2 Dec 90
Thought Pool: A location containing thoughts and ideas and sometimes pictures into which a being may extend his awareness to experience what has been placed therein.
A pool might be created by an individual or a group. It is then made to persist so that it can be viewed. In some cases, the pool is meant to be contributed to (with additional creations) by subsequent viewers.
Thought pools were very popular in the home universe era. There were entertaining ones which were like combination of a museum and a poem and ideas all at once in a structure perceived by permeation. Often they were non-linear and you would slide around between pictures/mockups (in contrast with a story universe where the sequence is meant to be linear).
There is also a special kind of thought pool which is dynamic in nature. These act as communication relay points or cross copy relays which are used to enable a group of beings who are playing together to stay aligned to the same mockups. In this case, the beings generally leave a portion of themselves within the pool. For example, 5 thetans want to play basketball. They need to agree on the court and the ball and their bodies (so they don't accidentally slide through each other) etc. Now if one player throws the ball, all the others have to know that and keep their mockups in the same position or else there might be 5 different balls each going their own way. So they setup a pool and each places a portion of themselves into it while playing. These portions are in physical telepathic contact and cross copy the ball's location etc. so that all will agree on it. In this case, the beings playing would choose to not-know the data that they know within the pool (in the pool they have to know where every molecule is to keep the playing field mocked up) to make the game more interesting (i.e., they might not see where the ball is etc.).
In the home universe matrix, one would push into or pull out of these dynamic pools very freely. among other things, these would be part of the entry point to the various individual universes and one would push a bit of oneself in to them to pick up the cross-copy that kept the universe mocked up. Later on the track, pools that are used to keep universes mocked up became much more compulsive. The central hubs of the universe machines that keep this universe in place (through a perpetual cross-copy) are dynamic thought pools, but they are enmeshed in a much more complicated structure to keep them protected etc. so that people don't fool with them or just pull out of this universe very easily.
Pools which hold one in agreement and cross-copy are not inherently abberative, but they become so when one is in them compulsively.
The really troublesome pools are somatic pools which include pains, sensations, emotions, and attitudes. At basic, this is where somatics come from. Let's say that you bang your fist on the wall. You are just moving a mockup against another mockup. The body mockup is generated by machinery (generally PMEs although you can also put a body there with purely mocked up machinery or even just mock up a body directly). The machinery is programmed to reach back to the appropriate pool to bring up the feeling of banging on the wall.
If the body machinery or template is based on PMEs or is at all infested with BTs, then you have beings present who can go out of PT and remain connected to the pool even after you stop banging the wall. Or they can be restimulated into thinking that you are banging on the wall when your not, as is specified in the Dianetic A=A logic. This results in the psychosomatic pains (as opposed to the PT somatic of feeling it when it really is happening). Running an incident Dianetically pulls them up to PT and causes them to disconnect from the pool. Blowing the BT or PME (or whatever) can also turn off the somatic by removing the being who is holding the connection. Note that you can't get sensations from these pools unless you also have a piece of yourself in them because at basic its always you mocking it up.
You can also knock out a somatic by disconnecting the line to the pool. But note that once the entities in the body connect to the pool, then entities in the pool also connect back to the body, so these connections are not easy to dissolve. Furthermore, at a deep level, you do not want to lose out on feeling things, so you wouldn't completely unmock your connections to these things. But you can temporarily suspend the connections at will when the sensations are not desired. Removing the pool connection is senior to most other handlings in that it can undo PT somatics as well as psychosomatic.
The emotional basic incident set up emotional clouds which are basically pools for each emotion.
There are "reality mirrors" which are basically cross copy pools. They are generally formed by implants. There are some that were setup before incident 2 that use items like "it is not safe to look" and "everything is in you and you cannot look at yourself so you must see yourself in a mirror". These reality mirrors are things you look into instead of looking directly at reality. It is pretty hard to manipulate MEST universe stuff if your seeing a reflection of it and trying to levitate the reflection (like trying to levitate something that is on a TV screen image rather than the object itself, if you could get a beam on it, you would only move the entire TV set).
There are abberative pools such as the Pools of suffering used in the Magic and Motions universes. These were build based on some absurd ideas that everyone had to suffer but you could have someone else suffer for you. The "Gods" that were around in those days were pretty abberated and miserable but still had considerable power. Magicians would hook up with these "gods" and would get favors in exchange for doing some suffering for the god (who would think that this would make him feel better). Each magician would have a quota. Instead of doing it themselves, they in turn would gather apprentices and have them do the suffering for the god (and a bit for the magicians too since they also believed this garbage). They would set up a pool of suffering and each apprentice would have to put a piece of himself in it to suffer on behalf of the god etc.
There are many other abberative pools as well. There are also implants which make beings serve in these pools or put pieces of themselves in these pools. You'll probably find that you have quite a few pieces of yourself stuck in various pools as well as having impingement of various sorts come in from connections to pools. You'll want to run all this out as well as become causative about your connections to universe cross-copy pools and somatic pools.
Techniques for handling pools:
1. Spot the formation of the pool. If needed, you can spot which universe it was formed in. Also spot the common somatic of the pool (if there is one) or what the pool does.
2. If a somatic turns on, then check for defenders who are protecting the pool and handle (see below).
3. Handle the entities (generally PMEs) who are holding the pool together (see below). Note that often they will only loosen up on being handled and wouldn't blow until the pool comes apart.
4. Then check if there is a more basic pool underlying the current one and handle the same way.
If necessary, you can handle other beings in the pool as well, but usually it will all come apart once you've handled all the ones that are holding the basic pool together.
Pool entities can be handled as follows (other PME techniques sometimes also work and might even be needed occasionally. Sometimes defenders might need to be handled with CE techniques).
a) Spot being put into the pool.
b) Spot the first time you were made to serve in a pool. (remaining steps only if necessary)
c) spot making others serve in a pool.
d) Spot others making others serve in a pool.
e) point to the being you divided from.
f) If not yet blow, then ask who are you. (if necessary, spot To Create is Native State or spot building the agreements
universe).
I ran this without step e above because I hadn't figured out the point to process at that time. This improved version should be faster and easier.
Note, often the first time they served in a pool was in the games universe. Often, this first pool is a sort of universe machine with "To create effects ..." type items. Although there are earlier pools (including the group postulation of the penalty universes), this is the first time that beings were implanted to fully split and have the split pieces pushed into the pools (rather than simply extending a bit of your beingness into a pool temporarily).
Once the pool comes apart, you may see lots of beings zipping around. Give them a little time to blow before running something else. Also, you can give them acknowledgments. If any beings hang, use "who are you" on them. Also check for copies.
Often you handle a pool and it comes apart even though there is a more basic pool. In this case, the more basic one might start sending in replacements. So if the pool seems to show up again or somatics persist etc., check if the is a more basic pool replacing the one that blew.
Historical note: In the HCL lectures, Ron mentions that there were nice thought
pools around in Home Universe. Aside from this, I know of no references or definitions in his materials.