A NEW SLANT ON LIFE (PART 1)

TABLE OF CONTENTS


IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE HAPPY?.............................................................1
THE TRUE STORY OF SCIENTOLOGY ....................................................3
TWO RULES FOR HAPPY LIVING..........................................................5
WHAT IS THE BASIC MYSTERY?...........................................................7
MAN’S SEARCH FOR HIS SOUL............................................................8
THE REASON WHY.............................................................................9
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?......................................................................12
THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE.........................................................14
MYTHS OF THE MIND.........................................................................15
HOW TO LIVE WITH CHILDREN............................................................17
ON MARRIAGE..................................................................................19
THE MAN WHO SUCCEEDS..................................................................20
ON THE DEATH OF CONSCIOUSNESS....................................................22
ACCENT ON ABILITY..........................................................................24
HONEST PEOPLE HAVE RIGHTS, TOO ...................................................26
ACCEPTANCE LEVEL..........................................................................28
CONFRONTING.................................................................................29
ON BRINGING ORDER........................................................................31
ON HUMAN CHARACTER....................................................................32
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.............................................................34
PLAYING THE GAME..........................................................................35
FREEDOM vs. ENTRAPMENT................................................................36
JUSTICE...........................................................................................39
THE VOCABULARIES OF SCIENCE........................................................41
HOW TO STUDY A SCIENCE.................................................................43
THE HUMAN MIND ............................................................................47
RECORDS OF THE MIND ARE PERMANENT ............................................51
COMMUNICATION............................................................................. 54


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IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE HAPPY?


Is it possible to be happy?

A great many people wonder whether half of us even exist in this modern, rushing
world. Very often an individual can have a million dollars, he can have everything his heart
apparently desires, and is still unhappy. We take the case of somebody who has worked all his
life; he has worked hard and he has raised a big family. He has looked forward to that time in
his life when he, at last, can retire and be happy and be cheerful, and have lots of time to do all
the things he has wanted to do; and then we see him after he has retired—and is he happy? No.
He’s sitting there thinking about the good old days when he was working hard.

Our main problem in life is happiness, but I’ll tell you more in a moment. The world
may or may not be designed to be a happy one. It may not be possible for you to be happy in
this world, and yet nearly all of us have a goal to be happy and cheerful about existence.

You know, very often we look at the world around us and say that nobody could be
happy in this place. We look at the dirty dishes in the sink, and the car needing a coat of paint,
and at the fact that we need a new gas heater, we need a new coat, we need new shoes or we
would just like to have better shoes; and so, how could anyone possibly be happy when
actually he can’t have everything he wants. He is unable to do all the things he’d like to do, and
therefore, this environment doesn’t permit a person to be as happy as he could be. Well, I’ll tell
you a funny thing—a lot of philosophers have said this many, many times—but the truth of the
matter is that all the happiness you ever find lies in you.

You remember when you were maybe five years old, and you went out in the morning
and you looked at the day, and it was a very, very beautiful day, and you looked at the flowers,
and they were very beautiful flowers; twenty-five years later you get up in the morning, you
take a look at the flowers—they are wilted. The day isn’t a happy day. Well, what has
changed? You know they are the same flowers, it’s the same world, something must have
changed. Probably it was you.

Actually a little child derives all of his “how” of life from the grace he puts upon life.
He waves a magic hand and brings all manner of interesting things into being out in the society.
Here is this big, strong brute of a man riding his iron steed, up and down, and boy, he’d like to
be a cop. Yes sir! He would sure like to be a cop; and twenty-five years later he looks at that
cop riding up and down and checks his speedometer and says, “Doggone these cops! “

Well, what is changed here? Has the cop changed? No. Just the attitude toward him.
One’s attitude toward life makes every possible difference in one’s living. You know you don’t
have to study a thousand ancient books to discover that fact. But sometimes it needs to be
pointed out again that fife doesn’t change so much as you.

Once upon a time, perhaps, you were thinking of being married and having a nice
home, and having a nice family; everything would be just fine. The husband would come home
and you would put the dinner on the table and everybody would be happy about the whole
thing; and then you got married and maybe it didn’t quite work out. Somehow or other, he
comes home late and he has had an argument with the boss, and he doesn’t feel well. He
doesn’t want to go to the movies, and he doesn’t see how you have any work to do anyhow—
after all, you sit home all day and do nothing—and you know he doesn’t do any work either.
He disappears out of the house.

He’s gone. Then he comes back later in the evening, and quite an argument could ensue
over this. Actually, both of you work quite hard. Well, what do we do with a condition like
this? Do we just break up the marriage? Or touch a match to the whole house? Or throw the
kids in the garbage can? Or go home to mother? Or what do we do?

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Well, there are many, many things we could do, and the least of them is to take a look
at the environment. You know, just look around and say, “Where am I? What am I doing
here?” And then, once you have found out where you are, why, try to find out how you can
make that a little more habitable. The day when you stop building your own environment,
when you stop building your own surroundings, when you stop waving a magic hand and
gracing everything around you with magic and beauty, things cease to be magical, things cease
to be beautiful.

Well, there are many, many things we could do, and the least of them is to take a look
at the environment. You know, just look around and say, “Where am I? What am I doing
here?” And then, once you have found out where you are, why, try to find out how you can
make that a little more habitable. The day when you stop building your own environment,
when you stop building your own surroundings, when you stop waving a magic hand and
gracing everything around you with magic and beauty, things cease to be magical, things cease
to be beautiful.

And here you have somebody who is happy, who is cheerful, who is strong, who finds
that most things are pleasurable; and what do we discover in this person? We find out that he is
making life, and there is actually a single difference: are you making life or is life making you ?

Carefully go into this, and you will find out that a person has stopped making life
because he himself has decided that life cannot be made. Some failure, some small failure,
maybe not graduating with the same class, or maybe that failure that had to do with not
marrying quite the first man or woman that came along who seemed desirable, or maybe the
failure of having lost a car, or just some minor thing in life started this attitude. A person
looked around one day and said, “Well, I’ve lost,” and after that, life makes him; he doesn’t
make life any more.

Now this would be a very critical situation if nothing could be done about it, but the fact
of the matter is that it is the easiest problem of all the problems man faces—changing himself
and changing the attitudes of those around him. It is very, very easy to change somebody else’s
attitude. Yet you are totally dependent upon other people’s attitudes—somebody’s attitude
toward you may make or break your life. Did it ever occur to you that your home holds
together because of the attitude the other person has toward you? So there are really two
problems here—you would have to change two attitudes. One: your attitude toward somebody
else, and two: their attitude toward you. Well, are there ways to do this? Yes, fortunately, there
are.

For many, many centuries, Man has desired to know how to change the mind and
condition of himself and his fellows. Actually, Man had a cumulative inclination to do this up
to relatively few years ago. But, we are making it a very fast paced world; we are making it a
world where magic is liable to occur at any time, and has.

Man now understands a great many things about the universe he lives in, which he
never understood before. Amongst the things he now understands is the human mind. The
human mind is not an unsolved problem. Nineteenth century psychology didn’t solve the
problem, but that doesn’t mean it has not been solved.

In modern times the most interesting miracles are taking place all across this country
and across other continents of earth. What do these miracles consist of? They consist of people
becoming well when they were ill, incurably ill. They consist of people who were unhappy
becoming happy once more. They consist of abolishing the danger inherent in many of the
illnesses and many of the conditions of Man. Yet the answer has been with Man all the time;
Man has been able to reach out and find this answer, so perhaps Man himself had to change.
Perhaps he had to come up to modern times to find out that the physical universe was not
composed of demons and ghosts. To outlive his superstitions, to outlive the ignorance of his

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forbears. Perhaps he had to do everything, including inventing the atom bomb, before he could
finally find himself.

forbears. Perhaps he had to do everything, including inventing the atom bomb, before he could
finally find himself.

Scientology has made it possible for him to do so.

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THE TRUE STORY OF SCIENTOLOGY

THE TRUE STORY OF SCIENTOLOGY

1. A philosopher develops a philosophy about life and death;
2. People find it interesting;
3. People find it works;
4. People pass it along to others;
5. It grows.
When we examine this extremely accurate and very brief account, we see that there
must be in our civilization some very disturbing elements for anything else to be believed about
Scientology.

These disturbing elements are the Merchants of Chaos. They deal in confusion and
upset. Their daily bread is made by creating chaos. If chaos were to lessen, so would their
incomes.

The politician, the reporter, the psychiatrist with his electric shock machine, the drug
manufacturer, the militarist and arms manufacturer, the police and the undertaker, to name the
leaders of the list, fatten only upon “the dangerous environment”. Even individuals and family
members can be Merchants of Chaos.

It is to their interest to make the environment seem as threatening as possible, for only
then can they profit. Their incomes, force, and power rise in direct ratio to the amount of threat
they can inject into the surroundings of the people. With that threat they can extort revenue,
appropriations, heightened circulation’s and recompense without question. These are the
Merchants of Chaos. If they did not generate it and buy and sell it, they would, they suppose,
be poor.

For instance, we speak loosely of “good press”. Is there any such thing today? Look
over a newspaper. Is there anything good on the front page? Rather, there is murder and
sudden death, disagreement and catastrophe. And even that, bad as it is, is sensationalized to
make it seem worse.

This is the cold blooded manufacture of “a dangerous environment”. People do not
need this news; and if they did, they need the facts, not the upset. But if you hit a person hard
enough, he can be made to give up money. That’s the basic formula of extortion. That’s the
way papers are sold. The impact makes them stick.

A paper has to have chaos and confusion. A “news story” has to have “conflict”, they
say. So there is no good press. There is only bad press about everything. To yearn for “good
press” is foolhardy in a society where the Merchants of Chaos reign.

Look what has to be done to the true story of Scientology in order to “make it a news
story” by modern press standards. Conflict must be injected where there is none. Therefore,
the press has to dream up upset and conflict.

Let us take the first line. How does one make conflict out of it? No. 1, A philosopher
develops a philosophy about life and death.

The Chaos Merchant has to inject one of several possible conflicts here: He is not a
doctor of philosophy, they have to assert. They are never quite bold enough to say it is not a
philosophy. But they can and do go on endlessly, as their purpose compels them, in an effort
to invalidate the identity of the person developing it.

In actual fact, the developer of the philosophy was very well grounded in academic

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subjects and the humanities, probably better grounded in formal philosophy alone than teachers
of philosophy in universities.

subjects and the humanities, probably better grounded in formal philosophy alone than teachers
of philosophy in universities.

Then take the second part of the true story. People find it interesting. It would be very
odd if they didn’t, as everyone asks these questions of himself and looks for the answers to his
own beingness; and the basic truth of the answers is observable in the conclusions of
Scientology.

However, to make this “news” it has to be made disturbing. People are painted as
kidnapped or hypnotized and dragged as unwilling victims up to read the books or listen.

The Chaos Merchant leaves No. 3 v cry thoroughly alone. It is dangerous ground for
him. People find it works. No hint of workability would ever be attached to Scientology by the
press, although there is no doubt in the press mind that it does work.

That’s why it’s dangerous. It calms the environment. So any time spent trying to
convince press that Scientology works is time spent upsetting a reporter.

On No. 4, People pass it along to others, the press feels betrayed. “Nobody should
believe anything they don’t read in the papers. How dare word of mouth exist?” So, to try to
stop people from listening, the Chaos Merchant has to use words like “cult”. That’s “a closed
group”, whereas Scientology is the most open group on Earth to anyone. And they have to
attack organizations and their people to try to keep people out of Scientology.

Now, as for No. 5, It grows, we have the true objection.

As truth goes forward, lies die. The slaughter of lies is an act that takes bread from the
mouth of a Chaos Merchant. Unless he can lie with wild abandon about “how bad it all is”, he
thinks he will starve.

The world simply must not be a better place, according to the Chaos Merchant. If
people were less disturbed, less beaten down by their environment, there would be no new
appropriations for police and armies and big rockets, and there’d be not even pennies for a
screaming, sensational press.

So long as politicians move upward on scandal, police get more pay for more crime,
medicos get fatter on more sickness, there will be Merchants of Chaos. They’re paid for it.

And their threat is the simple story of Scientology. For that is the true story. And
behind its progress, there is a calmer environment in which a man can live and feel better. If
you don’t believe it, just stop reading newspapers for two weeks, and see if you feel better.
Suppose you had all such disturbances handled?

The pity of it is, of course, that even the Merchant of Chaos needs us, not to get fatter,
but just to live himself as a being.

So the true story of Scientology is a simple story.

And too true to be turned aside.

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TWO RULES FOR HAPPY LIVING

TWO RULES FOR HAPPY LIVING
Be able to experience anything.
2. Cause only those things which others can experience easily.
Man has had many golden rules. The Buddhist rule of “Do unto others as you would
have these others do unto you” has been repeated often in other religions. But such golden
rules, while they served to advance man above the animal, resulted in no sure sanity, success,
or happiness. Such a golden rule gives only the cause point or at best, the reflexive effect point.
This is a self-done-to-self thing, and tends to put all on obsessive cause. It gives no thought to
what one does about the things done to one by others not so indoctrinated.

How does one handle the evil things done to him?

It is not told in the Buddhist rule. Many random answers resulted. Amongst them are
the answers of Christian Science (effects on self don’t exist), the answers of early Christians
(become a martyr), the answers of Christian ministers (condemn all sin). Such answers to
effects created on one bring about a somewhat less than sane state of mind—to say nothing of
unhappiness.

After one’s house has burned down and the family cremated, it is no great consolation
to (1) pretend it didn’t happen, (2) liken oneself to Job, or (3) condemn all arsonists.

So long as one fears or suffers from the effect of violence, one will have violence
against him. When one can experience exactly what is being done to one, ah, magic—it does
not happen!

How to be happy in this universe is a problem few prophets or sages have dared to
contemplate directly. We find them “handling” the problem of happiness by assuring us that
man is doomed to suffering. They seek not to tell us how to be happy, but how to endure being
unhappy. Such casual assumption of the impossibility of happiness has led us to ignore any
real examination of ways to be happy. Thus, we have floundered forward toward a negative
goal—get rid of all the unhappiness on Earth and one would have a livable Earth. If one seeks
to get rid of something continually, one admits continually that he cannot confront it—and thus
everyone went down hill. Life became a dwindling spiral of more things we could not
confront. And thus, we went toward blindness and unhappiness.

To be happy, one must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things
that are.

Unhappiness is only this: the inability to confront that which is.

Hence, ( 1 ) Be able to experience anything.

The effect side of life deserves great consideration. The self-caused side also deserves
examination.

To create only those effects which others could easily experience gives us a clean new
rule of living. For, if one does this, then what might he do that he must withhold from others?
There is no reason to withhold his own actions or regret them (same thing), if one’s own
actions are easily experienced by others.

This is a sweeping test (and definition) of good conduct—to do only those things which
others can experience.

If you examine your life, you will find you are bothered only by those actions a person

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did which others were not able to receive. Hence, a person’s life can become a hodge-podge of
violence withheld, which pulls in, then, the violence others caused.

did which others were not able to receive. Hence, a person’s life can become a hodge-podge of
violence withheld, which pulls in, then, the violence others caused.

Pain, misemotion, unconsciousness, insanity, all result from causing things others
could not experience easily. The reach-withhold phenomenon is the basis of all these things.
When one sought to reach in such a way as to make it impossible for another to experience, one
did not reach, then, did he? To “reach” with a gun against a person who is unwilling to be shot
is not to reach the person, but a protest. All bad reaches never reached. So there was no
communication, and the end result was a withhold by the person reaching. This reach-withhold
became at last an inability to reach—therefore, low communication, low reality, lover affinity.
Communication is time environment or situation.

One means of reaching others. So, if one is unable to reach, one’s ability to
communicate will be low; and one’s reality will be low, because if one is unable to
communicate, he won’t really get to know about others; and with knowing little or nothing
about others, one doesn’t have any feeling about them either, thus one’s affinity will be low.
Affinity, reality and communication work together; and if one of these three is high, the other
two will be also; but if one is low, so will the others be low.

All bad acts, then, are those acts which cannot be easily experienced at the target end.

On this definition, let us review our own “bad acts”. Which ones were bad? Only those
that could not be easily experienced by another were bad. Thus, which of society’s favorite bad
acts are bad? Acts of real violence resulting in pain, unconsciousness, insanity and heavy loss
could, at this time, be considered bad. Well, what other acts of yours do you consider “bad”?
The things which you have done which you could not easily, yourself, experience, were bad.
But the things which you have done which you, yourself, could have experienced, had they
been done to you, were not bad. That certainly changes one’s view of things!

There is no need to lead a violent life just to prove one can experience. The idea is not to
prove one can experience, but to regain the ability to experience.

Thus, today, we have two golden rules for happiness:

1.
Be able to experience anything;
and
2.
Cause only those things which others are able to experience easily.
Your reaction to these tells you how far you have yet to go.

And if you achieve these two golden rules, you would be one of the happiest and most
successful people in this universe, for who could rule you with evil?

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WHAT IS THE BASIC MYSTERY?


In the general study of the world and its affairs, we find out that the only way you can
make a slave—as if anybody would want one—would be to develop a tremendous amount of
mystery about what it’s all about and then develop an overwhelming charge on the mystery
line. Not only develop a mystery, but then sell it real good; sell some bogus answer to the
mystery.

Man is so used to this that, when you come along and put a perfectly good answer in
his hands, why, he drops it like a hot potato, because he knows what all answers are: All
answers are carefully derived from mysteries with bogus answers, and all mysteries are going
to cost you something sooner or later.

The development of the mystery itself stems from interpersonal relationships and Man’s
general conflict with his fellows and his environment, and so on. And the basic mystery is—
who is he? There’s no more basic mystery than that—”who is that fellow over there?” That is
the beginning of individuation, of, not individualism, but individuation, of pulling back from
everybody and saying, “I am me and they are ‘them’, and God knows what they’re up to!”
And then, after a while, the fellow takes it out of the realm of near blasphemy and puts it into
worship. And he says, “Well, God knows what they’re up to and he will protect me.”

So what do we basically have? We basically have a mystery on who the other fellow is.
Now “science” originally meant truth, and now it means research revenue. Science has so far
abandoned the basic mystery, that they think there’s a mystery on what is a floor, what is a
ceiling, what is space. That is really a very cooked-up mystery—because that floor and that
ceiling and that space is what thee and me agreed to put there, and that’s about all it is.

Wherever we have a mystery, we normally have had a disagreement or a
misunderstanding or an out-of-communication-ness. And that’s all there actually is to it,
basically. A fellow had to disagree with whom he was looking at. He knew about it originally
and he didn’t want to know who that fellow was over there. He didn’t want to know anything
about the situation, because he had learned a lesson: If he communicated with it, he would be
proved wrong!

So we had some people in our midst—you amongst them—who would put up a “this”
and say it was a “that”. And then you would get these things twisted somehow or another, and
you’d say, “Why don’t you communicate with this?” and then say, “You communicated with
that.” After a while a fellow says, “Aw, I don’t want to communicate with either one of them.
Dickens with it. Who cares what those things are—I don’t want to know.” And after that, he’d
had it. He said, “I don’t want to know,” and therefore he had a mystery sitting across from him
someplace. And he went so far along this line of not wanting to know that after a while he
conceived that he didn’t know. And then he went from there and said it’s impossible to know.

Wherever Man finds himself deeply instilled, engrossed, surrounded with mystery, he
is actually in conflict with himself and himself alone. That is why processing works. THE
ONLY ABERRATION IS DENIAL OF SELF. Nobody else can do anything to you, but YOU.
That is a horrible state of affairs. You can do something to you, but it requires your postulate,
your agreement or your disagreement, before anything can happen to you. People have to agree
to be ill; they have to agree to be stupid; they have to agree to be in mystery.

People are the victims of their own flinch. They are the victims of their own postulates,
the victims of their own belief that they are inadequate.

An individual has to postulate into existence his own aberration, his own flinch, his
own stupidity, his own lack of confidence, and his own bad luck.

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MAN’S SEARCH FOR HIS SOUL

MAN’S SEARCH FOR HIS SOUL

All thinkers in all ages have contributed their opinion and considerations to it. No
scientist, no philosopher, no leader has failed to comment upon it. Billions of men have died
for one opinion or another on the subject of this search and no civilization, mighty or poor, in
ancient or in modern times has endured without battle on its account.

The human soul, to the civilized and barbaric alike, has been an endless source of
interest, attention, hate or adoration.

To say that I have found the answer to all riddles of the soul would be inaccurate and
presumptuous. To discount what I have come to know and to fail to make that known after
observing its benefits would be a sin of omission against Man.

After thirty-one years of inquiry and thought and after fifteen years of public activity
wherein I observed the material at work and its results, I can announce that, in the knowledge I
have developed, there must lie the answer to that riddle, to that enigma, to that problem—the
human soul—for under my hands and others, I have seen the best in Man rehabilitated.

From the time since I first made a theta clear, I have been, with some reluctance, out
beyond any realm of the scientific known; and now that I have myself cleared half a hundred,
and auditors I have trained, many times that, I must face the fact that we have reached that
merger point where science and religion meet, and we must now cease to pretend to deal with
material goals alone.

We cannot deal in the realm of the human soul and ignore the fact. Man has too long
pursued this search for its happy culmination here to be muffled by vague and scientific terms.

Religion, not science, has carried this search, this war, through the millennia. Science
has all but swallowed Man with an ideology which denies the soul, a symptom of the failure of
science in that search.

One cannot now play traitor to the Men of God who sought, these ages past, to bring
Man from the darkness.

We, in Scientology, belong in the ranks of the seekers after truth, not in the rearguard
of the makers of the atom bomb.

However, science, too, has had its role in these endeavors; and nuclear physics,
whatever crime it does against Man, may yet be redeemed by having been of aid in finding for
Man the soul of which science had all but deprived him.

No Auditor can easily close his eyes to the results he achieves today or fail to see them
as superior to the materialistic technologies he earlier used. For we can know, with all else we
know, that the human soul, freed, is the only effective therapeutic agent we have. But our
goals, no matter our miracles with bodies today, exceed physical health and better men.

Scientology is the science of knowing how to know. It has taught us that a man IS his
own immortal soul. And it gives us little choice, but to announce to a world, no matter how it
receives it, that nuclear physics and religion have joined hands and that we in Scientology
perform those miracles for which Man, through all his search, has hoped.

The individual may hate God or despise priests. He cannot ignore, however, the
evidence that he is his own soul. Thus we have resolved our riddle and found the answer
simple.

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THE REASON WHY


Life can best be understood by likening it to a game. Since we are exterior to a great
number of games, we can regard them with a detached eye. If we were exterior to Life instead
of being involved and immersed in the living of it, it would look to us much like games look to
us from our present vantage point.

Despite the amount of suffering, pain, misery, sorrow and travail which can exist in
life, the reason for existence is the same reason as one has to play a game—interest, contest,
activity and possession. The truth of this assertion is established by an observation of the
elements of games and then applying these elements to life itself. When we do this we find
nothing left wanting in the panorama of life.

By game we mean a contest of person against person or team against team. When we
say games we mean such games as baseball, polo, chess or any other such pastime. It may at
one time have struck you as peculiar that men would risk bodily injury in the field of play just
for the sake of “amusement”. So it might strike you as peculiar that people would go on living
or would enter into the “game of life” at the risk of all the sorrow, travail and pain just to have
something to do. Evidently there is no greater curse than total idleness. Of course there is that
condition where a person continues to play a game in which he is no longer interested.

If you will but look about the room and check off items in which you are not interested,
you will discover something remarkable. In a short time you will find that there is nothing in
the room in which you are not interested. You are interested in everything. However,
disinterest itself is one of the mechanisms of play. In order to hide something it is only
necessary to make everyone disinterested in the place where the item is hidden. Disinterest is
not an immediate result of interest which has worn out. Disinterest is a commodity in itself. It is
palpable, it exists.

By studying the elements (factors) of games (contests) we find ourselves in possession
of the elements of life.

Life is a game. A game consists of freedom, barriers and purposes. This is a scientific
fact, not merely an observation.

Freedom exists amongst barriers. A totality of barriers and a totality of freedom alike
are no-game conditions. Each is similarly cruel. Each is similarly purposeless.

Great revolutionary movements fail. They promise unlimited freedom. That is the road
to failure. Only stupid visionaries chant of endless freedom. Only the afraid and the ignorant
speak of and insist upon unlimited barriers.

When the relation between freedom and barriers becomes too unbalanced, an
unhappiness results.

“Freedom from” is all right only so long as there is a place to be free to. An endless
desire for freedom from is a perfect trap, a fear of all things.

Barriers are composed of inhibiting (limiting) ideas, space, energy, masses and time.
Freedom in its entirety would be a total absence of these things—but it would also be a freedom
without thought or action, an unhappy condition of total nothingness.

Fixed on too many barriers, man yearns to be free. But launched suddenly into total
freedom he is purposeless and miserable. He needs a gradient.

There is freedom amongst barriers. If the barriers are known and the freedoms are
known there can be life, living, happiness a game.

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The restrictions of a government, or a job, give an employee his freedom. Without
known restrictions, an employee is a slave, doomed to the fears of uncertainty in all his actions.

The restrictions of a government, or a job, give an employee his freedom. Without
known restrictions, an employee is a slave, doomed to the fears of uncertainty in all his actions.

1. seem to give endless freedom;
2. seem to give endless barriers;
3. make neither freedom nor barriers certain.
Executive competence, therefore, consists of imposing and enforcing an adequate
balance between their people’s freedom and the unit’s barriers and in being precise and
consistent about those freedoms and barriers. Such an executive, adding only in himself
initiative and purpose, can have a department with initiative and purpose.

An employee, buying and/or insisting upon freedom only, will become a slave.
Knowing the above facts, he must insist upon a workable balance between freedom and
barriers.

There are various states of mind which bring about happiness. That state of mind which
insists only upon freedom can bring about nothing but unhappiness. It would be better to
develop a thought pattern which looked for new ways to be entrapped and things to be trapped
in, than to suffer the eventual total entrapment of dwelling upon freedom only. A man who is
willing to accept restrictions and barriers and is not afraid of them is free. A man who does
nothing but fight restrictions and barriers will usually be trapped.

As it can be seen in any game, purposes become counterpoised. There is a matter of
purpose-counter purpose in almost any game played in a field with two teams. One team has
the idea of reaching the goal of the other, and the other has the idea of reaching the goal of the
first. Their purposes are at war, and this warring of purposes makes a game.

The war of purposes gives us what we call problems. A problem consists of two or
more purposes opposed. It does not matter what problem you face or have faced, the basic
anatomy of that problem is purpose-counter-purpose.

In actual testing in Scientology, it has been discovered that a person begins to suffer
from problems when he does not have enough of them. There is the old saw (maxim) that, if
you want a thing done, give it to a busy man to do. Similarly, if you want a happy associate,
make sure that he is a man who can have lots of problems.

We have the oddity of a high incidence of neurosis in the families of the rich. These
people have very little to do and have very few problems. The basic problems of food, clothing
and shelter are already solved for them. We would suppose then, if it were true that an
individual’s happiness depended only upon his freedom, these people would be happy.
However, they are not happy. What brings about their unhappiness? It is the lack of problems.

An unhappy man is one who is considering continually how to become free. One sees
this in the clerk who is continually trying to avoid work. Although he has a great deal of leisure
time, he is not enjoying any part of it. He is trying to avoid contact with people, objects,
energies and spaces. He eventually becomes trapped in a sort of lethargy. If this man could
merely change his mind and start “worrying” about how he could get more work to do, his
happiness level would increase markedly. One who is plotting continually how to get out of
things will be miserable. One who is plotting how to get into things has a much better chance of
becoming happy.

There is, of course, the matter of being forced to play games in which one has no
interest—a war into which one is drafted is an excellent example of this. One is not interested in
the purposes of the war and yet one finds himself fighting it. Thus there must be an additional

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element and this element is “the power of choice”.

element and this element is “the power of choice”.

These four elements, freedom, barriers, purposes and power of choice, are the guiding
elements of life. There are only two factors above these and both of them are related to these.
The first is the ability to create, with of course its negative, the ability to uncreate, and the
second is the ability to make a postulate (to consider, to say a thing and have it be true). This,
then, is the broad picture of life, and these elements are used in its understanding, in bringing
life into focus and in making it less confusing.

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WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?


Knowledge is certainty; knowledge is not data. Knowingness itself is certainty. Sanity
is certainty, providing only that that certainty does not fall beyond the conviction of another
when he views it.

To obtain a certainty one must be able to observe. But what is the level of certainty
required? And what is the level of observation required for a certainty or a knowledge to exist?

If a man can stand before a tree and by sight, touch or other perception know that he is
confronting a tree and be able to perceive its form and be quite sure he is confronting a tree, we
have the level of certainty required. If the man will not look at the tree or, although it is
observably a tree to others, if he discovers it to be a blade of grass or a sun, then he is below
the level of certainty required. Some other person helpfully inclined would have to direct his
perception to the tree until the man perceived without duress that it was indeed a tree he
confronted. That is the only level of certainty required in order to qualify as knowledge, for
knowledge is observation and is given to those who would look.

In order to obtain knowledge and certainty, it is necessary to be able to observe, in fact,
three universes in which there could be trees. The first of these is one’s own universe; one
should be able to create for his own observation in its total form for total perception, a tree. The
second universe would be the material universe, which is the universe of matter, energy, space
and time and is the common meeting ground of all of us. The third universe is actually a class
of universes, which could be called “the other fellow’s universe”, for he and all the class of
“other fellows” have universes of their own.

A doctor, for instance, may seem entirely certain of the cause of some disease, yet it
depends upon the doctor’s certainty for the layman to accept that cause of the disease. That
penicillin cures certain things is a certainty to the doctor even when penicillin suddenly and
inexplicably fails to cure something. Any inexplicable failure introduces an uncertainty, which
thereafter removes the subject from the realm of an easily obtained certainty.

We have here, then, a parallel between certainty and sanity.

The less certain the individual on any subject, the less sane he could be said to be upon
that subject; the less certain he is of what he views in the material universe, what he views in
his own or the other fellow’s universe, the less sane he could be said to be.

The road to sanity is demonstrably the road to increasing certainty. Starting at any level,
it is only necessary to obtain a fair degree of certainty on the material universe to improve
considerably one’s beingness. Above that, one obtains some certainty of his own universe and
some certainty of the other fellow’s universe.

Certainty, then, is clarity of observation. Of course, above this, vitally so, is certainty
in creation. Here is the artist, here is the master, here is the very great spirit.

As one advances he discovers that what he first perceived as a certainty can be
considerably improved. Thus we have certainty as a gradient scale. It is not an absolute, but it
is defined as the certainty that one perceives or the certainty that one creates what one perceives
or the certainty that there is perception. Sanity and perception, certainty and perception,
knowledge and observation, are then all of a kind, and amongst them we have sanity.

The road into uncertainty is the road toward psychosomatic illness, doubts, anxieties,
fears, worries and vanishing awareness. As awareness is decreased, so does certainty
decrease.

It is very puzzling to people at higher levels of awareness why people behave toward

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them as they do; such higher level people have not realized that they are not seen, much less
understood. People at low levels of awareness do not observe, but substitute for observation
preconceptions, evaluation and suppositions, and even physical pain by which to attain their
certainties.

them as they do; such higher level people have not realized that they are not seen, much less
understood. People at low levels of awareness do not observe, but substitute for observation
preconceptions, evaluation and suppositions, and even physical pain by which to attain their
certainties.

Certainty delivered by blow and punishment is a non-self-determined certainty. It is
productive of stimulus-response behavior. At a given stimulus a dog who has been beaten, for
instance, will react invariably, providing he has been sufficiently beaten, but if he has been
beaten too much, the stimulus will result only in confused bewilderment. Thus certainty
delivered by blows, by applied force, eventually brings about a certainty as absolute as one
could desire—total unawareness. Unconsciousness itself is a certainty which is sought by
many individuals who have failed repeatedly to reach any high level of awareness certainty.
These people then desire an unawareness certainty. So it seems that the thirst for certainty can
lead one into oblivion if one seeks it as an effect.

An uncertainty is the product of two certainties. One of these is a conviction, whether
arrived at by observation (causative) or by a blow (effected). The other is a negative certainty.
One can be sure that something is and one can be sure that something is not. He can be sure
that there is something, no matter what it is, present and that there is nothing present. These
two certainties commingling create a condition of uncertainty known as “maybe”. A “maybe”
continues to be held in suspense in an individual’s mind simply because he cannot decide
whether it is nothing or something. He grasps and holds the certainties each time he has been
given evidence or has made the decision that it is a somethingness and each time he has come to
suppose that it is a nothingness. Where these two certainties of something and nothing are
concerned with and can vitally influence one’s continuance in a state of beingness, or where
one merely supposes they can influence such a state of beingness, a condition of anxiety arises.
Thus anxiety, indecision, uncertainty, a state of “maybe” can exist only in the presence of poor
observation or the inability to observe.

Such a state can be remedied. One merely causes the individual to observe in terms of
the three universes.

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THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE

THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE

These three conditions comprise life.

They are BE, DO and HAVE.

The condition of BEING is defined as the assumption of a category of identity. It could
be said to be the role in a game, and an example of beingness could be one’s own name.
Another example would be one’s profession. Another example would be one’s physical
characteristics. Each or all of these things could be called one’s beingness. Beingness is
assumed by oneself or given to one’s self or is attained, for example, in the playing of a game,
each player having his own beingness.

The second condition of existence is DOING. By doing we mean action, function,
accomplishment, the attainment of goals, the fulfilling of purpose, or any change of position in
space.

The third condition is HAVINGNESS. By havingness, we mean owning, possessing,
being capable of commanding, positioning, taking charge of objects, energies or spaces.

The essential definition of having is to be able to touch or permeate or to direct the
disposition of.

The game of life demands that one assume a beingness in order to accomplish a
doingness in the direction of havingness.

These three conditions are given in an order of seniority where life is concerned. The
ability to be is more important than the ability to do. The ability to do is more important than the
ability to have. In most people all three conditions are sufficiently confused that they are best
understood in reverse order. When one has clarified the idea of possession or havingness, one
can then proceed to clarify doingness for general activity, and when this is done one
understands beingness or identity.

It is an essential to a successful existence that each of these three conditions be clarified
and understood. The ability to assume or to grant beingness is probably the highest of human
virtues. It is even more important to be able to permit other people to have beingness than to be
able oneself to assume it.

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MYTHS OF THE MIND


The curse of the past has been a pretense of knowledge. We’ve had a worship of the
fable. We have had prayers being sent up to a myth. And man hasn’t been looking at all.

We in this modern age of science have not developed out of the field of humanities
anything comparable to a scientific observation of the mind. The humanities—psychology,
sociology, criminology and the various branching studies of the social sciences in general—can
be said at this time and place to have failed.

Imagining that one can see is a condition worse than being unable to see. The
humanities imagined too many things to see. They never cared to look. And so they have
failed.

Scientology tells you quite adequately that there is an enormous Valhalla mixed up with
Pluto’s realm, mixed up with fairy tales, mixed up with Menninger’s work, lying all over
below the level of truth. The truth is a simple thing that anybody could see. Why don’t they see
it? Because they live in this gorgeous wonderland which isn’t and never will be.

Let’s go into wonderland. The wonderland of syllables, the wonderland beneath the
earth of never never. We know it as dispersal. An individual looks at something and it flashes
back and he can no longer look in that direction. It kicks him in the teeth. So he mustn’t look
that way. He must look somewhere else. And he eventually learns very well not to observe
anything.

That is the exact mechanics of how a wonderland of pretended information, which
became the social sciences, was created. The individual couldn’t confront man, so he turned
around and developed a theory about man.

There are a lot of imaginary and legendary beings and beasts just like there were in the
dark ages. Take the way the ancient mariners kept people from trading with the American
Coast. Every mariner of Columbus’ day believed that you just sailed so far then fell off the
edge and there were terrific monsters and beasts who would drown you if you sailed beyond
the sight of land.

A great many beasts had been invented to debar careless voyaging into somebody else’s
hunting preserves.

Now I’m not going to tell you that the field of the mind has been only inhabited by
imaginary beings, but something of this order is done by the fellow who invents tremendous
nomenclature of the brain or bone structure and then says “you have to know all these names
before you can know anything about the mind” and then says “each one of these parts of the
brain has a specific function.” And adds “nobody should tamper with the mind because it
bites.”

I don’t say that that is the same thing the Spanish sailor did with the sea in order to keep
guys like Columbus from discovering things. I don’t say that for a moment. I merely insist
upon it.

All a person has to do is look—right where he is—and he will see something about the
mind. But if he’s been told it’s very dangerous to fool with the mind and he doesn’t know that
those raging sea beasts are really dummies to keep fishing preserves, why, he says, “Well, I’d
better not look. I’d better go blind. “

Through the years I learned that they were supposed to do things with the mind across
this basic premise—that IQ. cannot change and personality characteristics are unalterable. This
is a defeatism.

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Now, Scientology is defined as knowing how to know. But it could be better defined
as “summated and organized information about you”. It’s everything that has been known
about you for 2500 years at least. But it is summated so it is communicable, so that it is
applicable and so that it gets some definite results. And way over and above all these other
things it is capable of changes. It can create changes for the better, and it can make things look
and act better.

Now, Scientology is defined as knowing how to know. But it could be better defined
as “summated and organized information about you”. It’s everything that has been known
about you for 2500 years at least. But it is summated so it is communicable, so that it is
applicable and so that it gets some definite results. And way over and above all these other
things it is capable of changes. It can create changes for the better, and it can make things look
and act better.

Man, before he gets up and looks to find where he is, before he starts to look in the
proper direction, discovers he’s blind. Then he says, “Hey, wait a minute,” and takes the veil
off his eyes, takes a look—and has the tendency to keep diving into complexities.

So there is only one continuing stress in Scientology and that is greater simplicity, and
that means greater communication. By involvement in a complexity we create a mystery. We
sink man into a priesthood, a cult.

The simplicity of observation, the simplicity of communication itself and only itself is
functional and will take man from the bottom to the top. And the only thing I am trying to teach
you is to look.


(PART 2) (PART 3)