Re: Ken Ogger, The Pilot speaks from the dead
Pilot'sPosts Z9
[Note by RelayerAnt: What we are sending out is only excerpts and you can see the full Pilot's Posts at http://www.freezoneearth.org/pilot/posts/eframeset.htm]
Knowingness and Creation
Create as top of Know to Mystery Scale
(From Post 34 – August 1998)
This one may be a key breakthrough.
I was thinking about the Know to Mystery scale and wondering how one could learn something sophisticated such as a computer language by knowingness alone without the hard work and experience.
It just didn't seem to me that knowingness would go that high. You can pick up things by knowingness, but I just couldn't imagine it really working at that level of detail. My thought experiment was to consider somebody running "get the idea of knowing the C language" (C is a computer programming language) alternated with "get the idea of not knowing the C language" and my conclusion was that it wouldn't actually yield a knowledge of the language although somebody might have a few good cogs and get their confront up on learning programming.
And yet I pickup new computer languages these days with a careless wave of the hand. I certainly don't bother "learning" them in any formal manner. Using C as an example, when I did start using the language back in the early 1980s, I spent a few hours flipping through Kernigan and Richie's book, glanced at some sample code, and immediately wrote a sophisticated multi-threaded program. Within a few days I was solving problems for supposed C experts at work.
Now of course I already had a dozen other computer languages under my belt, and I knew machine internals well, having done system programming in assembler (machine) language back in the 1970s.
But I do come very close to picking up new computer languages by pure knowingness now that I have lots of experience in the area. Except that it isn't by knowingness. It can't be or else you could get to this state simply by drilling knowingness.
So what am I really doing when I pick up some new complex computer area in an afternoon? It is not knowingness. I hardly work on that at all.
It is the create button. It is mockup by approximation.
In learning C, for example, I was visualizing what would have to be under the hood, mocking up how the language would have to work, almost creating it and simply staying in agreement with what others had created. Knowing how the machine works and knowing what the language would have to do, you of course know what is there in the language without having to learn it, it is just obvious.
So I went back to the thought experiment and considered whether you could get somebody to know a computer language by running "mockup a computer language", and my feeling was that yes, this one could work if it was taken far enough. Of course this might be a bit out gradient and would probably overrun before you got far enough, but I could see it working in the right direction.
In practice, I am quite capable of inventing a computer language, and picking up an existing one simply means getting enough anchor points and orientation to duplicate what somebody else has mocked up.
I'll bet that somebody who already knows a few computer languages could drill mocking up new ones and turn into a real hotshot.
Where a computer neophyte would fail would be in not doing the mockups in sufficient detail so as to be of comparable magnitude to existing computer languages. Note that I'm not talking here about mocking up a vague symbol of a mass called “a computer language”, I'm actually talking about mocking up a language in all its detail, including a detailed instruction set and parsing rules, because that is the one that gives you the ability to know these languages easily.
The point here is that if you can create them, you can know them.
This puts CREATE as the top button on the Know to Mystery Scale. Starting from static nothingness, you have to Create something first before it can be known.
Ron bounced around a bit on whether Know or Not-Know was the top button on the scale. Putting Not-Know at the top doesn't quite feel right, so one tries to put it between Knowingness and Know-About (learning). But in practice, you generally shift up from leaning to pure knowing without going through a not-know step. And you can shift from Knowing down to leaning by simply going downtone or losing confidence or contracting your space again without manifesting a Not-Know step.
However, moving up to create, there is a natural tendency to do a little bit of a not-know. I don't mean a "blast everything out of existence", but simply that you would ignore the existing computer languages (not-knowing them slightly) so as to mockup a fresh and different one.
And coming downscale from create, after creating something, you would have to not-know it to some degree before you actually needed to do anything to know it (knowing it is an inherent effortless side effect as long as you are at create).
So the top of the Know to Mystery scale is really:
CREATE
NOT-KNOW
KNOW
KNOW-ABOUT
And then it goes downwards (looking etc.) to Mystery as is discussed in other writings.
I had a wonderful experience once when I was being word cleared in session. This was when I was getting set up for expanded grades back in the 1970s. I was a class 4 auditor and grade VA release from the 1960s one process per grade era. My auditor was one of my own former PCs and the C/S also knew that I had been a real hot shot cramming officer.
Everybody involved, including myself, the auditor, and the C/S knew that I probably knew the Scientology materials and definitions better than both the auditor and the C/S did. But the first step of the program required doing all the word lists for any correction list that they might have to use. And since I was grade VA, that meant every word list in existence except for the ones on the Clearing course and OT levels.
So the word clearing was a totally bullshit step which everybody knew was a waste of time, and it was being charged for at the current auditing rates ($50 per hour at that time). The C/S did not dare bypass the word clearing step because that would be squirreling. And we all wanted me to get onto the expanded grades processing. And nobody wanted to give me a lot of bypassed charge on wasting money on unnecessary actions. That quantity of word clearing can easily burn up 25 or 50 hours of auditing.
So we went through those word lists at express train speed. The auditor would say the word and I would say the definition. I wouldn't think about it, I'd just say the first thing that popped into my head and the auditor would just say the next word without stopping to consider whether I was answering correctly. He had confidence that I knew the answers so he wasn't worrying about it. And we weren't worrying about context. It was "Run?" - "Go Fast" rather than "Run?" - "do a process", and it was as fast as we could say the words quickly. So we did about 30 definitions per minute. We went through thousands of words in a couple of hours.
And something wild happened. First of all, I lost all considerations. Then I was just talking from knowingness without looking at any pictures or considering anything. Then there was a moment of stumbling when I realized that I didn't know anything and this was all meaningless. I talked to the auditor a bit about machinery blowing and he indicated an FN on that and then we went back and continued the word lists.
And then I realized that I was just creating definitions and not actually knowing anything, simply inventing without reference to anything. And the definitions just happened to be right but not as a result of looking at or knowing anything. They simply were right because I was postulating that they should be correct and in agreement because I wanted to get through the word clearing action without any time wasting distractions such as looking up words (and I didn't have to look up any in that entire endless list).
At the end of the action I had a floating TA and was in a state of creation above knowingness, but of course I didn't recognize the significance of that or fit it into the K-M scale as I did just now. But it is a great example of what I am talking about in this write-up.
In the Hubbard College Lectures of 1952, Ron talks about how you would learn to fly a plane by visualizing everything that could happen and what you would do about it. He talks about a beginning auditor preparing themselves to do a session in this manner; Visualizing everything that could happen and how to handle it. He certainly saw a bit of this in those early inspired days, but it didn't make it into the general theory or onto the K-M scale. But he does talk at times about learning something by doing mockups to approximate it (I think that that one is even on the study tapes).
So this isn't really new data. But the relative importance has been missed. Seeing it this way as the top of the K-M scale puts a whole lot of things into context and opens up practical applications.
And my thought experiment with the C language points up another key concept. It is not the size or significance of the mockup that is important. It is the amount of detail.
The difference between a child's stick figure painting and a Rembrandt is the detail.
Tesla is said to have visualized the complete AC power generation system in his mind before he wrote down the design of the Niagara Falls generators for Westinghouse to build.
Mozart is said to have composed symphonies in his head, complete in every detail, before setting them down on paper.
The great men in almost every profession are usually notorious for their attention to detail and when you dig further you often find that they had a tremendous ability to visualize things as well.
Recently there has been a discussion of theta size on Clear-l / ACT, with processing about mocking yourself up as bigger and so forth. Now that is nice and getting the idea of being bigger and smaller alternately is certainly a good process. A thetan's ability to reach and to have space is definitely one of the monitoring factors and you can get a big fast gain that way.
But this factor of details is why you don't get an OT simply by having the person be bigger and permeate things. He is simply not up to mocking up the quantity of details necessary for good perception and control. If you get the idea of being as big as the galaxy (which is fun and interesting), you probably get a vague blur rather than precisely visualizing the details of 3 billion star systems (yes it is that many).
Now don't let this discourage you. It is a gradient like everything else. It starts slowly, but you grow by quantum jumps rather than linearly by one item at a time. Once you can handle a certain level of detail, then you can handle it. Once you can hold one musical composition in your mind in detail, then you can do them endlessly, like Mozart. It’s only the first one that's hard.
Do the usual attention drill (a locational, as in Self Clearing process 1.1) spotting individual points on objects. Then as a second step, spot and hold points, keeping the previous points while adding a new one so that you can hold multiple points simultaneously.
Do mockups and see how many details you can put into them. Do it occasionally getting a little more detail each time.
Go ahead and permeate a big city and see how many individual buildings you can hold in your mind at once. Try it occasionally and keep pushing the number up.
Listen to complex music and follow individual lines. Then listen again and try to follow multiple lines at once and see how many you can get.
Study something complex and work on getting more and more of it into your mind at once.
There are lots of things that you can do here and there are many ways to work them into the ordinary activities of your life so that they build up naturally and easily.
And there are quantum jumps where you start getting collections of detail as a unit without loosing sight of the detail. Think of reading. You probably get “The Cat” as a single unit rather than as 6 letters or two words. And yet you probably do see and know all the letters. Just contrast that with the first time learning experience of sounding out all the letters and composing words while reading something.
I wonder how it would work to just have kids mockup words and how to spell them and to write them down without inval or eval and just keep them at it until something gives way. Then you would just have to orient them to what the currently agreed upon words and spellings are. This is just in theory, but it might turn on a fantastic learning ability.
You raise your ability to handle detail by rolling up your selves and handling details. If you do this consciously in present time without putting it on circuit, it soon jumps to being able to handle packages of details.
Part of our downfall may have been that we decided that there were too many details and it seemed overwhelming or too boring and so we put the details on automatic so that we wouldn't have to confront them. But if it is on automatic, your confront never comes up and you don't get that jump up to handling quantities of detail easily.
I would say at this point that theta horsepower is primarily monitored by how many details you can mockup and hold. If you want to be god, you better plan on tracking every sparrow that falls.
So the top of knowingness is the Create button, and the monitoring factor is how many details you can create.
I'm sorry if this sounds like work. It can be rough getting started. But at the top of the scale it’s lots of fun to mockup lots and lots of details.
Affinity,
The Pilot