book { Advanced Procedure and Axioms }

The key to the processes outlined in this book lies in the self-determinism of individuals.

. . .

Along each and every dynamic the mind makes a self-determined effort. Self-determinism is positive and strong in its native state.

The only thing which can actually alter self-determinism and reduce it is self-determinism itself. One can determine to be used or worked upon by the environ and its people but until one makes a determination to do so, one is not so affected.

Each and every aberration of the human mind and the human body has an initial postulate to be so aberrated. Engrams are effective only when the individual himself determines that they will be effective.

. . .

Self-determinism is that state of being wherein the individual can or cannot be controlled by his environment according to his own choice. In that state the individual has self-confidence in his control of the material universe and the organisms within it along every dynamic. He is confident about any and all abilities or talents he may possess. He is confident in his interpersonal relationships. He reasons but does not need to react.

. . .

DEFINITION: Responsibility is the ability and willingness to assume the status of full source and cause for all efforts and counter-efforts on all dynamics.

There is no compromise with full responsibility. It lies above 20.0 on the tone scale and is descended from in order to effect randomity but is descended from with the full knowledge of its assumptions. It means responsibility for all acts, all emotions on every dynamic and in every sphere as one’s own. It includes such “disrelated” data as the death of an individual one has never met on a highway on which one has never travelled at the hands of a stranger no matter how culpable. One does not send to find for whom the bell tolls without full willingness to have tolled it and to have caused the cause of its tolling.

There is a scale of responsibility between full responsibility and full other-responsibility where the former is above 20.0 and the latter is at 0.0. Complete negation of responsibility is complete admission of being under the complete control of the environment. Assumption of full responsibility is a statement of control of the environment and persons within it without necessity of control.

There is a cycle of responsibility. One acts and seeks to negate his responsibility for such action by placing the “reason” at another’s door. This works s long as one succeeds in making another accept responsibility for the action. The moment this action fails and another does not accept it, the entire action comes back at one. It is then a matter of fault and fixed (by another) blame and stirs the emotion of guilt. Before this cycle begins, there is no aberration, no matter what has been done, no matter what has happened to anyone. The action occurs but is no cause for discussion or justice until one seeks to shunt cause elsewhere than self.

This starts the cycle and eventually comes back as fault. Full responsibility is not fault; it is recognition of being cause.

Rationalization is wholly an attempt to shunt responsibility. Whatever occurs to one is actually his own responsibility, as the student will realize as soon as he re-evaluates the factors involved and as soon as he sees the enormous effect of this process.

The highest common denominator so far reached on occlusion is the responsibility factor. One is occluded on whatever he has tried not to be responsible for. He refuses responsibility for the incident, thus he has no control or responsibility for the facsimile of the incident. One can control nothing without assuming full responsibility for it.

. . .

Development of rationalization (negation of responsibility establishing conflict for development) establishes randomity; and randomity is apparently vital in order to effect a conquest of MEST (our closest approach to why survival, being a conquest of the material universe by theta).

One is obviously conceived after free choice. One obviously seeks and selects randomity on free choice.

Every individual is possessed of an urge for survival on every one of the eight dynamics. He can exercise free choice for the survival of every one of the eight. Indeed, since he has existed prior to any existing situation, he had the free choice to do something about it and thus had free choice about any existing situation. At least the problem resolves itself in this fashion. Its proof is that pre-clears soar up the tone scale on acceptance of full responsibility and the proposition is thus credited by its workability.

Running back any happenstance before the cycle of blame-failure-guilt is started will discover that the pre-clear had full responsibility for anything done to him or by him or, reaching far back, for anything done to anybody by anything or anybody. Full responsibility as AA’s (attempted abortion) occurs if only in choosing conception. Anyone alive today had responsibility in creating our social order.

A soldier shot on the field of battle may “blame” the sniper, the Selective Service, the stupidity of government, but he nevertheless had full responsibility not only for being there and getting shot but for the sniper, Selective Service and the stupidity of government.

You may locate any rationalization cycle merely by finding any mis-emotion such as antagonism, anger, fear, grief or apathy on the part of the pre-clear for anything or anybody. You will find then a cycle wherein the pre-clear considered himself affected by environment, blamed environment (and environment contains all dynamics including self), failed to make the blame stick and received the consequences, thus losing self-determinism, thus getting controlled by environment, thus getting aberrated, thus getting and using the service facsimile.

The auditor is not seeking the point where the pre-clear accepts the harm which came to him as his fault. The auditor is seeking the point where the pre-clear decided it was not his responsibility and then the earlier point of refusal of responsibility. Get the fault acceptance point and you will find apathy since here is agreement with accusation—wrong point. Get the first instant of rationalization and then the earlier generalization of negated responsibility and you will find the postulates which deny full responsibility. A postulate of illness so as not to attend school is not the primary postulate on the chain. The primary postulate on this chain is refusal of full responsibility for school.

Occlusions are resolved by full responsibility on the subject. This includes occluded persons.

. . .

The pre-clear, understanding all this, may yet wonder when he discovers in his past a person who avowedly had full responsibility, is always right and yet made him unhappy. Let the pre-clear look in this person for the actuality of full responsibility and the person in question will be found to have suspicions, antagonisms and rationalizations and is thus discovered to be lacking in full responsibility after all.

The environment starts to control the individual the moment he rationalizes away his inherent full responsibility. The individual becomes “unable” to handle any facsimile of any incident for which he has not assumed full responsibility, thus he becomes subject to facsimiles “handling” him.

Attempting to invalidate someone is attempting to negate full responsibility for that person. The person who insists it is “your fault” is invalidated on a low-tone level by insisting it is not your fault. Thus, assuming “fault” seems to validate the accusation of the person so claiming. Assumption of full responsibility is also assumption of the accusative person as a responsibility.

For definition, the responsibility scale drops to its next level to “I am responsible and I must do something about it”. This dwindles down through “I won’t be responsible”, “I am afraid of responsibility for it”, “I don’t care, it’s no use being responsible”. The lowest rung is no responsibility for anything.

. . .

An individual is evidently designed to be cause. When one speaks of responsibility he means “the determination of the cause which produced the effect.”

The goal of full responsibility is not attained simply by making a new postulate. It is attained by discovering and reducing the pre-clear’s assignment of cause.

Ordinarily people call the assignment of cause “blame.”

If one assigns cause to something, he delivers to that entity power. This is not mystical. It is a new discovery of hitherto unknown phenomena. By it strange visios and occlusions resolve.

A swift survey of emotions demonstrates that a gradient scale from cause drops down to effect. Cause is the life static itself. Full Effect would be MEST, or a dead body.

An organism seeks to be cause without becoming effect.

Cause is above 20.0; effect is at 0.

. . .

A strange visio on a case will vanish if regret is scanned up from it. Occlusions will turn off if blame is scanned off the occluded object or person including self.

This operates on any of the eight dynamics. That which one blames becomes a power and is occluded as unexaminable including self. That which is in stationary visio is that which one regrets having caused.

lecture set { Thought, Emotion and Effort }

lecture: 26 November 1951: An Analysis of Memory and Human Aberration , Part II

Now, I’m going to tell you something horrible. The second that you blame anything, including yourself, you elect a cause. You elect something else to be responsible. You elect a dynamic to be responsible and it becomes the cause and you become the effect at that moment! Do you see how this would be?

You fall downstairs and hurt your knee. And you say to Isabel, “You pushed me!” You suddenly have elected Isabel to be the cause. And just as certainly, you elected yourself to be the effect. And from that moment on, Isabel is going to be more powerful than you. The environment is going to be more powerful than you. That’s all you have to do.

 

lecture: 3 December 1951: Cause and Effect : Full Responsibility

Cause and Effect. You are cause! But you go along very far and you find out that you want to eat. The moment you eat, you become an effect. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it demonstrates how Cause and Effect interoperate.

It works out, then, that you are cause before you become an effect. And after you have become an effect, it is more difficult for you to be a cause again, unless you start out all over again and decide to be: “Well, I’m cause again. Now I’m going into a chain of effects.” A person does this when he says, “I think I will live life now” He quits his job, he buys a motorcycle and rides off to Puget Sound or something. He’s cause again. See, he’s deserted everything which was going to affect him.
. . .

Now, this Cause and Effect add up to this: A person who says, “I am not cause” – proof of the pudding is in the eating. This isn’t just a metaphysical or a mystical statement, this happens to resolve cases. Person says, “I am not at cause. I didn’t cause that.” [snap] Now he’s really off to the races. He will not blame self but blames others. “I didn’t cause that.” He blames something else. The second that he blames something else, he says, “That thing is cause.” It becomes more powerful than himself. It occludes and it can thereafter affect him forcefully because the memory of it is not handleable by himself anymore.

He said something else was to blame, so the memory of that something else is something beyond his ability to handle. He said, “Cause is over there.” Therefore, cause is there. What else is he saying? He’s saying, “I’m effect.” There must be a Cause and Effect in this situation. “What he did to me was horrible. He’s done these horrible things to me” and so on and so on. A person, all the time he’s saying this, is saying, “He’s cause.” Cause is the big boss. How to make your enemies powerful and yourself weak. “They’re to blame.” You assign them as cause, you can’t handle the facsimiles of them and you are electing to be an effect of them and, in thus fashion, you get occlusion.

Now, the second you start blaming self – “It’s my fault, I am to blame,” so on, so on. By the way, if you get a relatively occluded case that has an occasional fragmentary visio [visual recall], every visio that that person has is where he has blamed himself – blamed himself, followed with regret. So evidently blame and regret are highly aberrative. “Blame” is the artificial or arbitrary election of cause. It’s the introduction of an arbitrary cause.
. . .

Now, any and all rationalization becomes an assignment of cause. And you get somebody with a – here, let’s get practical now. A person has a psychosomatic illness: a person has a set of knees that are very bad. Says, “I can’t walk very far because my knees are bad. And I can’t do this, because my knees are bad.” Cause is a what? A memory. The cause is a memory. The second you blame a memory and say that it is cause, you immediately and automatically negate your responsibility over it and you’re not able to handle it and it will become a psychosomatic illness. It’s just as simple as that!

You say, “And I’m not responsible for this.” Anything for which you are not responsible can really fix you up.