blank is this list: semen, ovum, wombs, male genitals, vaginas, embryos, fetuses, birth and infants. End of list, and I do mean end of list.

Now, this is worked just a little bit different in that there isn't any real use to search these up on an E-Meter. If your case isn't exteriorizing very easily, he is depending utterly upon the biological line for his continued survival. So let's just bust the unending stream of protoplasm. Let's just cut the Gordian knot at center with this. You understand there can be cases that are tougher than this, cases that are being solid objects. They are way over here in the physical universe bracket. Don't try to run this on a nuclear physicist; it probably won't work. He has no more concept of procreation… As a matter of fact their wives find this out rather rapidly. That's a horrible nasty thing to say, but they're not totally emasculated, they're merely ohmified.

You can exceed this, in other words, but this technique will still work upon them and still produce a considerable effect. Won't solve the case all the way out, you see, but it will produce quite an effect on the individual because you've stepped back up a little bit above him and you've processed him up to where they can think about sex.

All right. Let's take that list which I just gave you and run it in this fashion. We ask the individual where ovums would be safe and where sperm would be safe. Now you ask him, „Now give me some places where sperm would be safe, and give me some places where ovums would be safe.“ If he doesn't know what an ovum is, you tell him it's a female egg. And if he doesn't know what semen is, why, you find out what his colloquial name for it is.

Now, you just ask him one or the other because the funny part of it is that these things are somewhat alternately safe. You know, he'll look all around and he won't be able to find any place where ovums are safe. But you ask him, „Well all right, where's a place where some semen is safe?“ „Oh, right there,“ see. You know, the two things are so identified that you can't take one all the way out of the problem. In other words, you're really dealing with a tremendous biological identification here. You can't keep asking, „Well now, where's another place semen would be safe? And where's another place semen would be safe? And another place semen would be safe? And another place,“ because you're going to hang up on ovum. So this is best run then on an E-Meter. And you don't even have to review the list on the E-Meter, ask about Papa, Mama or anything else. But you're giving him an E-Meter, waiting for it to stick. And when it sticks, why, he's hung up on something or other there and let's just shift on to one of the other items and work it until all of these items produce a completely free needle. That's how long you work that list.

You start in with the semen and ovums, and after he's worked this for a little while you'll be quite astonished, by the way, to find out in a man who's having a great deal of difficulty, that ovums and semen are only safe injected into his own body. Totally irrational, isn't it? You find out that his own genitals… it's not safe in his own genital area. It's just safe in his own stomach or something. You know, I mean this is real fouled up. He swapped communication lines with too many females.

Actually, this man got into trouble with women, and this woman got into trouble with men, and there's been too much cross references between the two, because a man talking to a woman is not duplicating and she isn't duplicating him. They're different sexes and different forms and different heights and different smells and different ambitions and everything else, you see. And these two don't duplicate worth a nickel. Facing each other, they get very fixed on this necessity to duplicate the son of a bitch because you just can't grr-nnn. You just don't understand what you're talking about. I mean people are frantic on this subject. Why? Well, a male body doesn't duplicate a female body, so a communication line is immediately interrupted. This is the finest little booby-trapping mechanism you ever saw in your life. Naturally, sooner or later a man starts to think of himself as a woman, a woman starts to think of himself as a man… herself as a man. Yeah, you get the darnedest confusions. If you want to run a concept on this sometime, just get the idea of duplicating women. Ask some preclear to do this and he'll get more automaticity in his field than you care to look at. Try to match terminal the idea of communicating with women. It flies all over the place.

However, that's not good processing. This is good processing. You just keep on asking him where semen would be safe, where ovums would be safe and where wombs would be safe and male genitals safe and where female vaginas would be safe, and we just go on down the list with using those first items, you know.

And then we find out that we've moved into another category. We've moved into the category of wombs. „Where are these things safe?“ and there is his occlusion, see. Because in essence most of these people, a lot of their blackness is simply stuck in a prenatal as we've known for an awful long time.

How to get him out of it though? All right, this is how you get him out of it. So here's your „Where are wombs safe?“ And this goes on like this, more and more of them, and then check every once in a while to find out if you've picked up new needle action on semen and ovums and things like that. And for heaven sakes, get it safe until he can at least get thousands and thousands of miles away from his body with perfect action. I mean, he can spot a spot thousands of miles from his body for semen, because for the first long while in processing when it comes to semen and ovums and so on it will be right inside his body or just exactly on the surface he will get such a thing as „An individual sperm would be safe if it were halfway into my face.“ You know, but it's right up here close.

All right, let's get it broad. Let's get it so that he can spot these things as safe just all over the MEST universe. See, you can just get them safe all over the place. Now, in spotting places where they would be safe, remember if you're going to steer in any direction, steer in the direction of spotting spots in space, where they will be safe. Okay?

We have, then, in essence with that list, something that breaks up these cases, and where it doesn't completely break the case, it takes the pressures and tensions off of the case. Pressures and tensions come off of the case, because quite ordinarily a case which is stuck in a lower bracket can still run this, and you would have a tendency to do this before you would do a lower bracket case.

Now, what's the lower bracket case from this? It's the fellow who can only be solid objects, like steel objects, like rocks and things like that, planets. A fellow who can only be these things. He can't be any living organism of any kind. He can be these solid things. What would you do in that case? The way to break him out of one that he's being in obsessively is just ask him to point out places where thetans would be safe. His understanding that a thetan is nothing, in terms of mass, and his effort as the solid object to communicate with nothing will break him down into apathy. Why? Because he's a solid object communicating with a nothingness. And he keeps doing this and it just simply will bust up this energy shell.

Now, you'll find another manifestation in here that you mustn't overlook, is… any preclear you have has a tremendous scarcity of semen, ovums, wombs and so forth, so be prepared at any time if he starts to get gasping, weak or sick at his stomach to remedy his havingness. You are just running „Where are semen safe? Where would some semen be safe?“ And he's starting to get a little sick. Recognize that getting sick as havingness trouble and have him just mock up lots of semen and pour it into himself; lots of ovums and pour them into himself; and so forth. In other words, remedy his havingness if he gets sick. But even if you didn't do that, you would still come out with the process. And that is SOP 8-DA.

Thank you.