Reality is another thing, and rather frightening to realize that the only reality
you know is that realitythe only reality you know in common with other people,
let me put it that way, is that reality on which you and they have agreed. This
is an old one in Dianetics, very old one.
We're all sitting here and all of a sudden this cat walks in. We all saw a
cat. We agree that thing is a cat. Fellow walks up and he says, "That wasn't
a cat, that was a Cadillac."
You say, "It wasn't. It was a cat."
REALITY IS THE MAJORITY OPINION
Well, it's a rather pointless argument because all reality is established by
is the majority opinion. One for you to think about. All the reality there is,
really, is the majority opinion.
So you get into a minority on reality and people start really fighting you.
They say, "He must be crazy. He doesn't agree with us." Well, their
reality might be entirely a psychotic reality in that it was not good for their
beingness. They've all decided not to be, you see? They say, "Well, we'll
justwhat's real here is not-beingness. Nothing exists; that's real. We have
all agreed that nothing exists."
The United States right now is on the very astonishing basis of "We have
all agreed the atom bomb does not exist. Ha! Well, it doesn't exist!" There's
only one unfortunate thing about that, is they are not joined in that agreement
with Russia. The atom bomb would practically cease to exist if everybody in the
United States and everybody in Russia, or even the majorities in both places,
were in perfect agreement that the atom bomb didn't exist. Or if they were even
in agreement that it was not athat it was not a threat, it would cease to
be a threat. That would be a real thing, then, wouldn't it?
THE MEST UNIVERSE
Well, enough people agreed hard enough one time about the MEST universe to
make various things in the MEST universe. And that's the long and short of it
and that's why you got a MEST universe. That's reality!
But if you go around searching for what people say you must face and call realityin
other words, if you go around obeying this thing "Well, the only thing that's
wrong with you can be healed and so forth if you just face reality. Now, if you
will just pay me twenty-five dollars an hour and face reality, we'll all be nuts."
Excuse me, I mean, we'll all be rich. That's wrong too, because the patient would
be poor. That is your standard therapeutic advice, however. Face reality! In other
words, agree with everybody!
BECOMING WHAT YOU AGREE WITH
Well, I don't know how sick you can get reading Dale Carnegie*, but it's not
well, because to some slight degree you become that with which you agree. If you
agree that the desert is a dirty place, you will become dirty. Blunt as that.
You become to some degree that with which you agree. And the only way you can
escape it is to go uphigh enough up the Tone Scale so that you are creating
an illusion for yourself.
I saw a cartoon one day, a wonderful cartoon, a wonderful cartoon. It said,
"Doctor, I just go on day after day facing the same grim reality." He
had learned to face reality 100 percent and he was a sick man.
YOUR ILLUSIONS
What you've got to teach a man to learn, if you are going to teach him to learn
anything, is you've got to teach him to face his own illusions. To hell with his
reality. Everybody has got reality. Throw it overboard.
You start agreeing with every reality that you run into and you will have a
good time!
Now, in Dianetics you go out in the society and you wonder why you have gone
out of communication just a little bit. It's because you don't any longer agree
with their reality. You've said their reality is too MEST. Because, you see, reality
is on this gradient scale too.
GOING OUT OF COMMUNICATION
And you've seen a society which is perfectly willing to be in chaos. What's
this? This thing is in chaos; it's a solid chaos. It's going in all directions
this way and so on, and it's going all so furiously and so fast and with so much
force that it became solid, and so there it is, a solid chaos.
And you get the society as it goes down the Tone Scale it approaches that chaos.
And when you get a living culture which has gone down the line to where it doesn't
care about this and it doesn't care about that and it says this is that and so
on, and so on and so on, it's getting too close to being a dead culture. And you,
being a little higher up the Tone Scale, say, "Hey. I don't want to be that
dead." That second, you've gone out of agreement with it. So your reality
goes out of it and you go out of communication with it....
AESTHETIC BEINGNESS
And you can say, just bluntly, that there will be as much communication as
there is affinity; there will be as much agreement as there is communication;
there will be as much affinity as there is communication. They just interact,
interactany of the three points.
So, you've got this whole band. If you want to go up Tone Scale, you'll finally
arrive at the beingness which is an aesthetic beingness, and there alone is enough
horsepower to come right around and actually create or disintegrate matter. I
snuck up on you with that one, but that's what you do.
L. Ron Hubbard, from the lecture WAVELENGTHS OF ARC
*Dale Carnegie: (1888-1955) American
lecturer and author who wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People.
The book stresses the importance of getting along with everyone you meet, and
includes advice on interpersonal relations such as "Never tell a man he is
wrong," and "In talking with people . . . begin by emphasizingand
keep on emphasizingthe things on which you agree." Carnegie's ideas
were based originally on public speakinglater he extended them to include
salesmanship and psychology.
Excerpted
from The Route to Infinity lectures.