Scientology
Handbook
SPECTER OF WAR HANGS OVER THE WORLD.

The threat of death and destruction is everywhere. Screaming headlines and blaring television and radio alerts pound into us minute to minute that violence and loss are at hand.

Ask yourself these questions: Are you more and more alarmed at occurrences around you? Do you feel less and less able to do anything about it?

If you feel frightened and alarmed, you are not alone. If you feel that you can do nothing about the situation around you, that is not an uncommon reaction.

The good news is that something CAN be done about it. There IS a way for you to make a difference — starting by helping the person in front of you.

L. Ron Hubbard dissected the phenomenon of the dangerous environment, providing methods that will not only help you overcome your fears, but allow you to help others. Applied on a broad scale, this information brings about an enormous calming influence and enables people to lead happier lives. Used on an individual scale — by you — it will enhance the lives of your family, friends and associates.

Click Below For Ways To Lesson The Threat

1. Find Something That Isn’t Being a Threat

2. Don’t Read the Newspaper

3. Take a Walk

4. Find Something That Isn’t Hostile to You

5. Handling a Loss

6. Arranging One’s Life

7. Knocking Off Things That Upset One

Dealing with the threatening aspect of the environment represents only one facet of L. Ron Hubbard’s technology for viewing and handling everyday life. Many fundamental discoveries exist in Scientology which shed new light on our society and provide tools to improve one’s survival in it. Studying the materials listed here can help you understand the environment better and handle it more effectively.

Solutions for a Dangerous Environment

Discover precise, effective procedures that provide a calming influence against the turbulence of life. Here are true answers to stress, anxiety and depression. Use this booklet for a happier life with less stress.

Click here to get a copy for yourself and to distribute to your friends.
THE DANGEROUS ENVIRONMENT

Many people are not only convinced that the environment is dangerous, but that it is steadily growing more so. For many, it’s more of a challenge than they feel up to.

The fact of the matter is, however, that the environment is made to appear much more dangerous than it actually is.

A great number of people are professional dangerous environment makers. This includes professions which require a dangerous environment for their existence such as the politician, the policeman, the newspaperman, the undertaker and others. These people sell a dangerous environment. That is their mainstay. They feel that if they did not sell people on the idea the environment is dangerous, they would promptly go broke. So it is in their interest to make the environment far more dangerous than it is.

The environment is dangerous enough.

At one time an idea was put forth that certain societies did not advance because the environment lacked sufficient challenge. One of those advancing the idea was English historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee (1889—1975) who felt that areas such as Mexico did not progress for that reason. Toynbee’s idea on this, however, was born in an ivory tower environment, sitting in libraries reading books, but never going out and talking to any Mexicans.

So Toynbee pronounced with great conclusive exclamation points followed by innumerable university degrees, “The reason the Mexican does not succeed is he has insufficient challenge in his environment. The reason South America isn’t an up-and-coming industrial power is insufficient challenge in the environment. The reason the African has not progressed further in civilization is because his environment has insufficient challenge.”

What did Toynbee know of it? He spent all his time in the back end of a library, reading books written by men who had spent all of their days in libraries! That is no way to learn about life.

In the Philippines, for an added example, a bold, energetic white man arrives and he advises the native Igorots — a tribe which inhabits the northern mountainous region of the Philippines. He says, “If you will just cut a pathway from the village down to the river, then take a bullock cart down to the river in the morning and fill up a water tank and bring it back to the village, your women won’t have to be making that long walk to the river. You should engage upon this public works project at once.”

He becomes absolutely outraged that they don’t immediately act on his suggestion and he goes away, thinking, “Aha! Those people have insufficient challenge in the environment. Nothing for them to measure up to. No ambition. Not like us in the West — we have challenge in our environment.”

This man had challenge in his environment? Mama spooned Wheaties into his mouth, Papa wrote all the checks as he went through college and his way was paved in all directions with machinery and vehicles. His environment was already licked, so of course he could afford to be bold.

But what really is the environment of the Igorot as he sits by the fire, listening to the white man tell him how he has to cut a path to the river? This Igorot has a little boy, whom he loves very much, but he knows this little boy has only a slim chance of living until he is seven due to disease and bad food. He knows that when the rains come, they won’t just be pleasant light rains; they will flood every seed out of the ground and pound the fields to pieces but if he can salvage anything out of that, maybe he will live a few more months. He knows all he has to do is walk under the wrong tree and get hit by a poisonous snake, and that will be the end of him. In other words, he already knows he cannot live, so why try?

In other words, the challenge of the environment is absolutely overwhelming for many people.

But does this mean there is no challenge in the environment in the more “civilized” parts of the world? By no means. Consider the situation of a young artist from Terre Haute, Indiana, who moved to New York City. The casual observer might say that he moved because there was no challenge in his environment in Terre Haute. No, here again, the challenge was too much.

This fellow decided to become a painter in the first place because he couldn’t face working in the feed store with the same fellow who beat him up during kindergarten, beat him up during grammar school and beat him up in high school. The thought of having to work with this fellow every day was just too much challenge for him. So he became an artist, but nobody in Terre Haute bought paintings and nobody believed in what he was doing. He had no future there; he was facing continual starvation, he was unable to contribute to his community. That was a very hostile environment. So he moved to a friendlier one, Greenwich Village. He would rather starve to death quietly in Greenwich Village than be threatened to death in Terre Haute, Indiana.

We come to the conclusion, then, that any individual — whether white, black, red or yellow — if he has not been able to achieve his own destiny, must be in an environment that he finds overwhelming, and his methods of taking care of that environment must be inadequate to his survival. His existence is as apathetic or as unhappy as his environment seems to him to be overwhelming.

Why then would people go out of their way to actually make the environment appear more dangerous than it already is?
THE MERCHANTS OF CHAOS

There are those who could be called “merchants of chaos.” These are people who want an environment to look very, very disturbing. These are people who gain some sort of advantage, they feel, if the environment is made to look more threatening.

An obvious example can be seen in newspapers. There are no good news stories. Newspapermen shove the environment in people’s faces and say, “Look! It’s dangerous. Look! It’s overwhelming. Look! It’s threatening.” They not only report the most threatening bits of news, but also sensationalize it, making it worse than it is. What more do you want as a proof of their intention? This is the merchant of chaos. He is paid to the degree that he can make the environment threatening. To yearn for good news is foolhardy in a society where the merchants of chaos reign.

The chaos merchant has lots of troops among people with vested interests.

And do not think it an accident that the current justice system will take a dangerous criminal, throw him into prison, make him more antisocial and more dangerous and then release him upon the society. The more crime, the more police are needed.

Ideas of this kind are found in the society to a marked degree. It isn’t just the newspaper reporter or the politician; individuals here and there also engage upon this.

A lot of people spend their whole lives as professional chaos merchants; they worry those around them to death. The percentage who do this may be as high as one out of four. For example, a housewife, operating as a merchant of chaos in her sphere of influence, thinks of her husband, “If I can just keep Henry worried enough, he will do what I tell him.” She operates on the idea that it is necessary to spread confusion and upset. But along with this goes a concern, “I wonder why Henry doesn’t get ahead?” Naturally, she is making him sick.

The truth of the matter, however, is this: the environment is not as dangerous, ever, as it is made to appear. Instead, tremendous numbers of people and vast amounts of money are manufacturing a dangerous environment. In fact, in the 1960s a huge proportion of the national budget of the United States was dedicated to atomic war. But if they hadn’t developed the threat, there would not have been one. The money that financed the horror was busy supporting the horror.

It is not to the advantage of those who get their income, appropriations or public interest from the amount of disturbance to make a peaceful environment.

A Calming Influence

Anything that tends to pacify or bring a calmed environment is resisted by the vested interest that backs a disturbed environment.

To the degree Scientology progresses in an area, the environment becomes calmer and calmer. Not less adventurous, but calmer. In other words, the potential hostile, unreachable, untouchable threat in the environment reduces. Somebody who knows more about himself, others and life, and who gets a better grip on situations, has less trouble in his environment. Even though it may only be reduced slightly, it is reduced.

Newspapers can have a depressing effect on a person.
Since they deal largely in bad news, they present a generally bleak picture of the world.

One can carry the bad news around with him and get a negatively distorted idea of his surroundings, which may, in reality, actually be quite calm.

Even somebody who has heard very little of Scientology has less turmoil in his environment. An individual, less threatened by the environment, tends to resurge. He gets less apathetic. He thinks he can do more about life. He can reach outward a little further; therefore he can exert a calming influence upon his immediate environment.

As that progressed forward, more and more individuals would be produced who could bring more and more calm to the environment or handle things better and better. It is only the things which aren’t handled which are chaotic. It would result in a situation where the threat of the environment would die out. This overwhelming, overpowering environment would be tamer and tamer. People would be less and less afraid. You would have more and more opportunity of handling the actual problems that exist instead of people dreaming up problems in order to make some money off of it. It would be a different society.

The merchant of chaos does not like calming influences, however. He will fight anything which lessens disturbance in the environment.

For example, a wife has her husband completely under her thumb. She keeps him worried and upset morning, noon and night.

If the husband now engages in some activity which brings more calmness to the environment, there will be repercussions from the wife. If he is less disturbed, he is less under her control. She would naturally fight the thing that was making her husband more calm.

Yet disturbance and chaos fold up in the face of truth. It is lies which keep the universe continuously disturbed. The introduction of truth into a society would produce a calmer environment with less disturbance and therefore less that could be swindled out of that society by merchants of chaos.
WAYS TO LESSEN THE THREAT

People are looking for a less threatening environment, or at least for a way to better endure the environment they live in.

The concept of the dangerous environment will be understandable to the individual no matter how crudely it is put to him. Just the concept that he considers the environment dangerous and overwhelming and he doesn’t quite know where that danger or overwhelm is coming from is an enormous piece of wisdom.

Shrinking back from a very threatening environment that may overwhelm him at any moment, unable to progress forward into greater endurance or power to handle that threatening environment — this is his life.

An individual’s health level, sanity level, activity level and ambition level are all monitored by his concept of the dangerousness of the environment.

There are real areas of danger in the environment, but there are also areas being made to seem more dangerous than they really are.

Thus, if a person is marched forward into these sectors of his environment and gotten to inspect them, he can perceive for himself that the environment is not as dangerous as it is being made to seem. And with increased confidence in his ability to handle at least those sectors of his environment, his health, well-being, sanity and activity levels will rise as well.

A number of simple procedures can help a person increase his command over his environment. The master question of all these techniques is “What part of the environment isn’t threatening?” If one can get him to differentiate and find out there are some parts of the environment that aren’t threatening, he will make considerable gain.

What is the individual’s expectancy at this level? It may be this low — that he just won’t be so frightened when the doorbell rings. This sounds like a tiny improvement; nevertheless, it would be quite real to him.

He might just want to handle it so that when he wakes up in the morning he doesn’t have an agonizing feeling that something horrible is going to happen if he gets out of bed — and maybe he doesn’t even expect that feeling to completely disappear, but hopes it will diminish.

These would be real gains to him, and he would be very happy with them. The funny thing is, the gains he will actually experience will, in most cases, greatly exceed expectations.

Here are the procedures you can use to accomplish this:

1. Find Something That Isn’t Being a Threat

When a person gets too upset or confused, one can have him look around his environment and find something that isn’t being a threat to him. Carry on doing this until the person is very happy or relieved and has had a realization about himself, the environment or life in general.

A person can also use this technique directly on himself. For example, an individual can be in his office and very worried about something. He may be sitting at his desk with papers piling up. Everything seems to be in a high uproar, and he feels completely overwhelmed. The person himself ought to be able to look at the papers on his desk (the source of the threat) and find something about them that is not a threat. By making such a discovery, the threat will balance out.

2. Don’t Read the Newspaper

This is very simple. Tell the person, “Don’t read the newspapers for two weeks and see if you don’t feel better.”

If he doesn’t read the newspapers for two weeks, of course he will feel better.

Then tell him, “Now read the newspaper for a week, and at the end of that week you will find you feel worse. Then make up your mind whether or not you ought to pay any attention to the newspapers.”

This could be proposed to the person as a simple experiment. It isn’t even an expensive experiment — as a matter of fact, it is cheaper not to buy newspapers than to buy them.

This is a simple action, but a very effective one which can markedly change a person’s outlook on life.

3. Take a Walk

Another way of having a person look at the environment and discover that it isn’t so threatening is a technique called “Take a Walk.” If a person feels bad, have him take a walk and look at things as he walks.

The effort here is just to get the individual to inspect the environment and find out that there is some slightly greater security in it. One just wants the person to look and find out if the environment is as threatening as it appears to be.

Take a walk and look at things” is the mildest advice that you could possibly give anybody, and is almost certain to produce a result if the person will do it. It is quite effective.

4. Find Something That Isn’t Hostile to You

There are people who feel as if everybody in the environment is hostile to them.

For a person like this, there is another technique that will lessen his fears.

One could ask any of several different questions, depending upon the situation. Examples of these are:

Find something people say or do around here that isn’t hostile to you.”

Is there one person in the company who isn’t actively hostile to you?”

Is there anything said today that wasn’t directly and immediately hostile to you?”

Ask the person one of the above questions (or a similar question with a wording more appropriate to the person’s situation). For example, ask him, “Is there one person in the company who isn’t actively hostile to you?”

Continue this until the person feels better, is happier and has had a realization about himself, the environment or life in general.

5. Handling a Loss

A fellow who has just lost his girl, or a woman who has lost her man, feels the horrible sadness and loss it imparts to everything. Actually, everything in the environment will “talk” to him or her about the lost love. For some period of time, it will be impossible for him to look around and not be reminded of this person.

When one’s concentration has been heavily on an individual, it is sometimes almost heroically difficult to not associate everything with that person. The trick is to find something that isn’t reminding the person of the one he or she lost. One might have to search a long way to find something.

This is the way to recover from a love affair. The situation is in actual fact a simple one: the individual has identified everything in the environment with his unrest. By directing the person’s attention to things in the environment which are not so connected and making him find things which are not actively reminding him, one gets a differentiation where an identification existed before. And where differentiation exists, intelligence and judgment can return.

Do the following:

Tell the person you are going to help them. Tell him or her, “Find something that isn’t reminding you of __________(name of person he or she lost).”

Repeat the command, getting the person to find something else that is not reminding him or her of the person until he or she has a realization and feels better about the situation.

This simple procedure can help the person recover from his or her lost love and begin to live again.

6. Arranging One’s Life

By having an individual plan a life by which he could live calmly and unthreatened, the life he is living becomes less threatening.

Let us take, for example, the poor fellow who is on a complete treadmill: he has to keep his job, even though it doesn’t pay enough and there’s no opportunity of advancement, because if he loses it, he feels he won’t be able to get another one or he won’t be able to survive. This man is in a box of his own making, and he finds that environment very hostile.

Get him to plan a life which would not be so threatening, no matter how imaginative or seemingly unattainable his plan, and he will be able to go on working at his job much more happily and feeling much calmer.

7. Knocking Off Things That Upset One

There is another action which consists of simply having the person stop doing things or associating with people that upset him.

One could say, “Knock off some of those things in your life that make you upset.”

Who upsets you? Well, don’t talk to them for a while.”

What activities leave you feeling worse? Well, just don’t do them for a while.”

What things in the environment aren’t really a threat to you? All right, have you got some of those? Fine. Associate with those. Pay more attention to them.”

This will benefit the person more than one might imagine.

A broken love affair can result in the person being in a state of mind where everything in the environment is a reminder of the loss.
But a person can be helped to recover. If one can find something in the surroundings which does not bring to mind the lost love...
...The person’s attention can become unstuck, which allows her to feel better.
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