Arthur Ronald Conway Hubbard

Consciousness – Part 2 of 2

Scientology 1.0.0 – Chapter 42

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Freedom to play

Before existence began, there was a Cause whose sole purpose was the creation of effect. This was followed by the decision ‘To Be’, a concept of ‘Oneness’ that does not distinguish between the experiencer and the experience.

To create an effect, a viewpoint must first exist, followed by something to view. Thus, the Oneness gives rise to ‘twoness’, thereby initiating a game.

In Scientology, a game comprises freedoms, barriers, and purposes, all of which wouldn’t mean much without the appearance of duality.

The interplay of oneness, duality, and games is well illustrated by the yin-yang symbol, which depicts a circle divided into dark and light sections, featuring interlocking curved forms that represent motion and change, with each side containing something of the other.

This symbol embodies balance and complementarity, highlighting how opposing sides are interconnected rather than strictly separate. It suggests that what appears binary is actually a whole that shares a continuous relationship while still representing a bifurcation.

An experience where one is responsible for both sides of a game is the very definition of ‘pan-determinism’. Engaging with others who (hopefully) take the same view makes for a very good game.

However, there are inherent risks. What happens if an individual or group begins to perceive themselves as too much the effect and becomes ‘other-determined’? What then?

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Two-pole universe

The risk is the viewpoint’s awareness of dimension points can vary.

Demonstrating this concept, there is an additional scale that runs alongside the Tone Scale, called the Know-to-Mystery Scale (Tone Scale in Full, from Scientology 0–8: The Book of Basics):

At the top lies a sort of ‘ultimate awareness’, where there are no sides. However, to have a game, there must be not just a cause but also an effect, etc., etc., and so forth. So, down the scale in quest of this sort of experience, one goes.

Above 30.0, I can only speculate about what’s going on (plenty, I imagine). But at 30.0 are Postulates, and there, I think, is firmer ground.

A ‘postulate’ is a thing suggested or assumed to be true as the basis for reasoning, discussion, or belief. In Scientology, however, a postulate is ‘causative thinkingness’. It is a directed desire, order, inhibition, or enforcement by the individual in the form of an idea.

‘To postulate’ means to conclude, decide, or resolve a problem; to set a pattern for the future; or to nullify a pattern from the past, all of which would be unnecessary if one knew everything. Hence, postulates are how realities in the bands at and below ‘Not Know’ are not only initiated but negotiated.

Postulating ‘Not Know’ introduces elements of mostly pan-determined mystery into the equation, sort of like deciding one day that the right hand should no longer know what the left hand is doing and vice versa so that both hands have a game. The self, as one vector, is partially and willingly unaware of all the other vectors that can be known. These include the various characteristics and intentions of other viewpoints, as well as the locations, qualities, and quantities of different dimension points. Knowing enough to achieve whatever goal has been decided on is a win. I mean, if you already knew your opponent’s moves and the game’s outcome before it even started, then it wouldn’t be much of a game, at least not for your opponent.

So, as far as the game of existence and experience goes, a prime postulate might be expressed as ‘To Know’ — at least enough to get the win. This is why Scientology is about ‘knowing about knowing’, and its purpose is to help individuals ‘know how to know’.

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Whose mystery

Now, all that there is to know is always available; it is not hidden. Nothing is concealed; only you, the viewpoint, varying on the scale, become mystified: you are ‘that which would know’ after ‘that which does not know’. You’re still the left hand and the right hand, but you’ve assumed the role of one or the other whose mission is to create an effect on the right or left, which are, after all, right where you put them. To make this a game, however, both hands perceive through vias. ‘Via’ means ‘by way of’ or ‘through’. Vias are postulated to exist. At the pool hall, players must use sticks and a cue ball instead of just dropping the balls in the pockets (which would get boring after awhile), and so it becomes a game. Similarly, things aren’t ‘seen’ directly but are always altered to some degree (see addendum on Existence Magic).

Perception-wise, nearer Know, like with lenses, the picture comes into focus (which probably looks nothing like what we’re familiar with as humans). 30.0 is apparently where our particular adventure begins with the postulate ‘Not Know’. 20.0, also possibly unfamiliar, is where ‘seeking the truth’ probably begins with another postulate: ’Look’. At 8.0 begins the ‘Thetan Plus Body’ adventure, where are the Plus Emotions, and where all postulates have one commonality: ‘To Aim Up’. As the viewpoint descends more and more, perception becomes blocked until, at some point toward the bottom (-40.0), nothing can be perceived (in any helpful manner anyway), which, for a viewpoint, is probably akin to Hell. Hell would be a no game game.

The postulate of Scientology is that staying in the Plus Emotions, even at levels as low as 4.0, is essential for survival. And to survive depends on always aiming up to ‘Know’.

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Risky business

Enjoyment of this adventure relies on the willingness to embrace mystery to some degree: Not Know applies throughout the scale below 30.0, where, as one descends, the mysteries appear to become increasingly complex, enigmatic and occult (hidden), but not yet unknowable.

But herein lies the crux: although the Not Know levels encapsulate the very essence of all enjoyable games, engaging with them involves that risk: apparently, not knowing everything includes the viewpoint not knowing itself entirely. Thus, there can be even further miscalculations and more error regarding postulates and then effects one creates can backfire. After some time, if a person continues to miscalculate, and due to a decreasing ability to know, the mysteries of life shift from being merely complex, enigmatic, and occult to becoming something altogether different.

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Complex versus convoluted

‘Complex’ means consisting of many different and interconnected parts.

All complexities are combinations and multiplicities of simplicities. Reality begins with basic facts, such as oneness and twonesses, that combine, diversify, and re-coalesce, becoming more involved and captivating: two, three, four, and many… ad infinitum.

But ‘captivating’ can easily become ‘entrapping’, complexity may overwhelm those who have made numerous mistakes and reached too low a level of Not Know. For such individuals, complexity becomes not merely overcomplicated but convoluted — something exceedingly difficult to navigate. ‘Complex’ is okay; ‘convoluted’… not so much. The strange loop morphs into a tangled knot: the mysteries of life are, in and of themselves, oppressive, and a lack of awareness — the illusion of unconsciousness — appears to prevail. (Talk about ‘cognitive dissonance’: remember, everything to know is potentially discoverable the whole time, provided one can perceive it; ‘Know’ is in continuous in play, and a part of oneself is always aware of this.)

When the situation is so seemingly transformed, normal everyday losses can feel overwhelming, like drowning, and any ‘wins’ become a matter of just getting to breathe, getting one’s nose above water long enough to get a whiff of air. For the purposes of my story, this can translate into no longer trying to achieve positive gains for one’s own side, which would be a matter of creative effects based on aiming up type postulates — an ability that is being lost — but rather of causing the opponent to lose, the only apparent option remaining (‘Burn ‘em down!’).

This sort of view can happen when stuck in the ‘Minus Emotions’.

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Counter-postulates

Just as the concept of ‘Not Know’ applies throughout the entirety of the scale down to ‘unknowable’, so do postulates.

Ultimately, because realities from 30.0 down have to be constantly postulated, what one postulates determines one’s experience. This process, of course, includes all the crappy realities and experiences too (God help us). Because the initial bifurcation is never actually alienated from itself, all effects created also affect the creator (feedback and consequences).

How Joe Blow (or Joanna) postulates is how Joe creates effects, and every effect created affects the cause of those effects, namely Joe. (Or Joanna.)

Maybe, one day, one wouldn’t want to know this, so if someone goes far enough down the scale, they might eventually make other postulates. These postulates are different from ‘Not Know’ because they’re ‘counter-postulates’.

A counter-postulate does not alter the original postulate but is one that opposes it. Rather than simply sticking to the postulate ‘To Know’, an individual who has made miscalculations that have become transgressions may feel compelled to make enemy-like decisions in order to conceal them. Consequently, new postulates emerge such as ‘The Other Can Never Know’, as the revelation of the secrets would result in losing. Given that postulates are already creating complexity, counter-postulates further complicate matters, potentially resulting in conundrums. This is where ‘other-determinism’ can kick in.

Other-determinism is simply something else giving one orders or directions in such a way as to overwhelm the degrees of self-determinism (full responsibility for self) that exist in the Plus Emotions. With certain secrets can come the need to deceive and hope others ‘never find out’. This phenomenon means that the actions of others become an overly significant influence on one’s own behaviour. So much so that attention gets fixated more on what the other is doing rather than what is being done by oneself.

Keeping transgressions secret is a lot of work and begins to consume the attention needed to achieve survival. It can make perfect sense to those who are as much a mystery to themselves as the world around them; unfortunately, they might even come to believe in ‘the unconscious mind’, which is more a hope than a reality. The consequence of restricting another person’s knowledge of things they have a right to know is that it also further restricts one’s own understanding, leading to the development of many additional, compounding, and unusual non-survival postulates and activities such as ‘Make Others Lose’, a very low-toned and distasteful game indeed.

(For a complete description, read the book Advanced Procedures and Axioms.)

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‘Games conditions’

When these two postulates operate together — ‘To Know’ for oneself (increasingly more difficult) and ‘To Never Know’ for the opponent — the individual enters into what is called a ‘games condition’ in Scientology.

A games condition means ‘have for self and can’t have for others’. ‘Have’, among other things, represents things like choice and control; a person seeks to preserve their choices while progressively blocking other people’s in order to own the whole game. Games may be won or lost, but control of the entire game? Well, that’s…

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‘Lose-lose’

Games conditions are games where everyone loses.

Whereas ‘Not Know’ accepts the mysteries necessary to playing games, postulating that the other must remain deep in mystery and so lose undermines the essence of a good game. Eventually, this individual seeks to escape from awareness and postulate ’Not To Know’ for themselves in order to keep their secrets safe and avoid responsibility for errors and miscalculations related to their actions.

One hand attempts to harm the other; yin (or yang) is now out ‘to get’ yang (or yin).

To stay in the Plus Emotions, one ought not postulate terminal loss for anyone, the kind that allows no return (‘I’m gonna destroy you!’) but rather postulate that everyone wins, such as when a good contest is had regardless of who loses because a good contest is the whole point. Getting into games with others whose main postulate is for you to lose rather than their own fair win, however, is typical minus-band thinking, so playing games with them can be hazardous.

To wit, at levels above 2.0, up to 3.0, there is being a ‘good sport’, a low form of pan-determinism. This attitude allows players to still admire the skill and ability of the winning side and to consider themselves fortunate to have had such a worthy opponent. Furthermore, they hope to have learnt a thing or two and be more adept next time. If our good sports win the next competition, however, a defeated opponent, if below 2.0, may display such resentment or, worse, pitiable victimhood as to convince our slightly higher-toned victors they have transgressed. Then, unfortunately, our easygoing players often start counter-postulating as well and succumb to 1.3 (Resentment) or, God forbid, 0.8 (Propitiation). This situation is a fairly good example of the contagion of Minus Emotions and the dwindling spiral mentioned in chapter 35.

Another instance is tolerance. Intolerant people use others’ tolerance to get in the door and then shut the whole game down, and people in the 2.1 to 3.0 band fall for it almost every time. (Karl Popper introduced the concept of the “paradox of tolerance” in his work, The Open Society and Its Enemies.) Open societies with low awareness are easy pickings for those stuck below 2.0.

For these individuals below 2.0, the stakes have become ‘too high.’ Being fair-minded is for suckers; ’the ends justify the means’ becomes policy. Like a drowning man, to get air, he claws over his rescuer, pushing him under the waves without ever twigging to the fact that now they must both drown.

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Sociopolitical chaos

Winning by making the other lose regardless of whether such a defeat improves anything often leads to things just getting that much worse for everybody. Games that aim up get shut down, and aiming down becomes normal. This is where things are in the West today. A new law or a new president may change a few odds and ends, but if the object is still to make the other side lose at any cost, the dwindling spiral just accelerates.

Where any competition feels grimly existential and the prospect of losing is unthinkable, taking any step to ensure the other side’s defeat seems wholly justified. Treating one’s own side’s victory as sufficient justification for any means becomes a matter of policy.

This mindset can lead those in the Minus Emotions to become utterly polarised, such as with the common dichotomy of ‘oppressors’ and ‘the oppressed’, an idée fixe of those stuck at 1.1 and lower. These counter-postulates create a serious and repugnant approach to engaging in social dynamics at any time. To be plain, these are the ‘zero-sum’ levels inherent in all ideologies that lie below 2.0.

When such other-determinism spreads to too many people, it could lead to an epidemic of cheating, with the primary symptom being the proliferation of games intentionally designed to never lose again! Of course, the only way to ensure such is to end all games (‘Burn it all down!’), although many people won’t understand that this is where they’re now headed.

This can lead to a situation that goes beyond zero-sum. These are the Deep Not Knows, the no-game levels that allow strange, non-survival, even demonic, systems to entrench and metastasise.

Such as monopolarism.

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Monopolarism

Monopolarism is what happens when the script flips. It represents a degree of unity, a ‘return’ to a holy and sacred, little ‘O’ ‘oneness’ that must be enforced to such an extent that functional distinctions, oppositions, and independent viewpoints become intolerable — even treasonous. This phenomenon may begin to manifest in any system, whether political, social, or otherwise, when it falls under the grip of extreme authoritarianism.

The usual symptoms of totalitarianism include a resolute elimination of opponents, as observed in all such societies where the suppression of independent competition and decision-making is institutionalised.

Regarding the goal of enhancing societal survival, these systems have historically proven ineffective, despite the numerous times they’ve been dug up and revived. In addition, such suppression, if its downward direction continues unchecked, could eventually equal a total diminishment of awareness of consciousness not only of the authorities in question but also of the feedback loop they depend upon to survive.

Such determined, unrelenting stomping on the face of society, unsustainable a policy as it is, suggests that the end result could be, if unchecked, a state of total unawareness of consciousness, such as -40.0: Unknowable.

Yin (or yang) isn’t just out to get yang (or yin) but to get rid of them. Forever.

For someone in deep confusion, such as those stuck in the lowest tones of the minus-band, this state might come to seem very desirable. A utopia: total freedom from play.

In other words, a one-pole universe.

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Aiming up

The Know-to-Mystery Scale and the Tone Scale can both be very useful if added to one’s ‘how to play games’ toolkit. Together, they can help to assess how people are engaging and even better understand the direction of politics, economics, really any system at all.

Add postulates, and you have another question: what do they want, and do their actions support that? The answers can make aiming up a little less perilous when you’re deciding whom to help, whom to defend, and whose actions to oppose.

As for the individual, no matter how far one descends, it is always possible to void counter-postulates, nullify patterns from the past, postulate better patterns for the future, and return to simply postulating to ‘Know’, which never ceased in any case.

Possibly, if enough people got into thinking this way about life, things could really improve.

Question is, what actions could help more people to do this?

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To Know

Discussing a couple of fundamental confusions could help more people think about the possibility of aiming higher. You know: consciousness comes before matter; there is no unconsciousness, only unawareness; people can become unaware when they miscalculate their effects, and they become more aware when they take responsibility for those effects and respond constructively to others’ effects.

However, several factors may make these ideas a difficult sell: 1) the bitter pills involved, 2) the prevalence of ideas like materialism, 3) the tendency of too many individuals to postulate that others will ‘Never Know’, and 4) constant meddling by a growing number of opportunistic monopolarists preying on ever increasing numbers of people stuck in the Minus Emotions.

First, though, there are those pills that mainly have to do with responsibility, recognising one’s own part in anything that might be affecting oneself and others.

The purpose of any effective therapy ought to be to rehabilitate responsibility. That is, restore a person’s independence and rehabilitate their agency, which may seem lost due to miscalculated postulates and counter-postulates. This would be a process that seeks to assist an individual recover their position as a cause point — their ability to more accurately postulate and act in the direction of improved survival: to cleanly postulate to ‘Know’, and then confront and handle the positive challenges that will appear as a result.

Done successfully, the process could even restore a modicum of pan-determinism, from being ‘a good sport’ to postulating that all sides win while still having a game.

In work aimed at restoring self-determinism, one of the first changes one could look for is an increased interest in life. A person begins to be more attentive to things they might previously have dismissed or left to others. On the Tone Scale, this change would begin to be seen at or, more likely, just above 3.0 (Conservatism).

At 3.5 (Cheerfulness), the change is more evident. The person can approach a problem in the expectation that they might actually solve it. There is a little more pleasure in finding out what’s really going on, even if it’s difficult to confront or when the answer doesn’t immediately present itself.

At 4.0 (Enthusiasm), the person takes on deeper mysteries and can enjoy the increased challenge. One sign of greater self-determinism is how they respond when a discovery disappoints or upsets them: can they take it into account and decide what to do next? With the right tools, more of what once seemed beyond their reach begins to look accessible. Life, despite its mysteries, starts to feel like a game that can be won.

Up from Enthusiasm, a greater understanding emerges, leading to increasing levels of determinism that extend beyond the individual and potentially encompasses all eight dynamics. Solving mysteries, creating positive effects, and playing games on multiple vectors becomes the norm.

But for those who aren’t at 4.0 or even 3.0, how can one reach these upward aiming Plus Emotions? What might be a way of getting there, not just as individuals but, perhaps more importantly, as a society?

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Next: some solutions