6209C20 SHSpec-192 Geriatrics Gerontology never solved geriatrics, but we have. You should understand that one of Man's longest searches has been a search for longevity. Geriatrics is the study of living longer. LRH's research at Oak Knoll naval hospital suggested that the mind could change the body more than the body and physical substances could change the mind. "You can always get function -- or thought -- to monitor structure, but you can't always get structure to monitor thought." Medicos got this messed up because it is usually so obvious when structure monitors thought. If you cut a guy's leg off, you generally, but not always, see his thought change. But if you don't get rid of the psychic traumas, you won't change someone's structure or function. Change the psychic condition and the structure can change. These conclusions are very valuable in the field of geriatrics. Metchnikoff studied geriatrics as he felt the years creep up. He found that, theoretically, sour milk could extend life indefinitely, but he died before age seventy. It is odd that there is all this interest in geriatrics, given that a thetan is indestructible. This is actually interest in preserving the body, which, as it ages, irritates the thetan by restricting his activity. A PC doing well generally looks younger. One that is doing poorly looks older. In the process of doing a dynamic assessment on goals [See previous tape] , you will see rapid change when you get the dynamic and the item and the goal. As a PC gets listed on the goal, he or she looks younger. If things go sour, the PC looks older. We don't know the theoretical age limit for a body, so we don't know how long a clear should live. It should be longer than "normal" anyway. If you clear somebody around age thirty, you will probably add thirty to forty years to his life. If he goes clear at seventy or eighty, you might add only five or six years. Probably, the older they are, the less you could add to the life-span. The field of geriatrics has the problem of researchers dying out without leaving records and dying out before the length of time it takes to produce results, so the researchers are always getting challenged. Age is normally determinable by the condition of certain body parts, functions, and cellular structures. If you were to examine someone physiologically, then clear him, then re-examine him, you would find that the person was physiologically younger. This pre-determines that they will live longer. People get interested in scientology when you tell them about its geriatric aspects. You would think that insurance companies would be interested in the idea of changing someone's life-expectancy, but they are not. They are only interested in figures, which are based on expectancy of claim payments, all figured out by averages, etc. Since the risk is spread out amongst many individuals, they don't care about making individuals live longer. They could even be against it, since it could cost them money. So you can get a reverse philosophy on this point. Socialist states and insurance companies realize that if we weren't kicking off regularly, things would be in a terrible state. But most people would be far more interested in living longer than they would be interested even in being healthy, since being healthy would cost them a service facsimile. People wish they could live longer, even if they don't believe it is possible. Just doing a problems intensive would increase a person's life expectancy. Most people are fighting living longer, even if they say they want to. LRH's experiments with horticulture, using tomato plants, produced some tomatoes that were kept in constant temperature and humidity and which were not injured in any way. They grew to sixteen feet, grew enormous numbers of tomatoes, and lived longer. LRH found that the life span and resistance to blight of a tomato plant is directly related to the amount of punishment -- the amount of clipping, handling, topping, pruning, etc. People thought he was interested in horticulture, but he wasn't. He was interested in geriatrics and longevity. A plant that is abused will become ill and will die sooner. Abuse determines: 1. Longevity 2. Susceptibility to illness. If you can delete abuse, e.g. by running engrams, you pick up the characteristics of not having been abused in the first place, i.e. health and longevity. This would apply equally well to human bodies. Dianetics also pointed to this conclusion. [See Science of Survival, Book II, p. 23.] In humans, if you delete -- audit out -- abuse, or the consideration that one has been abused, you effect the same change in longevity as not having been abused would have made. So in disseminating scientology, you can talk about longevity and preventing illness. On a planet that is very fixated on bodies, these are good avenues of approach. Dianetics corresponds to deleting abuse from a person's life, which is equivalent to avoiding abuse in the tomato plants. Depression gives rise to symptoms just like an illness. You can, as a dissemination approach, use "Maybe you are not sick. Maybe you are just depressed." You use that instead of "suppressed". The person will get very interested. Then give him a problems intensive. His "sickness" will frequently disappear. You don't tell the person that you will cure anything. You are only interested in removing the suppressions of life. We have to have a bridge from raw meat to clearing, and the bridge has to have reality in it. The person must be brought to a reality on the mind and life. Say you are running a clinic, giving problems intensives, using repetitive prepchecking. People will come out at the other end looking and feeling younger and no longer sick. This is an area that we have just neglected, with our emphasis on clearing. In Book III of DMSMH, it says that if you can parallel what the mind is doing, you can reach the mind and do something for it. This is a trick to parallel what a raw meat's mind is doing. He is thinking, "How sick (or well) am I? How young (or old) am I?" So "How are you?" means "How sick are you today?" A common hidden standard is "Do I look, feel, or appear younger?" If most people are fixated on the body (and they are), you can use this fact to get in comm with them. In effect, you are getting a guy in session, according to the definition of "in session", before you officially get him in session. Age is normally hooked onto the body by the thetan himself, using engrams and secondaries. The limitation on what thought can do for structure is only the thetan's consideration. The reason you have trouble defining scientology to people is that there is no datum of comparable magnitude in this universe. So they always put up a datum of incomparable magnitude and hang you right away in a suppression and a disagreement. "Oh, it's like Christian Science." "No," you say. Right there you are hung with a suppression of him. It puts you into a disagreement. Never let him choose the datum of comparable magnitude to scientology. Give him one -- his ruin, himself, what he owns, his family, his sick mother or wife, his health, etc. This is what is really of comparable magnitude to scientology for him.