Greetings, fellow NOTs scholars! Today's assigned reading is NOTs 38, "Basic Fear". If you haven't done the reading yet, you can pick up a readings pack (NOTs pack) at the campus bookstore, or wait for some nice Anonymous Remailer to post it to ARS again.

This NOTs bulletin was issued as HCOB 7 Nov 1978, and like all the NOTs series, it was marked as "Confidential" and "Limited Distribution". This one is very short: just five sentences. Let's see what L. Ron Hubbard has to say about Basic Fear. Here's the first sentence:

> There are two fundamental things that all beings have in
> common.

He's starting out with a pretty broad generalization here. Does this include cats? Space aliens? Or does he mean only HUMAN beings? I think he means all thetans. But let's proceed:

> One is that they are sure they will become worse, go down
> scale. That is the one thing thetans are really certain of.

So we're all like Marvin the Paranoid Android from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? I think not! Isn't Scientology supposed to show people that "something can be done about it"? Hubbard could be implying here that Scientology doesn't work, or that its effects are only temporary, since he's pontificating that ALL beings -- even such spiritually advanced ones as Tom Cruise and John Travolta -- share a certainty that they will become worse. But what's the other thing all beings have in common?

> The other is there are two things they are afraid they will
> become (and are certain they will become), cells and molecules.

Ah hah! So this is *how* they will become worse. I wonder: is it scarier to be a cell, or a molecule? Cells are made of molecules, so if you were a cell you'd be many molecules. And since people are made of cells, we are, in fact, molecules. Forget about Cruise and Travolta: we're entering Kirstie Alley territory here. And that's a lot of molecules! But why fear becoming what we already are? Let's look at the closing sentence:

> You will encounter the above in handling BTs and clusters on
> NED for OTs.

NED (New Era Dianetics) for OTs is, of course, NOTs. Now a thetan is not supposed to be a physical thing. Thetans inhabit bodies, but they are not THE SAME AS bodies. And BTs used to be regular old thetans with bodies before Xenu got hold of them. So maybe what Hubbard means here is that thetans fear becoming physically real themselves, i.e., BECOMING collections of cells. Could it be that their greatest nightmare is "the spirit made flesh"? What would Christians say to that?

In NOTs Series 32, "Chronic Somatics, Missed BTs", Hubbard says that while auditing on NOTs you will find "BTs and clusters being dead or who think they are dead; being MEST; being molecules." By "being X" he obviously means "imagining they are X", not "truly being X", since thetans can't die. So they must be imagining that they're molecules.

What's so bad about imagining you're a cell or a molecule? Here's what I think this bit of scripture means: Since thetans are the ones who mocked up the MEST universe, if one is a molecule then one is an illusion -- a figment of some other thetan's imagination. Only theta (spirit) itself is real. So imagining that you're a piece of MEST must mean doubting your own existence. I could see how this might be disturbing, though thinking one is a cell or molecule hardly seems more frightening than thinking one is, say, a fleck of L. Ron Hubbard's bellybutton lint. Ewwwwww!

This concludes today's lecture. I hope I've convinced you that NOTs isn't just a pile of incomprehensible nonsense. With a little study and reflection, the nonsense becomes quite comprehensible, though Hubbard is certainly not in Lewis Carroll's league. Now please discuss among yourselves. (It's a pity that such verbal tech is a crime in Scientology, isn't it?)

-- Dave Touretzky: fearless NOTs Scholar extraordinaire. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/NOTs

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