Today I would like very much to talk to you about some sundry common denominators to human behavior and activities. Some of these are more comprehensible than others.

The first and foremost of the common denominators of human behavior is "survive." There is no arguing with this after all these years. And after all now, it's been lots of years — twenty, thirty, pretty near — since that concept was first to some degree established. And it has been very, very well established for about fifteen years, and it's been holding very constantly in Dianetics and Scientology, even up till now.

Now, the only advance there's been on this common denominator is that there are two other facets to it. And that is the original curve or cycle of action. The first place we see this cycle of action is way back in the early days of the Veda.

We have a description of the cycle of action, which is: All things proceed from nothing, and then they are born into a somethingness, and then they grow and finally they start to decay, and die. And that is the cycle of action. Actually, in Scientology we have a much better description of that: create, persist, destroy. And this could be create, survive, destroy. In other words, survival also belongs — as well as standing by itself — it also belongs on this more descriptive curve.

This curve is apt enough that you will occasionally get a preclear, and knowing nothing but the fact that human behavior has as its common de-nominator survival, and that it has also its cycle of action, you could do a great deal for a case.

You -could do something like this: You could mock up a fellow falling dead. And mock him up falling dead, mock him up falling dead, mock him up falling dead. You just have him do this, you know, lot of times. You've ended cycle for him. He's arrived. He has managed to accomplish death.

Now, sometimes he has intended death for people and has never finished his cycle of action. So you have him mock his mother up dead and mock her up dead and mock her up dead. Or his father, or something like this.

To give you some kind of an idea of the workability of this End-of-Cycle Processing, which is what it is called, I had a preclear come in one time, and all this old girl could do was simply sit there and say how happy she would be when I finally accomplished her demise. That's real cute, isn't it? Preclear's sitting in your office giving you the full responsibility for knocking her off.

You were supposed to knock her off. And she wanted to be separate from her body so she could fly away and thus die more easily.

Well, I fixed her clock for her. I simply ran End-of-Cycle on her death. You see, I had her mock herself up dead and mock herself up dead and mock herself up dead and mock herself up dead and mock herself up dead.

I did this for about fifteen or twenty minutes and that was the end of that obsession. That finished the obsession, and then we could continue with some auditing and get somewhere.

The majority of preclears who come to you are actually on the succumb curve. And whereas they will tell you that they would be very, very happy to improve and get better, their actual goal is to succumb.

Now, any preclear occupies some position on this curve of create, persist, destroy. A preclear is always someplace on that curve. He can be located on that curve in this interesting and rather intricate fashion: If he is able to get three-dimensional visio, he is on the create side of the curve — somewhere along there, to the degree that he can get three-dimensional visio. If his visio is just media-media, well, he's on the survival end of it. But if he's over on the destruction side, his visio is flat. And if it's clear on over very close to destruction, it is nonexistent. That's real cute, isn't it? I mean, you can just actually spot him exactly.

Why? Because in creation you have lots of space, that's all. And one of the first things that creation requires is space. And the thing which survival requires is conversion — conversion of energies to energies, to forms, to other forms; you know, conversion — and necessarily, conversions are not particularly flat or . . . They're not either destructive or creative; they're simply just there.

So a fellow never really notices whether or not he has good three-dimensional visio or not. It's sort of — you know, it's not completely flat, it's not . . . You know. That's right in the center.

And you go down on over into the destruction end of the curve and the three-dimensional character becomes two-dimensional, and then becomes nonexistent as you hit destruction.

This is not very important, what I am telling you. It's one of these thou-sands of phenomena which I've unearthed, of one kind or another. But it hap-pens to be a common behavior pattern amongst all preclears that you will process. They'll be someplace on that curve.

You could say, then, that the first common denominator to all of existence was survival. And this survival breaks down into the eight dynamics. And you should know these dynamics very well because you use them, every now and then, in processing.

The dynamics, of course, are so well known that some people don't know them. And the first dynamic is the dynamic of self. The second dynamic is the dynamic of sex. Third dynamic is the dynamic of .. .

Well, what do we mean by dynamic? We mean the urge toward survival for that particular sphere of existence.

Third dynamic: groups.

Fourth dynamic: mankind.

Fifth dynamic: animals.

Sixth dynamic: physical universe — meaning matter, energy, space and time.

Seventh dynamic: spirits.

And eighth dynamic: infinity. Properly named infinity; infinity turned upright makes 8, and we can say — in the field of religion, when we're talking to people that we do not have to be too exact to — we can say this is the dynamic of God.

But here are your eight dynamics, and that merely comes into this category here of survival. And actually, if you looked at each one of these dynamics, you would find that each one of those had, as well as survival, the rest of the curve. They would also have create and destroy as part of them.

So there's the creation and destruction on the second dynamic. There is creation and destruction on the third dynamic, you see. It is the urge or the cycle of action.

So we could then plot our eight dynamics in this fashion: We could say the first dynamic — a total statement of the first dynamic — would be the urge toward creation, persistence and destruction of self.

In this universe, in this time, it happens to be — the emphasis happens to be — on persistence. And so we have survival as the most apparent urge. But remember we have creation and destruction there.

Now, the fellow who is always trying to mock up these fancy tales of what he is and how many titles he has, and all kinds of odds and ends and bric-a-brac about — that aren't true particularly. He's merely trying to create himself, you see.

And the fellow who goes around and commits robberies and burglaries, and leaves clues on the scene, he is simply trying to destroy himself. And so we have an urge toward destruction.

Now, the dynamics become very, very comprehensible if we recognize these other factors. They become very comprehensible. Instead of just specializing in survive, we take into account create and destroy. And therefore we get the urge of a group to create, the urge of a group to destroy.

But the predominant urge at this time, in this universe, happens to be to survive, to persist. That is its emphasis. It doesn't wipe out, however, the create and destroy part of that third dynamic, you see.

Similarly, in the Old Testament you read perpetually, continuously, and forever and aye, about the creative and destructive instincts of the eighth dynamic: Yahweh.

Boy, he was the author of the whole universe. He built the whole thing in six days. " 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord." He destroyed all the sinners and he brought on the flood. And he was a busy fellow, just in general, looking over his activities.

But these activities were observably survive. You see, the eighth dynamic was surviving, simply because it is obviously going along with this universe. See, this universe persistence would be the persistence of endeavor of the eighth dynamic.

Now, there's the creative and destructive instinct which goes on either side of it.

The cycle of action then expands into the eighth dynamic. And if we recognize this, a great deal of understanding of existence will take place.

Now somebody, somewhere along the line dropped in a word there, and said that there was another principle of existence known as "evolve." No, that does not belong there and is not supposed to … It wouldn't do anything to amplify it if we understand survival.

Survival depends, in this universe, upon conversion. Let's understand this real well. Let's understand survive real well. It's persistence. This, of course, takes into account the time factor.

Now the time factor, as it goes on through the line, naturally is some kind of a uniform agreement of rate of change of position of particles in space. That's time. It's no more than this. It's merely a consideration which is agreed upon, that there will be this much rate of change. And therefore, this consistent rate of change gives us this manifestation — survival.

All right, as we look over this rate of change, we discover that the entire universe seems to be a coordinated thing. It seems to be very coordinated. Well, how is it maintaining this rate?

This universe actually frowns upon creativeness. It also frowns upon destructiveness. This universe has as its motto: "Status Quo." It's rather interesting that it's so insistent upon persistence — tremendous emphasis on survival.

This is the one point that can be isolated and very readily understood. There's this tremendous emphasis. Well now, how is this survival taking place?

We see by the conditions of existence — which you will learn about in your Professional Course tapes and so on; the conditions of existence, which happen to be as-isness, alter-isness, isness, not-isness — these four conditions of existence require a continuous alter-isness (in other words, change of position of particles in space) in order to get an isness.

Now, somebody said the other day here that actuality was truth. Well, no. Actuality is isness. Isness requires alter-isness in order to get a persistence, you see. Things have to alter their position in space — continuous alteration of position in space.

And that is the motto of this universe. Alteration of position in space, on and on and on and on and on — new position, new position, new position, new position.

And when something really goes into apathy, when something really goes into apathy, it sits down and becomes a tree. And then when it's so far below apathy that you couldn't even measure it, it's a rock. See, it's real solid. Change of position in space.

And when it's no longer able to change the position of form in space, well, it figures it's more or less arrived, see, it's there — but it's dead! The fact that it has arrived tells it it's dead. And so they behave in this fashion.

A tree is not quite arrived. It can still change position in space. How? By throwing out seeds which get blown by the wind and get planted some place else, or buried by squirrels, or something of the sort. So a tree can even change position in space. But not a rock, except in the case, of course, of volcanic upheaval. It apparently doesn't change position in space. But at the same time, the rotation of the planet is changing the position in space of the rock continuously. The orbit of the sun is changing the position of every particle here on earth.

And so we get — even though we've reduced it to an apparent immobility — we still get this tremendous dizzying motion which goes on in this universe: change of position of particles in space. And this alone measures up what persistence is. So the woof and warp of survival would be the regularity with which position was changed in space. It's as simple as that. Survival is then accomplished by change of position in space.

Well now, in view of the fact that nothing in this universe can remain … Let's see, the most ancient statement on this is a Greek — Anaxagoras, I think — who said a mixture which is not shaken stagnates. You know, a mixture which is not shaken stagnates.

Anything which ceases moving in this universe — totally ceases moving in this universe — becomes nothing. It's an interesting fact. It would disappear utterly if it stopped moving. If you could totally stop its motion, it would no longer be in this universe.

Well, this is then the top and the bottom of the Tone Scale. You could go out the bottom, you know, by stopping moving utterly, and be free — people think; never saw it done — or go out the top and become a thetan who has no location in space.

See, he's not located in space except where he says he's located in space. You know, he says, "I'm here," so he's here. You know? He has no fixed position in space and he doesn't have to accomplish a rate of change.

Well now, in between these two things you get a continuous conversion. Let's not confuse it too much with the conservation of energy.

Do you know what conservation of energy is? Were you unlucky enough to have this taught to you arduously in your physics class?

It is taught in this universe that nothing diminishes and nothing in-creases, it only converts. Conservation of energy.

If you were to burn a piece of paper, you would obviously no longer have a piece of paper, would you? But the physicist convinces you utterly and completely that if you were to weigh the ash and were to condense and weigh the smoke and — he's never done this, by the way — weigh the smoke and particles which escaped, and if you were to take the heat and take the mass of all these things, put them all together, you'd have the same weight as the weight of the paper.

In other words, although you burned the paper, actually no particle or atom or electron or molecule of that piece of paper altered in the slightest degree. You can conserve energy — energy is conserved — but energy is neither created nor destroyed.

This hogwash is a major pile of ties across the railroad track of nuclear physics. Nuclear physics has found such things as holes in space. And they knock an electron through a hole in space and get back two electrons, you know. And they knock another one in and get two more.

And something around here seems to be creating electrons. And every-body says, "Well, it probably can all be reduced down to conservation of energy." But the point is, they haven't so reduced it.

Now, this is observable where life is concerned — that as long as life goes on being creative and creating, it is progressing, it is healthy, it is happy, it is well. And when it ceases to create and simply begins to convert energy, it really ceases to be very happy. It's sort of doggedly in there, you see — persistently, doggedly converting, converting, converting, converting.

And when it gets over to the other end of it, of destruction on the thing as a goal, and so on, it always will destroy itself.

When life starts in with a destructive motif — whether it's that expressed by Hitler, or that expressed by scorpions, or that expressed by any other thing which is all out for survival on the first or second dynamic, you know, or the third dynamic; and very, very down on any other survival — the second it begins to specialize in destruction, it cannot do otherwise than uniformly decay on all dynamics, and will destroy itself.

This is an interesting thing, that the dynamics act as a unity. This is one thing which is common in behavior of life, is the dynamics act as a unity, and something is as bad off as it is acting in disunity with the rest of life. And this is the optimum solution. The greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics is the optimum solution.

You can actually sit down and almost mathematically plot the right decision to make. And if you plot it on the basis "the greatest amount of good on the greatest number of dynamics" — in other words, the most survival for the most dynamics — why, you will have something close to an optimum solution. Now, that's solving problems by survival.

All right, the conservation of energy is that process by which you take an energy in one form and put it into another form. It translates this.

Now, in view of the fact that you have no such thing in this universe as a perfect converter … There's always heat loss. As an example of this, a steam engine burning coal — a railroad engine, rather, burning coal — has as its factor of efficiency about 9 percent in cold weather.

In other words, only 9 percent of the available heat in that coal ever goes into the driving wheels of the locomotive. That means that 91 percent of the heat and fuel, which was made available by coal, is lost.

A transformer comes very, very close to being a good converter, but there is still heat loss in a transformer — so that you put in 110 volts at one end and get out 220 at the other end, you should theoretically, you see, get just exactly the same voltage and amperage, you know, converted. You know, there ought to be the same power in the line, but there isn't. There is a heat loss. And everywhere we look through this universe we find heat losses or some similar loss.

Let's look that over very, very carefully. Because right there is the whole snag, hook and sump of human behavior — right there.

Survival: In order to survive without creating or without destroying — to any excess, you see — you would have to engage uniformly in conversion. And if no new energy came from anywhere, life would deteriorate and perish, and does deteriorate and perish unless it adds new energy to the form continuously.

No matter how many pigs you ate, or cows, chickens or goats, you still would not be able to burn the amount of energy, you see, completely, or use that energy. If we look at the human body like a conversion mechanism, we will see that there is an enormous loss in growing a pig and eating him. The actual BTU of that pig will never arrive in the driving legs of the body — there'd be loss; going to be loss all over the place. And when life ceases to create, this loss eventually adds up throughout the whole conversion system of a race or species — or all life, let us say, on a planet — and destroys it.

You are looking at planet earth right now on a dwindling spiral — a rapid dwindling spiral — whereby, for instance, the oxygen content of the air is dropping steadily. Why? Well, too much conversion, too little creation.

It's almost as though life gets obsessed after a while, like Schopenhauer became obsessed, and says, "We've got to stop all this. We've got to stop life." Well, the way to stop it is to stop creating, and to stop the people in life and the things in life which create.

This is an interesting thing. Germany will never be the same with the Hebrews decimated. Because the main creative lines carried on in Germany were carried on by the Jews — whatever Hitler said. He robbed a nation of its artistic or musical creativeness to a very marked extent.

This is fully as damaging as getting the nation knocked apart by war. Now, we're over there right now, making very sure that the German people, who know the German people … You know, it's always a benefit in government, you know. You should have a government knowing something about the people it's governing.

And right now, they have it so rigged — these various unit commands, and so on — have it so rigged, that it would be impossible for the German people actually to make any decisions for the German people or do anything forward for them.

They have that nation very, very sharply stopped. The rubble lies all over the streets. It's an amazing mess — it's rails, and so on. It's amazing that it has done anything at all. Because they're making sure that the German people don't govern the German people. And nobody else is complicated enough, ponderous enough, in order to figure out the problems that are peculiarly German and get the wheels of that civilization moving again. So there's another thing, you see.

Any creative instinct in the field of government . . . Let's say we will mock up a new plan by which Germany can then progress and live, you see. That is just cut right straight off. There is none of that.

This is not a criticism of military government. This is simply a forth-right observation of the activities of Allied control at the present time in Germany — not read by Gunther, but looked at.

And the German people say, "Oh, if they would … if they would just .. . if they would just ask somebody who used to be on the traction board, we could then get our streetcars running again. If they'd just ask somebody why they don't run." Instead of doing that, why, the present Allied government puts up a sign and it says, "The streetcars will all run by Thursday." And there's no street-cars by Thursday.

You see, it has to do with a number of very, very obtuse and strictly Germanic factors. In other words, here the impulse to solve the existing problems, you see, the impulse to carry forward the proper conversions inside the nation (I'm not beating the drum for Germany; I'm just showing you what can happen) — the proper conversion mechanisms are not being followed, you see: the governmental plan going into action, people do this and they do that, and that carries forward.

So there's a tremendous loss in that nation right now, you see. There's that huge loss taking place all the time. So these conversions of the energies of the German people into the restoration of the German nation, that loss there is so gigantic that nothing at the present time could rise up and give it sufficient creative impulse, you see, to pull it all together again — unless they simply turn it back, at least, to the German people.

The introduction of "stopping arbitraries": Here we have a nation which is terribly interested in the growth of food — here in the United States — very, very interested, you hear, about the growth of food, and this and that. The U.S. is doing perfectly all right, except for a half a dozen things.

They write big articles about timber conservation in the Saturday Evening Post and the Republican Party annuals and things like that, and then they don't bother to do a darn thing about it.

If you went up to the Northwest and asked the big timber barons about their timber conservation, they would turn you over to a boy who was fully informed on this subject, and he would show you more maps whereby recutting would be accomplished in another sixteen years, and charts, and oh, the most terrific stuff you ever saw in your life — none of it in effect. Not one scrap of it in effect. No timber conservation program is going forward in the Northwest. But a lot of talk is going on about it. Well, as a consequence, there's only one stand of timber left — Alaska. That's the last stand of timber that is inside U.S. territories.

Well, what's this got to do with survival? It's got a lot to do with survival. Nobody's letting those trees create new trees. You see that? They can do a lot of talk about it because the public expects it.

I'm not beating the drum, again, for conservation. I'm just showing you how this thing can get derailed. People have nagged them about conservation. And so they say, "Yes, yes. We have conservation programs." But they don't have conservation action.

Compare this to an activity that takes place in France. If you cut a tree down in France, I think you have to plant two, at least. And here in the United States, the rainfall, and so on, and the conversion of oxygen and of carbon dioxide, and so forth, is all dependent on the amount of trees, not the amount of lake surface, or something, you have in the country. An acre of trees puts back into the air tremendous quantities of water, compared to an acre of water.

So, here we have all this timber, you see, and grasslands, and so forth, which have been wiped out. Now, there's nothing replacing it. And if you look around very carefully, you'll find we're eating up the animal from tail to horns. The heat loss is catching up, see — the loss along this conversion.

If we go solidly and continually on the basis of conversion then, the losses and waste will whip the whole thing. You've got to create new energy as far as life is concerned. New energy has to be created, new activities have to be engaged on in order for anyone to win at all. And that is not what is taking place at the present time.

Here you have a nation increasing continuously in its food consumption. And here you have a soil getting more and more tired, less and less animals, less rainfall, and other factors.

It'll go by fits and starts. You know, things will look a little better this year than last year — and then so on, and so on. But you'll find out the aver-age productiveness of this nation would be declining.

Why? Well, it's because they're so sold on the idea of conservation of energy and the conversion of energy — so terrifically sold on this, and so completely ignorant of the creation of energy or even the destruction of energy. See, these things are out of gear. Life is a peculiar thing. It forms and makes certain kinds of energy.

Now, the common denominator as far as the whole race is concerned is that it slides along as a whole race somewhere along the cycle of action, and as a unit race could be considered to be — or a unit planet — could be considered to be somewhere between create and destroy, see; somewhere on that cycle.

And when it gets exactly pinpointed dead center on survival — without any creation or without any destruction — it has no other action but to go on over into destroy. It can't help but slide over the border — because of these heat losses.

So lets take a preclear who believes that he will be able to eat up and convert energy from outside sources to a sufficient degree to survive. He cannot survive! The second he makes up his mind that he is totally de-pendent on conversion and can safely depend upon conversion of energy, he immediately slides over in toward destruction. The most unstable point on the curve is exactly in the center of survive or persist.

If an individual is doing nothing but persist, he will be destroyed. And this is the one conclusion and prediction that you can make that will be common to all life forms. They have to be over on the creative side in order to maintain a survival. They have to be over here on the creative side to maintain survival because the second they're on survival dead center, they are doing nothing but convert. And the losses involved in conversion are such that they slide immediately into destruction.

You see that? It's an unstable point, this thing called survive, if it is not aided and abetted by creation. Therefore, we take — let's be more intimate — let's take the Foundations. Nothing was being created in the Foundations for two and a half years. A forty-two thousand mailing list . . . A thirty-five hundred membership dwindled to a hundred and thirty-four people.

Because it was simply trying to subsist on what was already there. See, it's tried to subsist on what is there. It tries to convert the existing product without any new introduction of anything, see, without any creative impulse going into this line.

Even a creative impulse in the form of sales, or anything of this character, would have been good. But instead of that, they even dropped out some of the things that were already posed in the line. And so, although all the materials were there, although there was really nothing else there but what had been there, well, with the greatest of ease it simply ate itself up.

And every time you find a preclear in bad shape, you are facing some-body who is eating himself up. He has decided "I am John Jones and John Jones is a surveyor." Tuh, tuh. Won't work! Won't work! Never has, never will.

See what he's decided? He's decided to sit exactly in the middle of survive. Now, he's going to convert, and he's going to follow the laws of conservation of energy. In other words, he's in total agreement with this universe.

He has been educated as a surveyor. He has been given the name John Jones. And now people are going to walk up to him and ask him to survey certain areas. You see this? They're going to ask him to … And he, being John Jones, a surveyor, is going out and survey these areas. And he will be very successful and live to a ripe, old age. No, he won't. He might live to be seventy, but what's that? Let's look under this for the secret, actually, of old age.

But let's look at this setup with a very critical eye here to find out if we might not have our finger very close to — what do they call them — geriatrics. Beautiful name. Obscures … Ha-ha! They always get these beautiful names to obscure the fact that nobody knows anything on the subject — so much so, that I throw these things aside, even to the point of forgetting them just so I'll be sure someday to know something about it.

Here again we have named something, and we do not add to it or create anything in it.

All right, here's John Jones. If he does not continue to create, at least create new business, he'll perish one way or the other. He's at least got to create that much. He's got to go out and beat the sidewalks or something of the sort, or ring doorbells or send out direct mailings.

Well, he wouldn't survive very well really, though, even then, would he? He's just simply being John Jones some more, and so on.

No, I'm afraid that he tries to solve it, if he solves this at all, by maybe taking up a hobby. You know, he just leaves the whole problem of survival.

That will now take care of itself — conservation of energy. "This is a community of eighteen thousand people. There are so many surveys have to be made to keep these people happy, and this will always hurr-hrm-hrr — and I will survive." No, they never survive when they've begun to be dependent upon any standard conversion line.

Let's go in a little more definitely into this, and let's look at what con-version really is. Here's electrical energy being converted into mechanical energy; electrical energy converting into heat; heat converting into electrical energy; mechanical energy converting into electrical energy; mechanical energy converting into heat — cat chasing its tail all the way around, in other words.

Now, how is this done? We have a power plant down here, and this power plant has a wide-open maw, and they open the door and they either throw in coal or they turn on a valve and shoot in fuel oil. And this fuel oil goes roarroar-roar-roar-roar, and that turns on and heats up some water. And the steam then goes into some Curtis turbines, probably, and that turns some big dynamos. And that puts positive — negative impulses into an electrical current. And it comes down here and it winds this clock round and round. Just as easy as that.

Well, that's just fine. Only there's a loss all the way along the line. Now, what was fed in there for fuel? Let me call your attention to that: what was fed into that furnace for fuel? A bunch of fish or a bunch of ferns, once upon a time, decided that they had arrived. They had a good form. They were doing right. They could now depend upon conversion of energy all the way along the line. And they're now lying there a mile below the surface in a heavy, black mass.

And that heavy, black mass, whether oil or coal, is mined or pumped, and that is now put into a furnace. And you find the present race eating up the energy-created deposits of the last many million years. And eating them up all at a gulp.

How many million years did it take these fish to develop that many ridges? Hm? And that much pressure of earth … And now all of a sudden we get very mechanically minded and, swish, we dig them all up, see. We dig up these solidified ridges and we throw them in a furnace. And then with numerous heat losses manage to do a vital operation like turning around the hands of a clock so we'll know what time it is.

Curious business, isn't it? Doesn't look to me like we are on the center there of conversion of energy — there being no such thing as a 100 percent conversion of energy. You can't ever convert 100 percent of energy into any other kind of energy, or use it.

But it looks to me, then, that sometime or another there's going to have to be an awful long time intervene again before this much fuel comes. Ah, you say, "atomic fission." Oh, yes, atomic fission. Now, that's the stuff. You see, after you've run out of all the coal and oil, why, then you've got atomic fission.

Okay, so you've got atomic fission. Atomic fission, whether you believe the Atomic Energy Commission or not, will still depend, to some degree, upon peculiar and special types of mineral of which there are very small sup-plies, and which again are the result of conversions of energy in Lord-knows-what form and in Lord-knows-what chain of conversion, down to a point of where the energy itself is made so unstable as it's about to leave this universe, or something of the sort; and if you ignite it or slap it together, like plutonium, you have simply made it to the bottom of the spiral.

Okay. So we have a good time, we get clear down to the bottom of the spiral and we find out how we can explode a rock. And this rock can then heat up water, and here we go again.

There are very limited quantities of uranium. You don't suppose if the U.S. government had solved uranium that they would now be paying such fabulous prices for uranium. There isn't much of it.

I'm sure that they have managed to conserve this energy all the way along the line. But the main point I'm making here is, yeah, they got a new thing — with a limited amount of it, see.

Well, when they get through that they will always be able to resort to something else, won't they.

This is the whole dizzy, dizzy spiral — not of the civilization, but of a pre-clear. This preclear ran around and fell downstairs and grew and ate and created energy, and so forth, when he was a kid. And he got all these nice deposits and engrams and facsimiles out there. Now he gets to be about thirty, thirty-five, forty, somewhere along in this range, and he starts to eat up his engrams. That's what he does.

Instead of going out there and accumulating a few more, you know — let's create something. No, he wants to sit there in the middle of survive. And the second he decides to do that he goes downhill all the way along the line.

Because it's customary to stop moving around after a certain age in the society, we get a constancy for old age. See? You wouldn't have to have any other agreement than that "We are dignified, and we take everything casually, and we don't drive fast cars or anything like that anymore" after a certain age.

If we got an agreement like that we would immediately put a period on a life which will be rather uniform. Actually, it's not uniform. People do not age uniformly.

Here's this old buzzard at sixty tearing around the country and doing this and that. And this kid at twenty who has quit. I mean, you don't have a good comparison like this. You wonder what old buzzard of sixty might be doing this. Well, I call your attention to the old guy, Bernarr MacFadden. He did a parachute jump the other day into Niagara Falls — interesting old character.

But these people become something. This has a lot to do, you see, with this. They become something. And the somethingness which they become is an energy-conversion unit in which they have some faith, and so they continue to be the energy-conversion unit.

And a complete beingness could be described as an energy-conversion unit — the becoming of an energy-conversion unit. Now that is a successful, they think, survival identity.

And people who get into a failed survival identity … You know, this fellow is a janitor in this life and he is failing like mad. But he has these private dreams about this emperor, you know — if he were just an emperor, you know. And he kind of reads books on this subject, and so forth.

He's actually picking up a winning moment out of his past, see. Way back down the track a few million years ago on some planet or another, you see, he had a considerable prominence. And he is holding on to, and is chained by, a time when he was and had been a very successful conversion unit from his standpoint. Beingness could be said to be conversion-unit.

A person who is not obsessed with having to live off other existing energy does not have any trouble with being things. But a person who is obsessed at having to have other energies than his own to live, then becomes, not only obsessed, but he gets to be something and, boy, you can't blast him out of it with dynamite.

The degree that people can be things is the degree that they are, over there between create and destroy. You see, they're somewhere on that curve.

Well, you could say the cycle of action is the curve or gradient scale of the ability to be. And when they hit dead center on survival, the exact middle of the curve, they think they have hit an excellent conversion unit. Status: something that can convert energy.

You see, their presence or beingness or position or title or medals will bring them a certain amount of money which converts into a certain amount of food. And as long as they are this thing, they will continue to be able to convert energy — eat, in other words — and so act. That's a successful form.

Now, there's a lot of philosophy back of why the dinosaur is no longer with us. But he sure got the idea he was a successful form, and he didn't change for a long time. And when he did change, it was simply to disappear. He got up there to a successful form and there he is, gone.

You can say, then, that it is the opening chapter of death for a person to reach a successful form. A totally successful form is the first page open of the book of death. Because one can't stay on the middle of that curve. He's going to go over to the destroy side of the curve.

You have to create to some degree in order to live at all. Nobody can ever sit back and relax on this subject. He can never sit back and say, "Now I am something, and I have done this, and I am going to depend upon it from here on out." "On out" is what should have the emphasis.

Therefore, as you look at your preclear you are looking at somebody — if he is having any difficulty — who is a successful conversion unit.

Now let's take a look at some of the somatics of a preclear and find that they are timed. And this is a peculiar thing, the timing of a somatic. Some people have somatics which turn on at five o'clock. Some people have somatics that turn on very precisely in the morning. Some people have somatics that turn on between 1:00 and 2:00 at night. Some people have somatics that turn on regularly in the spring and the autumn.

These are interesting things, this cyclic behavior of somatics. And it would be a fabulous and mystifying thing unless we knew something about geology, biology and physics.

There was a little animalcule once upon a time known as a plankton. And every cell in your body has a history which goes into the sea. It has a history which takes it into the swamps and lakes, and to that period of time when it became dependent upon sunlight in order to survive.

And that is why you get a timed somatic. It's simply a dramatization, on a cellular level, of the pattern of "I can't survive without outside stimuli." Now, you've asked many times why these preclears go around with this totally black field. What good is a black field? Well, I'll tell you what good it is: It absorbs light, it will absorb photons and it is part of an energyconversion-unit pattern.

And to make somebody who is not creating get rid of a black field is to ask him to get rid of the very thing which will pick up photons, or heat units, in his environment and convert them for him. You've just got through asking him to get rid of a conversion unit.

One of the interesting things you can do is to have somebody mock him-self up coal black, out in space, so he'll absorb what light there is. And have him do it again and do it again and do it again. And then you will get a change in the black field. You'll get all kinds of wild changes in the black field.

There's another way to do this. You ask him to look around and spot things which are undergoing or being active in conversion. Let's spot mechanical, electrical, heat processes of energy conversion. Let's just look around and spot them. Look around and spot them. It's an interesting process.

You're asking the fellow to as-is out of existence, conversion units. And the funny part of it is, after he has done this for a little while, he will tell you rather independently that he could create something. You move him back up the track.

You show him that he is following the pattern and behavior of all of life as his main activity — you know, this life is all converting. Well, he's set down so he is converting. He's an energy-conversion unit. That's what a body is.

Now, think of the luckless thetan that gets into the middle of a body and depends upon the body to convert all of his energy — convert energy for him so he can live. Think of this guy. Isn't that an interesting state of mind to be in?

He sits in this body, which is a conversion unit, and without creating anything of his own he's going to subsist off this body. The body is just going to go bzzzn-bong.

The truth of the matter is the body can't exist unless it's pumped up. It's too much of a conversion unit. It requires creation in order to subsist — exist.

But what a thetan is doing in the first place, thinking that he has to get on some communication line and convert cause as it passes through to effect — you're always on a communication line — we're not quite sure what he's doing there, but it must have seemed like a good game at the time. It's the idea of he sets something up to run forever and then sits back to let it run. Of course, nothing like this will happen. What happens is it starts running him, and then it runs down and leaves him stuck with it. That's the course of action of such a thing.

So now, as we look over the common denominators of existence, we find out that a species is commonly — and that its forms are — commonly involved, and particularly involved, in the conversion of energy.

And we can predict how fast they will go over into the destroy field by discovering how much creativeness they permit. And where creativeness is permissible, we assume that they are not yet up to the center of survival, and so will not quickly pass over into destroy.

But where they are doing nothing but convert, they are either about to die or dying. And so it is with any preclear you're processing. If he has become totally a conversion unit, he will then be identified as having fixed beingness.

You'll find such a person with mass, meaning and mobility. But you will find him depending upon an orientation point like Mama. His body still remembers taking food while in Mama. Body still remembers being fed by Mama. And this recall, you might say, or habituation, will assume that Mama is the orientation point, and let the individual assume that he is simply a symbol. And he will go around converting energy like mad.

Actually, to furnish any energy to anything he would have to be an orientation point. He'd have to be a point from which he was looking and creating space.

Any symbol has to have an orientation point to run around. Mass, meaning and mobility is what a symbol has. But we could add something to that as far as its behavior was concerned. Any time you find something with mass, meaning and mobility, you will find it, in this universe, engaged in conversion — and not at all specializing in creation, but very often specializing in destruction.

So you get a whole level across a race, species, so forth, directly marked by the degree that they are creating and that they are being symbols.

Now, there isn't any particular reason anybody has to be or not be a symbol, as long as it's a game. There is nothing wrong about anything, except not knowing about it. That's what's wrong about something.

If a person is being a symbol, dancing on the puppet strings of some old orientation point — if you'll let me mix a couple of metaphors — the chances are this individual is depending upon the amount he can convert for his survival. He will be as healthy, as well, and so forth, as he can create for his survival. This is our main point of attack, then, when we try to understand people.

Now, we could level a lot of hard words. You'll notice I haven't been using hard words as we went along, but I'll use a few hard words now, and you will see how this fits in.

A condenser sitting in an electrical circuit is, of course, converting, one way or the other, energy from one part of the circuit to the other part of the circuit. Now we can simply say it's a converting unit of one kind or another, you see.

But there's a harder word that you could put there. It's parasitic. That condenser in that electrical unit is parasitic.

It is not adding anything to the unit. It is depending for its continued existence and activity on the circuit which it is adjacent to on either side, isn't it? And it's dependent in the final analysis upon the light plant down here, isn't it? And that is dependent in the final analysis upon a bunch of fish that mocked up some black ridges and collapsed and got buried and mined a few million years ago.

This begins to look interesting. It looks like we've got an after-the-fact. Life created once, and now again we can have a condenser being parasitic upon the creativeness of life millions of years ago.

Just trace anything down and you will get its ultimate, in terms of host. A parasite requires a host. Well, somewhere along the line there's a host. See this?

All right, as we look over the pattern of life, we find all through the society, to some degree or another, a person to be in communication with the rest of the society has to depend to some degree upon that interchange of energies, whether food or economics or social. He is depending to some degree upon that to get interest, as far as he's concerned — demand interest from him to get interest from that. In other words, there's going to be an interchange of some sort.

He is only in trouble when he gets to a point where he cannot live with-out. And when he can't live without something, he's in trouble — right there — because he has become parasitic, and the host is somebody else. In other words, you have other cause.

And every time something elects itself into a parasitic position in life, every time something does, it has elected something else cause. So we get to another process. There's an interesting process along with it, and that process is, simply have the individual either just think over and tell you or point out (however it would fit in) things he is making responsible.

You could say to this fellow, "Elect some causes for your condition." Same thing, you see. "Just what are you making responsible?" "Now, what's responsible for your being here?" is an auditing question which could be repeated over and over and over, with the fellow as-ising continually, as-ising. This is responsibility.

The fellow who is searching through his bank, endlessly, endlessly searching through his bank, is doing the thought-level dramatization which will become at length a conversion system. He's looking through the bank to find cause.

It's an engram that's cause, it's this that's cause, it's something else that's cause. It's cause. It's that mystery that's cause. It's the sun that's cause. It's this that's cause. It's that with cause. Something else is cause.

Eventually, this constant and continual running-fire of thought will simply become a solid, mechanical operation of conversion. He will simply .. . Instead of trying to find cause on a postulate level, he will start to take energy from. And he'll take energy from there and there and there and there and there and there.

And there are a lot of preclears that you're running simply on this kind of a level — that you'll run eventually. They've even stopped trying to find cause; they're just trying to find a new bank to drain some energy off of.

Now, we say that a preclear is as well off as he can accept responsibility. This is an old truism. Well, he's as well off as he can create. He can create as much as he can accept responsibility for. If he can accept responsibility for his life, and for being alive, why, he can create. If he can create then he can accept responsibility for. We can attack it either way.

And what is responsibility? Responsibility is the willingness to be cause. And trying to put responsibility on something else is the effort to make something else be cause.

One of the games a thetan plays continually is trying to make something else be cause. It's a very hard thing for him to do. It's so easy for him to be cause. It's real hard for him to get something else to be cause.

So we get shame, blame and regret. We get jammed banks; we get energy deposits, black ridges and coal mines.

When we look at all of life, we can understand it in the individual by the degree that he is creating and the degree that he is converting. We can under-stand the individual.

We know that if he's still creating, if he still has new beingnesses, if he's still developing, he'll win. And if we know he's gone over to where he's totally converting, we know that he has become a parasite. And he is nothing more in life than a parasite. And life will kick him around accordingly.

This is the most basic understanding of life there is — for this universe, and this time and place.

Okay.