THE THETA FACSIMILE PART I

A lecture given on 29 October 1951

How We Use Our Facsimiles

I want to give you some material about theta facsimiles. Part of this has never been covered before; it has to do with learning. It also has to do with a couple of new gimmigahoojits which have been discovered in the mind that you don’t know about yet.

I overestimated the length of time it was going to take to find the governor— how a person could speed himself up and slow himself down. It was right there; it was no trick to find. Later on I will show you how you can speed up your governor and slow it down.

I also want to tell you about a center button concerning theta facsimiles, and give you a new tone scale.

A theta facsimile is considered to be nothing more nor less than a picture of the physical universe; you refer to it ordinarily as a memory. You can consider that when you have looked, listened, felt or otherwise observed the environment, anything that you perceived, plus where you were sitting and so forth, is a package of perceptions. It is a number of perceptions all packaged up very nicely.

Now, this gets filed. In present time we get it directly and simply take observation of it. We get it directly as we perceive it and then it is filed, and we can afterwards recall it or use it. But our present- time observation of it is not filed and then recalled for our present- time awareness. In other words, it is on a direct circuit as you first observe it.

You observe something, you see something— that comes straight in through the action switchboard. There is a monitor there which compares it and so on, but it goes straight into action or it is filed for use, and both occur. What you perceive is used and then filed, but always filed. Or you simply perceive and file without taking any action.

But each time that you have filed something, that file we call a theta facsimile. Theta is merely the mathematical symbol of thought. It is nothing mysterious like elan vital; it is simply a mathematical figure. Mathematically, it is something we don’t know everything we would like to know about, so we represent it with a Greek letter theta, much as you represent nine apples or twelve canoes with an x in algebra. You might have been very confounded in algebra; don’t be confounded about theta, because it simply is a word which we use to describe something about which we have adequate knowledge to say it exists. But calling it theta does not say how it exists, it merely says there is something there.

And when we say facsimile, we do not mean the actual thing; it is a picture of the actual thing.

Any time you record anything with a camera you simply hit the button and the real universe goes in through the lens and records on the camera film. Now you have a picture. You could just as well call that a facsimile. So we have theta (call it thought if you want to, but thought is so abused and misunderstood that we will just lay off using this word and call it theta) and we have facsimile, which is a recorded picture.

You take a picture about every 125th of a second, every 75th of a second or something like that, and any time you perceive something you perceive it on all channels, and that theta facsimile is recorded on all channels. That is, there is a constant recording of everything you see, a constant recording of everything you hear, of everything you feel, and a copy is retained. This goes on from the beginning of life to the end of life. Whether or not this is all recoverable or not is nothing we have to belabor. It happens that it is, but it doesn’t invalidate anything or validate it one way or the other.

The point is that you can record things and you can recall them.

So, you perceive all of these things and this package comes in as a picture. The structure and mechanics of this picture are very interesting. But we needn’t go into that. What we are interested in is that you, by remembering or recalling some picture which you have taken of the physical universe on all these perception lines, are simply looking at a picture.

Now, let’s take a look at the awareness unit, the central control or whatever you want to call it. The Greeks called it the id. Somebody back in the old days, way back in past history in psycho- analism, used to refer to it as the ego; they also had a number of other "parts of the mind"— they had terrific numbers of parts. They didn’t know what any of them did, so they had to name a lot of things.

But let’s not be that complicated. Let’s just call it "I." This "I" is your awareness of being aware. A thinking being is aware of being aware. When we say "I" we mean the gimmick that takes a look at the physical universe on one side and the recall bank on the other side and which also takes a look at all the computers around, figures out all the problems and receives the solutions.

This is all very simple. Let’s take words: You hear certain words spoken. These words are symbols of physical- universe actions which you have perceived in the past; you have it all added up very beautifully. This word word is a package: it tells you a sound wave, a symbol, a meaning— just the word word tells you this.

The word table is very simple. That is simply what you have recorded as being what this sound table represents. But again, these are just theta facsimiles.

Now, thought is accomplished by "I" taking these theta facsimiles and comparing them to the present- time situation, a present- time environment. "I" makes all these comparisons and sorts them all out; it tells you what is dangerous, what isn’t dangerous, what is safe, what is painful, what is pleasurable. This sorting process goes on continuously and— incidentally— instantaneously. It is all a very neat system, and actually it is not hard to understand.

You just take a lot of perceptions of the physical universe, from the time you were born on forward to present time; this gives you data. As you see anything in the present- time environment you can then recall stuff in past environments and compare it with the present- time data. You do this so fast that you don’t even realize that you are determining that you do it.

You don’t do it unless you determine that you do it. It is not something spooky that sneaks up on you in the night somehow, any more than it is a spirit standing out there telling you what to do. You are doing it. You can start or stop this process at will.

Somebody has put something out in the society saying, "A man has to think all the time; you can’t stop a stream of thought. It’s all by association and so on. And there’s this constant stimulus- response mechanism on, and you’re just a puppet. The universe acts so you then react, and it all just works out on that basis— and you haven’t got anything to do with it, you poor fool. That’s why you’re here for treatment."

A fellow who is actin g in that fas hi on of course has turne d his selfdeterminism over to his environment. He has said to the environment— and incidentally has said this consciously in his own lifetime, usually when he was very small—" I want the environment to control me," "I want Mama to pick me up," "I want to be handled," "I want to be told what to do," "I’m going to agree with this person in order to get something." This is good, valid "reasoning."

But you go back there and you find out that the individual himself was telling himself what was going to happen, telling himself what to do, and telling himself consciously— fully consciously— which theta facsimile he was going to pick up and use.

You take somebody and get his recalls up and give him a little Postulate Processing or something like that and he will all of a sudden spot these mechanisms.

He bites down on a radish and it hurts a tooth. You will get him to the point, after a while, where he can differentiate, and you can make him remember this little incident. He hurt his tooth and he can get the moment when he recognized that he had hurt the tooth and then what he chose for the excuse. He is not supposed to hurt himself, so he chooses this reason. He says to the body, "You’re really falling apart. You’ve got to go to the dentist! The tooth hurts, it won’t heal again. It’s your fault!" So he goes down to the dentist and gets the tooth repaired.

By the way, if you just pick up this chain of decisions you will blow the toothache. It will be gone. In other words, just the realization that one is doing it to himself is enough to blow a whole lifetime, practically. A fellow takes an entirely different turn on existence.

You walk up to somebody and you say, "Did you ever wish that you were sick? Did you ever make yourself sick or did you ever wish to be sick?"

"Oh, no. No, it’s just the environment. I’m a stimulus- response mechanism and the environment comes in and I get these new facsimiles, and I just can’t do anything about it; I’m just helpless about the whole thing."

You say, "Come now, there must have been a time in your life when you wished you were sick."

"Oh, no."

"Did you ever try to get out of school?"

I haven’t found anybody yet who hasn’t bit on that one. That is the beginning of a play called "Cutting One’s Own Throat," because once you have done this and selected this theta facsimile, all you have to do is select the conclusion. That is very simple then. You selected the facsimile when you were young, and you got that into action. That was a little hard to work, but now all you have to do is remember selecting it. And then after a while you only have to conclude that you have concluded that you have concluded, and it will happen so fast— thought being instantaneous— that something can happen in the environment (for which you have had this as a ready excuse) and you get sick.

You fail at something— you drop a lead pencil or something terrible— and immediately you cough. This is conscious! It is horrible.

All you have to do is experiment with this a little bit and you will find out how horribly true this is; it is grim. For instance, a girl comes around and tells you that she is dying of pneumonia or something; her lungs are going all to pieces.

You say, "When did these symptoms start?"

"Why, oh . . . three days ago."

"Well, what did you fail at just before that?"

"Oh, nothing! No."

"I mean, did anything go wrong in your life about three days ago?" "Of course, four days ago— four days ago I ran the car into the side of the garage." So you say, "Well, now, what did you think when you ran the car into the side of the garage?"

"Oh, I didn’t think anything; I mean, I was just hurt!"

Meantime, you are loosening this up; you are getting out the right theta facsimiles about running the car into the garage. Your job as an auditor is just like sorting cards. You are just trying to sort out the right facsimile and deal it into the right spot and say "You see? Four- flusher! l"

She says, "Well, I did think something. I thought, ‘Oh, how mad John is going to be. ’ I remember thinking that."

"Well, what else did you think?"

"Oh, I didn’t think anything else. Oh, except, of course, that I ought to have some excuse for it."

"Well, now, what did you tell John?"

"Oh, I told him I had run the car into the side of the garage."

"Come now, how did you put it?"

"Oh, I didn’t say any Oh, yes. I said I had a dizzy feeling."

Now, this person doesn’t know anything about Postulate Processing. You just start working with her like this and all of a sudden, "How does your chest feel?"

"What chest? Oh, yes, that’s funny; it’s gone!" It is really just that simple.

What is happening there is that the individual is actually, actively, all the way along the line completely self- determined. An individual starts in this life and continues on through to the end of this life on his own supply of, you might say, theta— his own theta facsimiles. He chooses them, he sorts them around, he makes them what they are.

For instance, he elects at some time or other to be afraid of something. Of course, nobody ever elected to be frightened of anything! But were you ever told a ghost story when you were a little child? Do you remember how obliging you were? You said, "Gee, that scares me!" and you were very smug about the whole thing.

You remember a Halloween, even a recent Halloween when you decided to act frightened for the benefit of the children down the block? Do you remember that? What you did was reach in and pick up a theta facsimile, and this was a nice "frightened" facsimile, and you just counterfeited it— you thought. Actually, you used the real facsimile, but your intention with that facsimile was not to really be frightened. But you chose one; there it was, it said "fright" on it.

The odd part of it is that when you choose this theta facsimile it will possibly be something which is very available to you. Then something happens: a man jumps out from behind the bushes down the block a few days after you pretend to be afraid of the children, and what is your nearest action? Now you can use this theta facsimile, but you use the theta facsimile on him, with you in the winning valence. You jump at him, you yell at him suddenly or something like that. That would be your first impulse.

When you realize that this doesn’t do any good you reach a moment of failure and you reverse valences— that is, reverse the efforts— and you get on the receiving end of this theta facsimile. So you get really scared and you run like the dickens. Or you feel like running, or you just freeze where you are. But you elect to do so. You have to have a choice in the monitoring of your own body in order to respond to situations in a fairly survival fashion. It all depends on what you choose as your response to the situation. This situation fits facsimile eight billion to the twenty- first power, ninety- one. That particular theta facsimile fits very exactly to this situation. You reach back, pick it up and try to use it— first as the counter- effort; you try to use it as the winning side of it. Does that work? No. Then you use it as the losing side of it, because either way you get action— either way.

It is a compound solution of a situation, and in a time of emergency people use these compound solutions.

In training troops you have to give them good, solid, compound solutions that don’t depend on entheta facsimiles or damaging facsimiles. Otherwise they will go on a winning streak but the second they hear they are losing they will all turn into a flock of cowards and run. Therefore, the trained regular keeps on in action because he has been given enough theta facsimiles to keep him going in action. But militia doesn’t keep going; they get out there and each one is using his own theta facsimile on the enemy— winning, winning, winning, winning. Then all of a sudden he hears that he is failing and maybe he is a little bit worried about failing, and he just turns the thing around. So you get a rout; all the militia runs away— they leave the field.

In other words, in order to carry through a course of action of any kind, it requires some experiment in the past which has been successful or unsuccessful as you have wanted it to be. You have to have all of this experience. Experience is another name that can be assigned to a whole file of theta facsimiles. That is all there is to it.

Now, you can think of these files of theta facsimiles as an index- card system. Don’t try to make it as infinite as it is, because there are lots of theta facsimiles. There are billions and billions to the billions of powers of them, actually, in a genetic line. You look through this card file and you find that they are sub- indexed. Your major conclusions are at the top. Then under the major conclusions there is another bank of conclusions and under those there is another bank of conclusions, so that you can pick out a whole bunch of conclusions.

Let’s take the conclusion a fellow is operating on with regard to women: "Women are no good" or something like that, something nice and general. Under that are a bunch of other conclusions which have added up into this big conclusion, and under that there are a bunch more conclusions.

When you get down into this second strata, however, you start running into this sort of thing: You pick a card out of the second bank, not a major conclusion. Let’s say there are fewer times the fellow has decided that women were good than times he decided that women were no good. You reach into this second strata and you will find the minority in there is still effective, and it says "Women are sweet angels," "All women should be defended to the death," "I love women," "They’re all good."

But this major conclusion depends upon Sally Anne jilting him and girl playmates being mean and he couldn’t hit them back, and all these conclusions. In other words, this is pretty confused; it is a pretty confused mess on this second echelon. There is a finite number of these, though.

So, this first major conclusion says, "Women are no good"; he concluded this. Down in the second echelon, there are a number of theta facsimiles that say "Women are no good, women are no good." These are incidents, facsimiles, and they are actually complete motion pictures. They are usually much better motion pictures than any motion pictures a movie studio puts out because they are also "smellies," "feelies" and "talkies," and they are in three dimensions, in color and everything.

So, he has a certain number that say "Women are no good," but he still has a few that say "Women are wonderful!"

Now the fellow has this major conclusion unsettled. He is lying in the road, knocked out cold or something of the sort, and a woman comes along and helps him out; she gets an ambulance and sees that he gets to the hospital and so on. This is shattering to his conclusion. He can’t use that major conclusion anymore— not without a wince.

So the poor fellow now is undecided about women—" Are they bad? Are they good?" He is in a maybe classification.

Unfortunately, the mind runs on the system of yes~ no and maybe: "It is true," "It is not true," "I don’t know whether it is true or not." Those are the three possible answers to any problem— yes, no, maybe. It doesn’t matter what problem it is. Yes means that there are more yeses about it than there are noes. No says there are more noes about it than there are yeses. Neither one is absolute, but the mind is perfectly willing to accept any majority opinion of yeses for a yes or any majority opinion of noes for no, as to its theta facsimiles.

This is the way it thinks; it adds these things up and it says, "‘ Women are good’— one, two, three, four— those are all yes." And then it gets "‘ Women are no good’— eight noes! Conclusion: ‘Women are no good." ’

Now all of a sudden this girl helps the fellow out, and sitting right with this major conclusion he now has one that says "Yes/ no— women are wonderful/ women are no good." He can’t live with that because it puts him in a maybe strata. He is sitting on the center. He can’t make up his mind. There is no majority opinion. A n y t i m e t h i s happens, the chairman of the board, the president— the control center, in other words— throws in his vote. And the individual can actually, at this instant, decide of his own volition, "Well, here I am, hung up in maybe, and maybe is very bad because it means an unsolved problem and ties up a lot of circuits and all that sort of thing. So I’ll just say bang!— bad or good, this is my decision, and go on from there."

You can do this, by the way, about any problem that you become upset about. If you are upset about any problem, right now at this moment, all you have to do is realize that it is because you can’t get a clear- cut yes or a clear- cut no on your answer, so you are haunting this horrible center ground.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question." "Yes or no: that is the question." You will find out first that you can solve that problem merely by finding out what the problem is; that is often handy. This tells you "Yes or no— I have a problem." That is the first thing to ask yourself: "Do I have a problem?" And then you find out "Well, what is it?"— just as mechanical as that. "Well, what is it? What is my decision on it?"

"Well, if I stay out with the boys and play poker my wife will be mad. But if I go home I will be unhappy and I will waste the whole evening, and I do like to be out with the boys once in a while." That is in a maybe realm. It is fifty- fifty whether it is better to be out with the boys or keep the wife happy. You have seen people do this. They suddenly throw in the sponge; they say, "Well, I’ll go anyhow!" They have decided already that they will take the consequences. They just concluded "The consequences aren’t so horrible that I can’t take them."

A person will come up into this basis: "Yes or no— am I alive or am I dead? Maybe." An individual can even go to the point of solving this problem by realizing that he can’t answer it yes. He says, "Am I alive?" and he tries to answer it yes. That is to say, "Do I have action? Am I in control of my environment? Am I handling my problems?"— in short, "Is there anything to live for?" And all of a sudden he finds out he can’t answer yes to it.

In other words, there are too many factors that say life is too horrible, too many factors that say there is nothing in the future for him. All he is going on, though, is his old conclusions. He is operating on these old conclusions and he is trying to solve this thing one way or the other. He asks himself this question and he realizes he is hanging in the middle about this whole thing.

It is a solution, and a very workable solution, to say "No, I have nothing to live for"— boom! That takes one out of that problem completely; one doesn’t have to worry about that this life!

Maybe he decides on the yes side. Once he has started to incline toward yes on a major problem of that character he will generally go all the way and be very determined about the whole thing.

That is what determination is, and that is what certainty is. And self- confidence itself is made out of this factor: Are all the past conclusions in your life resolved as they should be, or are they unresolved? If they are all resolved, yes or no, and if they add up into an alignment, you probably won’t grow wings but probably the Santa Fe Railroad could use you to haul the Super Chief. You would have that much horsepower, because any cloudiness in thinking is tied up on this basis of the maybe.

Each one of these theta facsimiles has its own conclusion on it. Selfdeterminism has put the value on it, and it says "Women are no good" on one set of facsimiles and "Women are good" on another.

Fortunately, today’s environment is not yesterday’s. The environment changes if only from the standpoint of time. Environment is always changing, so the conclusion which was valid to you when you were four years of age about sucking your thumb is not particularly necessary to you now. The conclusion that you made at six months of age—" The only way to get fed is cry" is not valuable to you now. If you go into a restaurant and start crying, they won’t feed you.

Yet those things are still monitoring. Once you have made the conclusion you are stuck with it, because you made it.

So when a fellow goes into a restaurant there is actually, kicking around in all these other conclusions, a mix- up about crying for the food. It is as silly as that. It is clear down at the bottom of the pile, but it is influencing later conclusions.

An individual can get so confused about food. How do you like people to ask you "Do you want tea or coffee for supper?" You have to answer yes or no to tea, or yes or no to coffee. You have to consult whether you like coffee or like tea. But that isn’t what you consult. You consult theta facsimiles with regard to coffee and tea, relative value.

You end up with "Well, I don’t care, dear; you choose it." Right at that instant, by the way, you have handed over your self- determinism to another human being. The point is that what you did was go back and find out that "growing children should not drink coffee." You found out that "tea burns the tongue." These are some of the conclusions that are kicking around in the coffee/ tea question, not resolved at all. You look back through the file and that is what you find—" Coffee is bad for growing children," "I had a bad cup of coffee in the navy," "Coffee is very often too hot," and there may even be such a wildcat conclusion as "When you drink coffee in a china teacup, you are liable to break the teacup." It has now gone over into teacups and you are faced with the decision of drinking something out of a teacup, not choosing between coffee and tea. And teacups are dangerous because you get the devil knocked out of you if you break a teacup. So you would just rather not choose. It is not your fault that that teacup gets broken! Do you see what your decision is? It isn’t about coffee and tea at all; it is about whether or not you are going to be blamed. So you say, "Dear, you choose it."

Now, it can be that way about any problem or situation in life. A person is as healthy, as happy, as effective, as able in sports, as instantaneous in his thinking, and generally as well off, affluent, safe and long- lived as he doesn’t have these points of indecision, and he is well off and all these other things in direct ratio to how much his life is laid out in terms of yes and no— in other words, to how self- determined he is.

His health and everything else depend upon his self- determinism, his power to choose— and not only that, his recognition of his power to choose— and also upon a sorting out of what he has chosen in the past. Have you ever tried to live with somebody who had a nasty temper, who was kind of sniping at you all the time? Did you ever try to live with anybody doing that? It is a funny thing, but they are afraid of you. They have determined to be afraid of you somehow and now they are going to set up situations to make it possible for them to have something to be afraid of.

Or if they are angry, they set up something so that you will do something so they can be angry with you. They get it all worked out completely. They postulate, in other words, whether you are going to be angry, or whether you are going to be a villain, or what you are going to be or how you are going to be, and then they pick up one of these theta facsimiles and try to hang it on you to make their postulate come true. And then they get very upset if you don’t compare with their data.

So, somebody elects that they will be afraid of you; they are going to involve you in all kinds of stuff until they have a situation where they can be afraid of you. Then they are right— and only then can they be right.

But if you go on like a saint they eventually crucify you, because they have to be right, they have to get over into yes or no, and you won’t let them. You won’t do anything so they can be afraid of you— you are mean. You won’t beat them so they can be angry with you!

Let’s take a college girl; she goes on this course and nothing much happens, but about midterm she suddenly rushes to the dean and says, "Last night the professor took me out in the car and attacked me."

The dean calls this professor up on the carpet and he says, "What’s going on here?" Maybe this fellow has an alibi, and maybe he hasn’t— that is tough.

Now, this girl wasn’t "experiencing a sublimation because of the symbolization of the snake festival as practiced by the ancient Indians." When she first went in she simply said to herself, "Gee! That guy is liable to attack me!" And then he doesn’t— the beast!

She hasn’t said "Now, I have to sublimate all this. And I have to be very covert about my libido theory because Freud in 1894 said something about it. I have to be awfully covert about this whole thing. I really like him, you see, but I’m going to postulate this. And just to explain to myself why I want it, actually man is a beast down underneath and you mustn’t ever let it come to the surface, so therefore I’ve got to be this covert." That is not her line of reasoning. That is the psychologist’s line of reasoning (if you want to call it reasoning). What she does is simply postulate "This guy is dangerous to me; he is liable to attack me." And then the weeks go on. She made a postulate; she said, "The future is going to be this way," and she said it with a jolt! Possibly she recognized in him some of the characteristics of some fellow back in high school or her father, or she has an entheta facsimile from the prenatal bank— anything. It doesn’t matter why she postulates this thing.

She doesn’t have to postulate it, by the way. But she postulates it, and now having postulated it, she is hung with it; she has to make it come true.

She finds out that he walks between two buildings at night and she will go somewhere along there so that she can make this postulate come true.

But this professor just keeps saying "Good morning, Miss Smitherington," and "Good evening, Miss Smitherington. How are you? How are you getting along in class? Oh, that’s fine," and keeps walking up to his desk. He never attacks her.

As long as he keeps up this "outrageous conduct," she is wrong! There is only one way by which she can be right. But she can’t precipitate her own future, so all of a sudden she just postulates that it has happened. Rather than be wrong she says, "Well, it’s happened! I’ll go to the dean and complain." So she does.

There has been many a man had his throat cut this way; I’m not kidding.

And many a woman has had her throat cut the same way. Some fellow comes along and he takes a look at this woman and he says, "My, I’ll bet she’s mean. Oh, but she’s mean. You know, I’m going to tangle with her sooner or later. I just know it." Maybe this girl handles the files. Now, regardless of who he saw in her or why he made this conclusion— that has nothing to do with it— he didn’t have to make this conclusion. He had a free determination whether he did or not, but now he has made it, and so he says to this girl all sorts of weird things.

She keeps on saying "Good morning, Mr. Smythe, ’’ and "Good evening, Mr. Smythe," and that is about all. Finally he finds out that her card- file system isn’t as good as it might be and there are a lot of reprehensibles. Actually, this fellow will go to the point where he will keep setting up traps for this girl to fall into so that he can tangle with her, because he has to be right.

How wrong can you get? Dead. So he doesn’t want to be wrong. All he has to do is get this girl to a point where she fights with him. Then one day she hears that he has said something or other, and that he has done something or other, and she barks at him about it. Now he is right. He tangled with her; there it is and life is now simple and smooth. He looks around for another goal.

As incredible as it may seem, this is the way these things get set up. People actually set up things to be afraid of, to be angry about, to be happy about and to be bored about. If you want to do this, just try it sometime. Let’s say you are going to go to a show and it is reputed to be the best show in town. Before you go, sit down and very honestly and earnestly— not as a test— tell yourself, "I’m not going to enjoy that; I know I’ll just sit there and be bored the whole evening!" You go to the show, and it can be the best show in the country but you will be bored. You will even figure out reasons why it bored you and tell all kinds of things about why it bored you, how it bored you, why the acting was this way.

But you can pick out the worst picture in town and say to yourself, "I’m going out and treating myself to a movie, and regardless of what it is, I’m going to enjoy it. I’m really going to like this. I’m going to enjoy this movie. I bet there are a lot of things about it that I could enjoy; I bet there are, if I want to look closely. Even if I just enjoy how bad it is, I’m still going to enjoy it." You go to the movies and sit down and you will enjoy it. You will have more fun picking the villain apart or something of the sort, but you will enjoy it!

This is forecasting the future, and you don’t need to be cleared to do this; you can do this right now any time you want to. You just hand out these conclusions and they happen.

You are engaged wholly with your mind in postulating new realities for yourself and for those about you; that is what your mind is trying to do. You are measuring up and estimating efforts necessary to accomplish actualities or realities all the way along the line. You keep this up as a steady computation.

This is done by comparing theta facsimiles, one with another, so as to sort out your experiences . And, believe me, they don ‘t sort out on a magnetic association level. You have free choice. They don’t combine unless you want them to combine; they don’t come apart unless you want them to come apart. The only thing stet about them is that they are there, because you have taken them automatically.

You can even choose to take the visio, for instance, out of any theta facsimile you want to. You can actually choose to take the visio out of it. You can take the visio out of present time: Just close your eyes for a moment; there went the visio. That theta facsimile doesn’t have any visio in it.

On a recall basis, by self- determinism and by other conclusions, you select theta facsimiles for use. You have a recall center, and we can call this central files. The command post, "I"— the command post of the mind— reaches back to recall information, to recall data. It does this on an automatic basis— that is, it just says, "Well, in this life I’m going to recall lots of information." It can go back and do this on a wholly automatic basis or it can select by examining, one by one, the theta facsimiles— memories, in other words— and just bring them up and take a look and say, "Let’s see— yeah, I’d look nice on horseback. That’s a good one! Horseback.... Riding habit. Yeah, I’ll put a riding habit into this now." This is imagination working: Put a riding habit on the thing and dress up this theta facsimile. Of course, now you have made a theta facsimile with your imagination to compare with the original theta facsimile. You have put a riding habit on or something like that.

So, your command center, or control center, reaches back into the central- files system. There is nothing very "subaware" about this centralfiles system; it is all there. It is just whether or not you want it,

You decide that you have been through a horrible experience. You say to yourself, "Gee, the bicycle came down the hill and I didn’t get out of the way in time and I got knocked flat. Horrible experience! Oooh, just terrible; a terrible experience." Now you have a theta facsimile about a bicycle coming down a hill, and it has a conclusion tab on it—" Horrible!" It has every other tab on it too. It is just as mechanical as that.

You say, "Goodness, I just don’t want to look at that anymore." You have made a conclusion, so you block out that theta facsimile on recall. You forget it, get it out of sight, duck it. It is too horrible to recall— it says so right on the theta facsimile— so you duck it, get it out of the road.

Let’s take another one: Somebody comes along and slaps you across the eyes. This gives you a theta facsimile— a slap across the eyes— and this we could call an enturbulative theta facsimile or a bad theta facsimile or a forced theta facsimile, anything you want to call it. It is a slap across the eyes— painful.

Then one day you happen to be wearing last year’s suit and it is sort of full of holes, and you don’t feel that you look quite as attractive as you might. Somebody comes along and stands there and looks you over. You say, "Well, what’s the matter with you?"

"Oh, nothing," and he snickers a little.

Do you go off and forget this boy and just kick this whole thing overboard? He is being insulting! He is looking you over! So you say to yourself, "Let’s see, what do I wish I could do to this guy? Well, his eyes are what is offensive, so I’ll slap him across the eyes." But then you very foolishly don’t. And if you don’t, the theta facsimile moves into another file. It moves from a third- dynamic classification where you are the winning valence to the first- dynamic classification whereby you are the victim.

You say, "I’d like to put that guy’s eyes out. I wish he wouldn’t look. What’s the idea of staring at me?"— anything like this. All of a sudden you postulate: you pick out of the hat the theta facsimile that says "Hit him in the eyes," but then you don’t hit him! You have another theta facsimile that says "Control yourself at all times; this is the way all young psychologists should act."

So, you pick this first one up; it says, "Put his eyes out, the dog!" but then this other one says, "Nah- ha- ha- ha— no, control yourself! " So you say, "Okay," and then you go down to the doctor’s and get some glasses.

Why? You wanted to do it, and you by conscious self- determinism brought a theta facsimile up into the action category, and then you didn’t either put it back in the file or put it into action— one or the other. No, you left it in the action category, and as long as you left it there you got the somatic, because this thing contains a somatic. In other words, it contains the slap across the eyes! That slap across the eyes would never trouble you as long as you lived provided you didn’t say "Well, I need a good, strong theta facsimile to knock this guy silly."

You take out a theta facsimile and you say, "Gee, I wish I could knock him silly." Why are you saying "I wish I could knock him silly"? The theta facsimile says, "A person is knocked silly by hitting him over the head with a baseball bat!" It says, "A baseball bat is picked up by grabbing it with both hands by the handle, raising it up over the head, flexing the biceps and bringing it down with force. The person who receives this blow very often gets a headache." This is data. This is experience.

And the way this theta facsimile really became an impressive facsimile —that is, a facsimile with big value on it— was by hurting the devil out of you. So you can figure it would certainly hurt somebody else. A natural, simple proposition, isn’t it? So you pull up this theta facsimile and you say, "Hit him over the head with a baseball bat."

Suppose you bring out this theta facsimile and you hit this boy over the head with a baseball bat. Then his mother calls up your mother and you get spanked! Nothing happens to you that time, but the next time you see this boy he tells you the same thing. He says, "Your mother uses a mustache cup and your father’s a psychiatrist"— something insulting. You get mad and you reach for this baseball bat; you are reaching for this theta facsimile, but there is another facsimile that says "Mother will not love me anymore if I use baseball bats. I have reached this conclusion of my own free will." And you did, too; there is an earlier conclusion that says "Mother has to love me." So you say, "What do I do?"

Right there you have a theta facsimile which was once very open- andshut: You got hit over the head with a baseball bat and then you used the theta facsimile to hit somebody else over the head with a baseball bat (you didn’t even have to use it that often). You look at this other boy and you have the effort to pick up the baseball bat and hit him over the head. You have already called for action—" All stations, calling all stations. Alert for hitting person over the head with a baseball bat! Theta facsimile number so- and- so, hook into motor controls. Throw the right switch." But you don’t do it.

Obviously only one thing can occur: You say to yourself, "I failed. I failed to use this theta facsimile. I failed." You didn’t hit him over the head, you didn’t get even with him, you didn’t finish the cycle of action, you have been inhibited— you have failed!

So you take the theta facsimile and you say, "I’ll show me! " Bong! You go home with a headache. You just turn it around, because it was yours in the first place and you got it with a headache; now you use it on yourself to explain to yourself how come you didn’t use it on the other fellow. You lost before, now you have lost again and that is just tough; but you have a headache.

Years later, your spouse is sitting on the bed very sympathetically while you have a headache. Where did the headache come from? "Well, obviously it’s the mitosis of the left ‘yubdula oblongata, ’l and it’s easily cured by aspirin."

As a matter of fact, you can so fix up the motor controls with aspirin that they won’t react. So you can have all the theta facsimiles in the world sitting at these motor controls saying "Act, act, act!" And if you take the aspirin or anything similar, you can bring the synapses apart in the action switchboard with these gimmicks, and the theta facsimiles won’t act. Of course, you won’t think as well.

On the other hand, you might suddenly realize, self- determinedly, "You know, now that my head doesn’t hurt, I think I will reach for a whole batch of new theta facsimiles and do something." You have free choice on any of this.

I am showing you what the basic mechanism is. Way down at the bottom of the track, with the earliest beginnings of this sort of thing, it happens this way: An individual receives motion, turns the motion around and starts using it. He chooses, in the early part of the genetic line, to turn the motion around. When a motion comes in— even though it is a painful motion— he just turns it around and heads it back toward the environment. Now, if he receives it and holds it and doesn’t send it back again, it acts against him. But a person can turn any motion around.

You can reach all the way back down the time track and pick up any theta facsimile you ever had and wish it on yourself, but unless you see that there is a good reason for it, you yourself will reject it. But any time you pick up a bad theta facsimile— an entheta facsimile, one which has physical pain in it for you— and don’t complete its action but fail in picking it up, then you wish it on yourself as an explanation. This is a very simple mechanism.

You can sort through a fellow’s thoughts until he finds where he himself is making these conclusions; as soon as he finds this out, these things just start tearing up. This is a very central push button.

You just ask an individual this question: What is your method of getting even with somebody?

Much more importantly, who do you want to get even with? Take what you consider your chronic somatic, right now at this moment, or something that hurts you periodically or a little bit, and just think about it for a moment and wonder who you wished it on. Who did you first try to give this thing to?

You may not unbury the answer right there, but if you can answer that question, if you can find that data, that chronic somatic is going to go away; it is just as simple as that.

You tried to wish it off on one other dynamic than your own. You tried to wish it off on the second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh or eighth dynamic and it didn’t stick, so you got it.

This chronic somatic or whatever you consider to be wrong with you— what did you try to wish it off on in the first place?

Did you ever see a little boy kick a rock? Did you ever see somebody beat up his coaster wagon? That is a very elementary use of this sort of thing. He has been beaten sometime or another, so he figures out the coaster wagon is going to get that. Oddly enough, a person gets madder and madder and madder and finally will get sick in trying to beat up a coaster wagon, because the coaster wagon will not complete the whole cycle. It won’t finally say "I quit, I give up, uncle, please stop beating me." And in view of the fact that it won’t say this, the facsimile will not be finished out, so the individual goes into the losing valence, and he just gets madder and madder and madder and finally gives up beating the coaster wagon.

He explains it to himself as "It didn’t do any good to beat it." He couldn’t finish off the theta facsimile.

This whole thing is a cycle of action. If you postulate action and then you do not carry it forward, you consider that you have failed. And when you consider that you have failed, you give yourself an explanation as to why you failed. You say, "I’m sick" or "I was unable to do so." If you can’t throw action off onto the physical universe and the organisms around you, if you can’t divert this action and give it to somebody else once you have chosen it and postulated it (it isn’t any stimulus- response mechanism; you chose it, you postulated it, you said, "This action is going to happen," and you have then started the whole cycle of action), if you fail to complete that action, you will turn around and wish it off on yourself as an explanation.

This shouldn’t make you frightened of choosing a course of action, because the most deadly thing you can do is not choose courses of action. But it should make you very chary of picking up good, solid, painful entheta facsimiles and wishing them off on somebody else, though that is all right too. You can do that because somebody else can process it out right away. Or you can— you can just remember when you said you would pick it up. This is very simple. It will go away.

In short, what you should know here particularly is that you are the boss, and not through any stimulus- response mechanism or any hocuspocus, or any unconscious, subconscious, discommissioned mind, or something of the sort. You are the boss. Naturally, things can get into the reactive mind; you can get engrams— the whole mechanism of engrams is perfectly valid— and engrams, in getting restimulated, can tend to coerce you a little bit by just giving you more ammunition. But you choose the ammunition. You choose that engram and you turn around and you use it.

You will find that people have what is known as service facsimiles. There is one chain of engrams which they use; it is about all they use. The auditor only has to find out when the individual started picking up this particular type of engram, trying to wish it off on the physical universe and then failing, in order to find out how the individual got it wished on himself. The individual gets it back at himself. It is a very simple course of action.

If you start to do something, you haven’t realized it completely but your only complete cycle is win or die. This is a horribly barren, final sort of a thing. You say, "I think I will go to the movies." Now if you don’t go to the movies you are liable to get unhappy. When you make up your mind to do something, you probably do it. Don’t let that become engramic. But if you don’t carry it forward you get in trouble. You can do this and do this and do this. What you think you are doing is sort of checking your impulses; but if you go on checking enough impulses, pretty soon you don’t have any impulses.

You say, "I’m going to do something— oh, no, I better not." Then next time you say, "I’m going to do something. Oh, no, I think I better not!" And the next time you say, "I’m going to do something. No, I guess I better not!" And in that exact degree, you are turning your self- determinism over to your environment.

But if you were just to sit there and think to yourself, "Who have I tried to get even with? Who have I tried to hurt in my life?" somewhere along the track you would pick up your effort to wish this entheta facsimile off on somebody else, and your failure to do so. It will blow right there; it will disappear.

That is a central mechanism.