Summary of NOTs 38: BASIC FEAR This is a very short document: the body contains just 70 words. According to Hubbard, there are two things all beings fear becoming: "cells and molecules". 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. Why fear becoming what we already are? Let's look a little closer... Hubbard says in the next paragraph that this fear will be encountered when handling BTs (body thetans) on NOTs. Now a thetan is not a physical thing. Thetans inhabit bodies, but they are not THE SAME AS bodies. So maybe what Hubbard means is that thetans fear becoming physically real. Could it be that their greatest nightmare is "the spirit made flesh"? 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". So what's so bad about imagining you're a cell or a molecule? 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) is real. So imagining that you're a piece of MEST means 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. I guess NOTs isn't such a pile of incomprehensible nonsense after all. With a little study and reflection, the nonsense becomes quite comprehensible. Pity such verbal tech is a crime in Scientology, isn't it? -- Dave Touretzky, KoX (SP4+++): interpreter of NOTs for the masses.