Many a person has spent half their lives at war with one or other of this ape’s inherited social or cultural habits, and have at last gone to their graves defeated in the struggle.  When you try and fight this ape’s evolutionary history you always lose.  He has certain basic requirements, and a number of quaint* behavior patterns.  Learn to live with them, for you will not change him by fighting them; you’ll only make him ill and yourself miserable.  Ignorance of the true nature of the human ape as a life form has caused untold misery down the ages.  If you walk this route far enough you will one day walk away and leave this ape, but you will never be free of him until you understand him intimately.

* quaint: attractively unusual or old-fashioned: "quaint country cottages" · "a quaint old custom"

Identity 

This is the role a being assumes in order to play a game.  Like any other effect it is a created thing, and obeys the laws that govern effects in general.  Thus identity, as soon as it is considered important, tends to persist, become more solid, and have command power over the being. 

Intelligence 

This is the ability to evaluate relative importances; the ability to note differences and similarities between them.  Thus, a person can be very knowledgeable, but if he is unable to evaluate the things he knows he will be incredibly stupid.  Children give the apparency of being stupid, but this is not so.  The child merely lacks data and experience, and so has nothing to evaluate what he perceives against.  This is also why children are so gullible and will believe anything you tell them.  Generally speaking, within the data at their disposal, children are much more intelligent than grownups.

Stupidity is the inability to evaluate data.  Ignorance is the lack of data to evaluate. 

Death 

This is the loss of a body.  At this time, it is considered a deprivation of magnitude, and temporarily throws the being into a feeling of degradation sufficient to occlude his knowledge of the lifetime he has just lived; it forces him into a ‘Mustn’t Know’ regarding it. Without a body he regards himself as a nobody - literally a no-body.  Thus, in his subsequent life he has few, if any recalls, of ever having lived before.  This is all that is involved.  As the being comes up the line his recalls of his past lives will progressively return to him. 

Can’t 

Can’t is the feeling one gets when one’s postulates are overwhelmed.  The anatomy of ‘can’t’ is must versus must-not.  You cannot work with ‘can’t’.  It runs apathy, apathy, apathy - and then, just for a change, more apathy.  You work with ‘Must’ and ‘Mustn’t’ in opposition and then you succeed. *

* Do not take this short passage lightly. Dennis, in talking about ‘must’ and ‘must not’ in opposition, is talking about how postulates can oppose each other. If you are timebreaking a postulate of “I can’t _____”, don’t just sit there and postulate “I can’t ____”. Instead, work with “I must ____” then “I must not ____”. Sitting there timebreaking “I can’t _____” will run you into apathy, even if that was the way you worded your postulate in the incident. That’s an example of how you would handle it if you ran into a “can’t” postulate on Level Three and timebroke it.

On levels four and five, you’ll have all the ‘must’ and ‘must not’ postulates mapped out for you and in what order to run them.

The only time you ever timebreak “can’t” in session is if you are quoting something you or someone else said, and only as the auditory sensation of them saying such. NEVER RUN “CAN’T” AS A POSTULATE.

Emotions 

These are particles a being creates to let other people know how the game is going.  there is a scale of emotions from apathy up to serenity.  They are very light particles, and as soon as you touch them in recall, they change to other emotions further up the scale.

The subject of emotions put on a scale is not original to TROM, but to Scientology. It’s called the “Emotional Tone Scale” or simply “The Tone Scale”. The book Self Analysis by L Ron Hubbard has a simplified chart of emotions and the behaviors of people who are chronically expressing such ranging from apathy at the lowest up to enthusiasm at the highest.  There is also a section of The Scientology Handbook with an even more elementary explanation.  For the most thorough explanation of the emotional tone scale, read Science of Survival by L Ron Hubbard, but I recommend reading Dianetics the Modern Science of Mental Health first. 

The lowest emotional tone one could be in, and still be alive, is apathy. Above that is grief, then fear, then anger, hostility, boredom, contentedness, cheerfulness and finally enthusiasm at the top of the human emotional scale. There are shades in-between each of those emotions that you can learn about, but for the purpose of how this relates to TROM therapy, this list will suffice.

If you are timebreaking an incident where someone has just died, you may feel the grief from that incident.  Upon further timebreaking, the grief will turn into fear, then anger, then hostility, and then at boredom you may have the incident, or at least the emotional part of it fading away. However, it is not unusual to go up the scale further and at the end of timebreaking an incident to feel cheerful or enthusiastic, or even start laughing at the occurrence. If you do find yourself laughing at the end of timebreaking an incident, say, over someone’s death, do not worry. This does not make you a heartless person. Take it to mean that you are no longer burdened by the grief and suffering over the loss of a friend, family member or loved one, and this laughter is laughter of relief, and should not be thought of as joy over someone having died.

Emotions going up this scale are always good signs that you are timebreaking properly. This alone is a good reason to learn about the emotional tone scale in Scientology, and there are other benefits such as being able to better communicate with others and predict their behavior.

Sensations 

These are particles which occur at the boundary between opposing postulates.  Like emotions, there is a scale of sensations.  As the space opens up the sensations change to ones further up the scale.  Pain is a sensation in very collapsed space.  Further upscale is sexual sensation.  Then tickles.  Above this is heat.  Then electrical sensations.  Then color, and finally pure aesthetics at the top of the scale.  The ones listed here are only some of the well-known landmarks on the scale.  There is a near infinity of gradations between all of them.  Thus, emotions and sensations are very elusive things when you contact them in recall; as soon as you touch them, they vanish and become something else further up scale.

Mankind fondly believes that the only way to find out about the mind is to select some effect it contains, then look further into the mind to find the cause of that effect. Then, having found what appears to be the cause, to consider it an effect, and to start searching for the cause of this effect even deeper in the mind and so on.  Thus, one backtracks in search of prime cause: a cause which is not an effect of an earlier cause. Having found this prime cause, the whole mind will vanish in a puff of green smoke, or something - or so the theory goes. 

Now there is some justification for this theory when you are dealing with material objects.  One billiard ball canons into another on a table, and imparts a motion to it; the motion of the second ball is indeed caused by its impact with the first ball.  But what imparted motion to the first ball?  Why, the billiard player, of course! The being who is playing the game of billiards.  Once you take him out of the equation, you will search endlessly for your prime cause. 

The search for the prime cause of the mind, then, without considering the living being who created and is maintaining that mind, is a futile search, for one is not looking for prime cause in a place where it is possible to find it.  The first requisite for finding anything is to search for it in a place where it is possible for it to be. Everything you discover in the mind - indeed, its total content - is an effect.  There are no causes in there, so you won’t find any.  Thus, to postulate that one part of the mind is the cause of some other part is a lie, and in pursuit of this lie you will never discover the truth.

The endless ransacking of the mind in search of prime cause is called “The Long Night of the Soul”.  It’s a very long night: it goes on forever.  After the elapse of a theoretical infinity of time, you would emerge from the same door as you went in - much, much sadder, and no wiser. 

Everything you wish to know about any effect in your mind lies in that particular effect and your relationship to it right now.  To skid off sideways and reach deeper into your mind for the cause of this effect is to commit yourself to the Long Night of the Soul.  Don’t embark upon it, for it may well be the last anyone ever sees of you.

<BACK     NEXT>

TABLE OF CONTENTS
GLOSSARY