Here on the diagram is space zero and space infinity, thought zero and thought infinity, and time zero and time infinity. You can tell quite a lot by remembering this little picture. This is a simple picture. You can see that motion depends upon both space and time. If there is no time involved there can’t be motion. If you move your hand from one place to another it involves time. It was there it is now here. Regarding space, nothing can occupy space except for a period of time. If something does not occupy space, it does not exist in time. It seems ridiculous, but this is the little fact that the physicists ignored when they started saying space equals time equals space equals time. Actually, motion is space and time together, and therefore energy. When you take these two quantities (space and time) all by themselves, you get circular reasoning. It makes you go around in circles.
I’m giving you this for a reason, so that you can estimate the limit of this theory, since it is dependent upon the same body of knowledge that gives you the atom bomb which explodes and nobody knows why. Not until you add this to it (thought column on diagram). What is holding space and time together? What created space and time? I can’t fall back on the theory that this was all created in six days and nights, but I will have to admit that I don’t have any more concrete evidence than those word in that best seller, the Holy Bible. The science of physics, which gives you atom bombs, motors, robots, etc., is based on that very same proof.
When you ask a question in a classroom and it boils down to “it says so in the text, so it’s true”, realize that it is based on this kind of proof, and that is pure nonsense. It is all nonsense in every subject right up to this line of space, time, and motion. Then your truth starts. What starts motion? How did space and time get there? Well, I can give you a theory. It is a pretty good theory; an interesting theory anyway. You can laugh over it if you like.
Well, let’s go way back; when “a” thought first occurred, the first thing that happened was nothing. Each one of you by the way, has apparently had this experience. Then you decided to make an illusion. The first illusion was to make self. You don’t have to buy the engineering malarkey (B.S.) that imagination can’t be cause in itself. Cause can be cause. So, here is “the” thought. It doesn’t have any reality naturally, for the simple reason that there is no one to agree with you. It’s just an illusion. Mary Baker Eddy reached back in time and got hung up on one of these and came out with, “all is illusion, think good thoughts, etc. etc.” and some extrapolations like “man is evil, but God is good, and God is all.” Even Norbert Wiener would not be able to stretch that into a logical equation. But, right up to the point where she says, “all is illusion”, there is some truth. The proof of the truth in it, is the fact that on a lot of corners you have Christian Science Temples. There must be something there.
It isn’t that all is illusion, but it certainly started that way, in so far as you personally are concerned. You did it. You thought, “All is an illusion, what will I do with it?” So you invented shape. To have shape, you had to invent space. To get motion perhaps you added time. And you have had that experience. Why else do you watch a magician and his illusions with such fascination. How you love illusion. If I should just go whoosh, and a big pillar of fire were to appear, you would at least say, “Gosh!” And so would I. There is pleasure in illusion. The most fun you ever had as a little kid was when you went to mother and said, “Hey Ma, there’s 3 tigers and 2 giraffes out in the yard, and I just put them in my wagon and ….” And she says, “NO, No.” You thought, “She’s crazy.” She isn’t crazy, but she is down there on the tone scale to where she is all mixed up in the MEST universe. She doesn’t understand that this creation of illusion is a Primary and very vital function.
As a matter of fact, if you should depart from this MEST universe tomorrow that is probably just what you would do. You would sit somewhere on a pink cloud, and just create pretty illusions. You might sit there for 100 years thinking how pretty it is. Then somebody else might come along, and you would say, “Look, isn’t that something?” He might take a look at it and say, “Bah, that’s not so good,” and your illusion would go Pfshoooo. How do you erase an engram? It is interesting that an engram will erase. How does thought, emotion, and effort erase? It erases on the principle of disintegration. You have the power of disintegration.
When very light high waves run into heavy MEST waves, they disintegrate. That is why your dreams can be invalidated so easily. Did you ever find yourself telling someone about some book you are going to write etc., and this fellow says, “That’s no good, and besides it has all been done before,” and poof your illusions were gone? You thought it was pretty good. Of course, stupidly, you let it stay erased. You said in essence, “He invalidated it, he erased it, so therefore I’m not cause.” What you should do (and you should try this next time someone tries to invalidate an illusion of yours) is just repeat your illusion, dream or goal. You just keep that up, and he will go into apathy after a few tries. Try it! Watch him come down the tone scale each time he tries, and fails to kill your illusion. This is the Basic Interpersonal Relation ship, “I’m going to show you my illusion, and you are going to try and erase them. I’m going to erase your illusions, and here are my illusions. I’m bigger than you are, because I can put my illusions up there, and you can’t erase them, but when you put your illusions up, I can erase them.” Evidently, you have spent thousands and thousands of endless years doing that on the track.
What do you do when all the space around you is full of these shapes? You made space, and you think, and you think, and you come up with a brand new original invention TIME. Now, what is time? Time is a method of erasing an illusion without giving myself the pain of destroying it. So, what I do is, “Here is my illusion then, (I put it back in then) here is the illusion..then, that’s in then, which now gives you more space. This is a very workable thing. Take a person stuck on the time track, and just get him to practice this exercise. It is still inherent with him that he can make his own time, and so you just get him to go on this basis: Now….then, now….then, now….then, now….then, and you will find he can more on the time track.
It sounds incredible, but that is all time is. It’s now, and it’s then. Here is Now, and now, Now is then. It doesn’t go out in space, it just evaporates. He created it once, you have just taught him to create it again. It is a simple mechanism. Space and time are based on thought. When thought didn’t make any illusions, it was zero, and when it started making illusions, it went zip and extended to become infinity.
And the second it became infinity; it became impossible to think. Why? Because it was senseless, every thought became an infinity of thought. In order to think any thing that was worth thinking it had to have a finite shape or size, and you had to come down from infinity in order to think. Now, you say to yourself, “Here I am” and there is no contest about this. So you say, “Here I am” -bop- and, There You Are, and you say, “That’s me,” only it’s somebody else now. And the reason it’s some body else is because of different characteristics- I’m this way, and he is that way.
So, a person starts in a sort of a thought mitosis, and that underlies all these other mitosis engrams you try and run. If you can find and run this earliest one, the others just blow, because a person becomes himself. He won’t be content with that after a while, and he will become himself, and himself, and himself, etc. etc. He is unlimited but he has to stop after a while, because he keeps posing puzzles for himself so that he can solve them. He makes them tougher and tougher until he finally poses a puzzle that he himself can’t solve. Then he is happy. But the puzzle gets worse and worse and worse, and other people add to it, and other people pose puzzles that add into this puzzle, and then make other people to make more puzzles to add into this puzzle…Then, they all look at it and say, “AN UNKNOWN”, and so the first matter is born. 1
Notes
- Hubbard, L. R. (1952, 23 June). Technique 88: Anatomy Of Maybe. Summer Session Technique 88, (5206C23A). Lecture conducted in Phoenix, Arizona. ↩