Your sphere of influence and space
An article by L. Ron Hubbard,
from the Scientology: Milestone One lectures
Now, the individual, let us say, has offended against groupshe doesn't want
to take responsibility for those groups anymoreand so the dynamic of groups is
something he is not going to touch.
And let's say he's offended against children, so he's not willing to take responsibility
for children, and he's missing on that dynamic. He's offended against womenhe's
not willing to be responsible for women, therefore his second dynamic is all the
way out. This leaves him dynamic one. He still owns his body pretty well as long
as he's alive. And so his sphere of influence could then be his body or the first
dynamic only. And when he has offended against this often enough, he won't even
take responsibility for the first dynamic.
And so he contracts his sphere of responsibility. And when he has contracted
his sphere of responsibility to this regard, then all the dynamics, all the counter-efforts,
all the counter-emotions, all the counter-thoughts of all the dynamics can hit
him. And most people, by the way, are riding on this very little, thin margin
between not quite being able to stop all these efforts and barely being able to
sidestep them enough to keep alive in their own body. This is just a concept that
they have.
Your body is not your mind. Your facsimiles are not your body, even though
those facsimiles contain that blueprint. The size of your mind is not the size
of your brain. The size of your mind is not the size of your body. Your mind is
as big as the galaxies or as big as the island universes or as big as all the
universes there ever areit doesn't matter how big it is, but it will be
as big as, and will influence as much as, you want it to influence. That's very
blunt. You could conceive your mindit could be withdrawn in its periphery
to something the size of a head of a pin, as in politicians. Or you could expand
it out so that you were able to command your own body, as will do an athlete:
he is at least in command of his own body. Or you could expand it out to the size
of a group where you are trying to handle or manage a group. You can expand your
mind that far.
And by the way, you won't handle that group unless you do conceive your mind
to be as big as that group!
You've got to be able to conceive your mind to be as big as whatever you're
trying to influence, because it means that you've got to take the responsibility
of whatever you are trying to influence. So therefore, you've got to conceive
yourself that size.
You see, the trick in this is the mind doesn't have any size. It doesn't have
space or time. It merely has recordings of space or time.
Most people looking at themselves in the mirror, looking at space and time
around them, looking at themselves, conceive their mind to be merely as big as
themselves. Now, most people do not believe that they handle much of a periphery
of influence. Most people are actually having trouble with themselves. They have
trouble with themselves.
If you can't sit down to a typewriter and learn how to type on it in fifteen
or twenty minutes, you're having trouble with yourself. If you can't grow a better-looking
nose, you're having trouble with yourself. That's really blunt! That's compared
to an optimuman optimum situation.
Therefore, in order to secure any freedom, or to call yourself to any degree
self-determined, you have to have a concept of yourself to the size, to the sphere
of influence that you are trying to determine.
What's self-determinism? "Self-determinism" could be called something
much better, but most people couldn't take the bridge that fast. It should be
called something like "pan-determinism"pan meaning all
the way across or around or over. Pan-determinism: determinism on all dynamics.
And if you were in 100 percent possession of your mind, of your actions and so
on, you would have 100 percent sphere of influence over all the dynamics.
Pan-determinism. You're just as responsible for Russia going to war at this
moment, or trying to threaten the rest of civilization with war, as Russia is.
And in view of the fact that Russia is not even vaguely responsible for what it
does, having contracted in each and every mind within it to bare-necessity control
of self, and having to think in terms of "We're collectively something, but
individually nothing"pretty badly off. If you knowif you
know that you can be determined all the way across the line, just potentially
determined across all the dynamicsthen, you see, you have to accept the
responsibility for Russia being in the state of mind that it's in, as well as
the United States being in the state of mind it's in.
And if you were to just broadly accept responsibility for the atomic situation
in the world today, you would, of course, do a great deal about it. But as long
as your concept is that you can barely take care of yourself, you'll not be able
to do anything about the war.
L. Ron Hubbard, from the lecture THOUGHT, EMOTION, EFFORT AND THE
OVERT ACT
Excerpted
from the Scientology: Milestone One lectures.
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