The tones in the band immediately beneath Death on the tone scale -- those with names like Needing Bodies, Protecting Bodies, etc. -- require some clarification, and explanation of the phenomena behind them. For one thing they are misnamed; they aren't always necessarily about "bodies." Though bodies are indeed their most noticeable focus, a better word to use in its place would be "objects." An object is anything possessing a material shape which can be distinguished from other shapes -- and which shape is perceived as having meaning. Which includes bodies as a type of object.

Because they are perceived as having meaning, objects are SYMBOLS as defined by LRH (mass, meaning and mobility). A quick scan through the Effort band of the tone scale reveals a whole lot of symbolizin' goin' on!

So let's rename those two I mentioned above. Needing Objects. Protecting Objects. Those two right there instantly define the majority of human activity. Needing: gotta have food, get that girl, finance that new car, buy that doohicky... Protecting: stop drunk drivers, save the whales, build that sea wall, keep out those Argentine House Ants, frame those photos so they won't be ruined... Hmm... Approval From Objects? Certainly! Not just from people -- ever notice a person who seems a little ritualistic, who has to polish that car just SO and will buy it a new set of floor mats to propitiate its perfection? The car is becoming cause...

This clarifies early 60's GPM research by LRH, Jack Horner and others somewhat, with a pursuit of that object assigned the greatest significance, based on one's strongest GPM goal.

Gotama (the Buddha) over 2500 years ago warned his monks against making symbols out of objects, against assigning meaning constantly to the things around them ("fermentations" I believe he called it). This is in the Sabbasava Sutta. Alfred Korzybski (the founder of General Semantics) likewise perceived that the meaning tagged to an object was not the truth when he pronounced his famous dictum: "The map is not the territory." (Quoting him in this context is viewing his words from the opposite end from which they are usually seen.)

What probably neither of them explained is that MEANING IS ALTERATION. To say that in purely scio terms: MEANING IS ALTER-IS. It is an alter-is of an original as-iness occasionally -- or much more often, an alter-is of a current isness.

When dealing with physical objects (which are never so far as I know original as-isnesses), this alteration is atop quite a bit of previous alteration, involving such things as time and ownership/source. Because it is atop prior alteration, then the assignation of meaning to a physical object is effectively a NOT-IS.

And THAT has to be precisely why Buddha stressed the cessation of thinking up all sorts of ideas about the world around us. So long as any monk were assigning meaning to something, he would be incapable of achieving its ISNESS, because all his thinking would be not-ising the thing.

So it can be seen that in order to rise out of lower tones and conditions, it is necessary to cease one's automatic assignment of meaning to objects. I said automatic! Not shut it off permanently, just get it under control: start, change, stop. Upon attaining this, I would expect a person to most likely release from the Effort band of the tone scale. And whatdoyouknow, I glance through the Clearing Course and old OT2, and I'll be damned if they aren't list after list of charged significances!

(Sarcastically) I suppose it might have been usefully if LRH had any real idea what he was doing. Sometimes a nuts and bolts engineering approach just doesn't get the job done very well. And when it does work, does the engineer know why? LRH should have done more mystical/spiritual study; his basics were incomplete. But enough of beating him up. He's gone and there's no help for it.

Keep in mind that EFFORT IS RESISTANCE. And that a person only resists their ideas/significances/meanings about things.

For example, let's say you are a man and you are married. Let's suppose you have a friend named Ralph. It is okay with you if Ralph has sexual intercourse with any woman he meets at a bar. It is not alright with you if he has sex with your wife. But why? In both cases it is just a male body atop a female body -- why resist one and not the other?

Because the second female is assigned by you the significance of YOUR wife. And that carries one hell of a lot of meaning for most men!

This is not telling you to attain a state of meaninglessness wherein you offer your wife's body to any passing stranger -- though in some cultures (such as the Inuit) this was exactly the custom! This is telling you that if you are the effect of your own significances, then you will resist in your mind. And you can therefore be trapped in the sub-Death Effort range of the scale.

Notice that assignment of of meaning to objects is light and thin at higher tones; but that at lower tones these become heavy significances. Find someone who has their attention stuck at the bottom of the effort range -- in other words a psychotic -- and you'll see that the meaning has more mass to them than the object itself. But that's nuts, you say! Yep!

Don't get the impression from all this that significance only functions in the effort range. Meaning is assigned to emotional matters (matters of affinity), and also to opinions and the identities which hold those opinions. Meaning begins at the middle Thought band -- and indeed that is the true nature of that sub-band of the tone scale. It's command is "THIS MEANS!" and its dichotomy expresses as significance versus insignificance. Dennis Stephens (discoverer of TROM) found this level of the mind. Instead of calling it "meaning" or "significance", he called it "importance". Same stuff. Keep in mind we are working in the middle Thought band ABOVE apparency, and because it is above apparency, our words begin to fail us. It is of no significance that Dennis used a different word. IT'S THE SAME LEVEL. I use different words at various times for this level myself. Check the words I'm using here against the words I used in Primal GPMs. Not the same words, but it is the same level.

Because the "THIS MEANS!" command is higher on the tone scale than the tone Apparencies Are Reality 26.0, then the resolution of it pops a person free of the apparent universe, to at least partially exterior from it.

A quick glance at the resistanceless text of the Tao Teh Ching will indicate that Lao Tzu seems to have resolved it, and was no longer fully within this physical universe as a spiritual beingness. As this is above the dichotomy of the personal self, then this material is senior to the mind's yammering about "me, me, me!" And the excellent Chinese gentleman indeed exhibited a breathtaking selflessness.

This gives us a new view on both objective processes and significance cases. Objectives certainly are putting the processee into contact with the physical universe, and thereby helping him achieve isness. What he's blowing his way through however is all that significance which had been assigned to it so thick that the isness was apparently no longer accessible. And a significance case is simply someone who had piled on so much meaning atop reality that the meaning became their new apparent reality.

I sincerely hope this article didn't drown you in significance. As with all the later Ghost Danse articles, I expect you to have either memorized Nos 24 and 38, or refer to them continuously. Those two are are detailed, and a goal oriented view of the span of apparent reality, of both the physical universe and your mind. Use both maps. But just remember, neither are the territory.

Ouran