Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1951, 4 September, 1951, 4 September, 1951, 4 September
Document title: Illusion, Illusion, Illusion
Document type: lecture transcript
Event: Professional Course, Professional Course, Professional Course
Location: Wichita, Kansas, Wichita, Kansas, Wichita, Kansas
Document ID: 5109C04B, 5109C04B, 5109C04B
Description: Hubbard talks about the magic of postulating illusions into reality. Links to the procedure he writes about and gives instructions for in his book Self-Analysis. This quote shows Hubbard's knowledge and intent to hypnotize people with his book for new Scientologists., Hubbard talks about the magic of postulating illusions into reality. Links to the procedure he writes about and gives instructions for in his book Self-Analysis. This quote shows Hubbard's knowledge and intent to hypnotize people with his book for new Scientologists., Hubbard talks about the magic of postulating illusions into reality. Links to the procedure he writes about and gives instructions for in his book Self-Analysis. This quote shows Hubbard's knowledge and intent to hypnotize people with his book for new Scientologists.
Let us start out with the illusion of words, the illusion of language. Self Analysis, by the way, breaks straight through quite a few illusions of that character, so I won’t spend too much time on the illusion of language. This has been covered elsewhere. But look what you can do with language. You can say “To the rear march, to the rear march, to the rear march” and get a bunch of men spinning like gophers. Somebody can jump up and say “Now, what we should all do is go and join the colors so our great country . . .” and people will go out and get shot at. How magic this stuff is!
More than anyone else, a writer is the person who knows language as an illusion. What you can do with language! The flow of language! Things you can say! Somebody sits down in a chair and you suddenly transport him away not only to far lands but to far times or to times which don’t exist at all—all through the medium of language. It is wonderful.
A writer, after a while, begins to consider himself as a sort of a magician — that is, unless the editors and their rejection slips get to him when he is too young, before he has hardened.
The writer sits down to a typewriter and pounds out a lot of stuff and puts it out. Then other people get the idea.
[…]
If I imagine a table and give an illusion to a table long enough, you or I will eventually build one. If I keep validating it to the point of accidentally putting something on it every night—if I say “It’s there!” and I accidentally lay something on this table—it will get on to a point finally where somebody or something will put a table there. You say, “A table belongs there,” and you have then postulated that reality. And when you get to the point of saying “A table belongs there so we are going to put something there,” then you have turned the thought or illusion into a complete table which is standing there. It is very simple, actually. Don’t look at this on a magical basis, because the magic is fantastic enough. You and I imagine something exists and then out of physical-universe energy, matter, space and time we build it. That is magic.
But in the same way, in the field of thought where a mind believes that it approximates and is bounded by the physical universe (in other words, a low-tone-scale mind), all you have to do is postulate that something exists in that mind and it will exist. That is also magic.