Life Continuum
An article by L. Ron Hubbard,
from the Scientology: Milestone One lectures
Naturally, when your preclear was hit in the jaw, he did not like the person who
hit him in the jaw. And yet he has received a motion, a counter-effort of a hit
in the jaw. Now, to be fully self-determined, he feels he ought to be able to
hit somebody in the jaw. So he goes and he hits somebody in the jaw. The second
he does this, he recognizes that he has done an act which was done to him by a
person he doesn't like. So the moment he does this, he likens himself, then, to
the person who hit him first that he doesn't like. So therefore, he can't go on
being himself. So he'll switch over to some degree into the valence of the person
he's just hit, and he'll wear the somatic himself as a life continuum or as an
effort to arrest that somatic and keep himself from being like somebody he doesn't
like.
This is not very complicated. It's something that you should sort of lay down
on a piece of paper and look at it until you see it very thoroughly, because it's
quite important.
Now, in the field of emotion
This covers overt acts, it covers life continuum,
it covers all of the buttons that you find in the handbookall of themexplains
it very well. And if you look over any preclear, you can ask him this question
and get the central computation or the central snarl in his memory bank or his
thoughthis computer. You ask him what he would defend above all things.
Just ask him that, and he will saythink for a moment and he would say "my
family" or he will say "oh, babies" or he will say "cats"
or he will say "governments" or "God" or something of the
sort.
Well, you've got him in a bear trap right that moment. Why? Why would he defend
this above all other things? He has to defend this or become the thing that attacks
it! Why does he have to do this? He has to defend these things because he has
offended against them and is doing a life continuum for them. Very simple. He
hasis doing a life continuum for cats or babies or something of the sort,
and at one time or another he injured the entity he is defending. He has done
an overt act against this thing.
You'll get some preclear, and you'll find this preclear says, "Oh, these
horrible brutal menthese brutal men that torture these poor little cats!"
And you just stick your tongue a little bit in your cheek* and
say, "All right, now let's go back down the time track and let's find the
timelet's find a time, now, when you killed a cat."
"Oh! I'd never do such a thing! Poor little pussycats. II
love pussycats and they're much better than men," and so on. "I'd never
do such a thing; I just never would."
So, the poor little pussycat we find at the age of four, being most wonderfully
strangled by our pussycat defender.
One case, for instance, had dressed a kitty up in baby clothes and had put
it innocently in a box and had come back and the cat was dead, having strangled
to death on the baby clothes. And this person ever afterwards starts to defend
cats, but then sees somebody punishing a catnamely, some men punishing a
cat one way or the other or doing something to a catso she hates the men.
She has to hate the men and defend the cat or she becomes the men because she
killed a pussycat too, you see. This is very simple. Very simple. You can draw
that. You can draw that with ease. And, as a matter of fact, I had better draw
it for you.
Now, here, [marking on blackboard] here we have a time track. We will just
take one life. We'll take a very, very microscopic view of a person's existence
and take one life.
And, by the way, has anybody present got any doubts in themselves that youby
now in Scientologythat you live only once? Do you think you live only once?
Who around here thinks you live only once? (pause) Ah, you're scaredthere's
somebody around here thinks you live only once. (laughter)
Male voice: Sure, you never stop living; you're only living once. (laughter)
Ha-ha-ha-ha! Very good, you never stop living; you're only living once. That's
correct, that's correct. Okay, I was just hoping for somebody to bite on that.
I have a lot of very interesting experiments I like to perform, because I love
to see somebody's jaw drop.
*Stick your tongue a little bit in your cheek: reference
to the phrase with tongue in cheek, meaning "in a humorously ironic,
mocking or insincere way."
Excerpted
from the Scientology: Milestone One lectures.
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