Vinaire's Blog

Project: Hubbard 1954: The Phoenix Lectures

This paper presents Chapter 20 from the book THE PHOENIX LECTURES by L. RON HUBBARD. The contents are from the original publication of this book by The Church of Scientology (1954).

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the understanding from Buddhism.  Feedback on these comments is always appreciated.

.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION DURING OPENING PROCEDURE BY DUPLICATION

When we say thetan we’re talking about an emanation point. We’re talking about a person. He writes letters, he greets you in a silly fashion, he does this, he does that. Let’s examine, for a change, the Cause end of this line. All too often one examines only the Effect end of the line, because that’s where interest gets centered. When we examine the Cause end of the line we discover something of tremendous interest about it: Cause, if it desires to get anything like an ARC effect at the Effect point, must take into consideration the fact that the Effect point is often quite incapable of mocking itself up as Cause.

A person appears to be an emanation point. As a thetan he is the resultant of all persisting considerations of a theta system. A person is usually being an effect. Rarely he is being a cause.

Here is CAUSE — DISTANCE — EFFECT. Now, to get perfect duplication it is necessary that Effect mock itself up in some fashion or other in order to get in the duplication of this Cause — in order to receive the communication at all.

In communication, the distance arises due to lack of duplication. In the absence of distance, both cause and effect operate in unison like two meshing gears, but there is vector from cause to effect.

To give you an example of that: you’re an American in France. Now a Frenchman comes up and he says, “Blotheree zomberfiel, ello blfthblorerup.” And you say, “Huh.” You weren’t an effect at all, really, not the kind of effect he intended. He wanted you to put your baggage on the van or something. And you sure get a kind of an only-one feeling when you wander around doing this a lot, and people come up to you who don’t speak English, don’t speak deaf and dumb, don’t speak Boy Scout Semaphore. But they throw a lot of verbalization in your face which is supposed to mean something, and you don’t comprehend it. Furthermore, you are acutely aware of the fact that their customs are probably unfathomably strange. For instance, in France, if you’re an American, your idea of plumbing and the French idea of plumbing are two entirely different things. Two entirely different things. The whole problem of trying to walk into any civilization is actually the problem of being able to mock yourself up. You don’ t willingly mock yourself up as a Frenchman. You don’ t willingly mock yourself up as part and parcel of all these strange and outrageous customs. You could understand this quite easily on the Effect point, but how about the Cause point? The Cause point has, much more so than the Effect point, to mock itself up, because the Effect point mockup is being assisted by Cause, but the Cause point mockup is not being assisted, and it’s this fact — that it’s not being assisted — which causes people to think they need help.

They get used to being on the Effect side, and when they get over on the Cause side they say, “Where’s all the help?” So they invent an analyzer and a computer and a Reactive Bank and all kinds of things in order to be over here at Cause point, because the Cause point has to mock itself up just like the Effect point or subordinate Effect points which are not really capable of any great change, which are not capable of mocking themselves up, and will never be communicated to, unless Cause mocks itself up.

So, in order to deliver an effect, Cause has to be able to mock himself up on a much higher self-determinism than Effect because Effect is assisted in the mockup by Cause.

The ability to be at Cause-point is necessary for good communication. You have to be able to be. In other words, you have to be able to mock yourself up. If you, instantly, addressed by this Frenchman, were to mock yourself up as a French official, were you able to do this, you see, you would find suddenly that it was “all on the house”. Actually something would come out of an interchange of this character — you say suddenly, “What are you doing without your identification papers?” or something of the sort, and he would say, “Oui, Oui, merci, thank you very much, no checkee … uh… adios…” or whatever. You have to mock yourself up as something he recognizes as Cause, but what kind of a second sight would this take? What does this Effect recognize as Cause? You mock yourself up as what this Effect point normally recognizes as Cause, and that puts you on the Cause end of the line. It is therefore the Cause end of the line which you should examine, because that’s where, as an auditor, you’re trying to put the preclear. You’re not really trying to put the preclear at the Effect end of the line. Now if you understand that thoroughly — you’re getting what is meant by the increase of self-determinism. We mean we’re increasing this preclear’s ability to be at the Cause end of the line.

You don’t become effect of what you don’t understand. Becoming effect is easy as it is being assisted by cause. Being cause is more difficult. It makes people think that they need help, and that is why mind is called upon.

To be Cause requires much higher self-determinism. That is how cause is recognized by the effect point. In auditing, we are increasing the self-determinism of the person to be at cause-point. It is necessary for good communication.

If the preclear came into the auditing room, and all he said was “Hehehehehe”, why, you would recognize that he is not quite at the Cause end of the line. In fact, he’s probably not at the Effect end either, he’s probably halfway between the two points, being a communication particle.

An individual can drift away from Cause point, get on the line itself, and become a particle on the line. If you walked up to him on the street and wrote an address on his chest and put a stamp on his forehead and put him into a mail box he’d be perfectly happy about it. Such cases have become communication particles. They are a message. They don’t even have a message, they are one. The exhausted messenger throwing himself off his horse and dying at the king’s feet as he announces the defeat is being his message. There isn’t any reason why anybody should kill horses or messengers just to tell some king that he lost a couple of chunks of real estate, but they used to do it all the time. In other words, these people could very easily be communication particles. Not cause or effect at all.

The decline is simply from able Cause to fixed Cause — and then they start riding out on the line. From an Effect which can receive, to an Effect which has to receive, to an Effect which won’t receive. Desire, enforce, inhibit. Eventually somebody would be found avoiding all causes, avoiding being Cause, avoiding anything else which was Cause. Whatever they’d do they’d finally get on the line as a particle or symbol. They go from Cause into the state of Symbol, they go from Effect into the state of No Symbol, but they get on the line, they slide around, and they get mass, meaning, mobility. Now there’s nothing totally bad about this. But let’s restore this preclear’s ability.

When you encounter a person, who is incapable of addressing you physically or verbally in any acceptable way that makes an easy communication it is because he cannot change. He is fixed. If you, or the warden of a prison, or the soda jerk down at the corner drugstore, or the President of the United States walked in, he would be found in the same fixed state of address.

Well, if he can’t change, he is expecting continually that he’s going to be the Effect. So, we have a preclear sitting there and it’s: “Well, you go on and audit. I’ll be effect.” They sit there in “can’t change”, unwilling to be Cause. So, it’s up to you to get the preclear to the point where he is at least conscious that he is moving something, that he is not being moved. That’s why you get him to go around touching walls and objects.

Fixation results in a person neither being cause nor effect, but just being a message. He is expecting continually that he’s going to be the Effect. To get him to the point where he is at least conscious that he is moving something, and not being moved you get him to go around touching walls and objects.

But the essence of this is contained in duplication. This person cannot duplicate blitherarerup, therefore he can’t talk with you, but that’s true of him and all life. He recognizes his inability to duplicate life and he recognizes that he can’t get on a two-way communication basis with it in such a way that it then is assisted in its receipt. Life will receive your messages, if it recognizes that you are a communication source. How does it do that? Well you have to be like it. You have to assist its duplication.

This does not mean that an auditor has to get down on the floor and grovel and duplicate all possible weird and bizarre things that a case could do, because actually all you’re duplicating there is the circuit (Circuit: a part of an individual’s bank that behaves as though it were someone or something separate from him and either dictates or takes over his actions. Circuits are the result of engramic commands.) but certainly an auditor could be called upon to duplicate any average motion. The person folds his hands, the auditor folds his hands. He sees then a physical gesture being duplicated.

The common denominator of this inability is the duplication factor. In all this communication difficulty, there is basically this inability to duplicate — so much so that reality could be called and rephrased and redefined as: the degree of duplication. Affinity is actually the distance and the particle size. Communication of course is Cause-Distance-Effect. And the degree of duplication is what makes reality. You are as real to those around you as they can receive you.

The problem with this person is that he cannot duplicate. He recognizes his inability to duplicate life and to get life to duplicate him. When auditor mimics him he feels a relief that he is being duplicated. The degree of duplication determines reality. It reduces the sense of distance (increases affinity) and enhances the common activity (communication).

Did you ever get some kind of an inkling around your family that they weren’t receiving what you were talking about? Well, that’s because they fixed in their minds a long time ago the fact that they were duplicating you little. You were different in size. This all by itself would be sufficient to make the family incapable of receiving information from you. Grandpop’s a fairly successful manufacturer, and he’s seen this grandson who’s been running around while grandpop was in his middle years, and the kid goes off and studies sales promotion, with all the verve of youth and a good background and a good inheritance on this whole line and boy he could give Grandpop cards and spades on the subject of promotion. He moves into Grandpop’s sphere of activity and he’s on the job. He puts a suggestion memo on Grandpop’s desk. Do you think it ever gets read? Ha ha, that’s just from Jimmy. And Jimmy goes out and starts to work for another company, and it starts selling the whole field and wipes out Grandpop. “He didn’t know what he was talking about.” Grandpop has already conceived the idea, you see, that the smallness of Jimmy is not a duplication. And that being his primary idea connected with this individual, he then knows that all he can receive really from this individual is “Ga-ga-ga-ga”, “Gimme a lolly pop” and “Gimme a nickel”. Something on this order would be within his basic communication line with this child, so afterwards he could not then take the child’s communication line seriously. But the child changes, grows up.

The main impatience that you ever had with parents or anybody like that around you is their fixed idea that you are small. Then you come around later and your parents are getting on in years and they’re ailing and you say, “Why don’t you” — and give them some sensible suggestion — you’re going to help them. And you find out that almost anything you suggest is unacceptable, because they know they can’t duplicate someone your size. They know, if they know anything, that you’re about a foot tall, or two feet tall — wherever they’re stuck on the track as far as you’re concerned. Mama very often gets stuck on the track at birth with the child, the first view of the child, and after that the child just doesn’t ever have a sensible solution to anything. But the child is actually better adapted to the modern environment than Mama is.

Thus, an odd thing could happen, if an auditor were not fully aware of this duplication factor in the beingness of the preclear. He could be under the delusion that the preclear is improving — when the preclear is actually simply getting more like the auditor. Well, that is what the entire field of psycho-analysis is built upon: if we could just get the patient to be just like the analyst, why then we’d be all set. They apparently go through some magic rites, as I was taught — in order to accomplish what? — the patient’s shifting into the valence of the analyst. Well, the assumption by the preclear of a beingness other than his own — a valence — is not the goal of an auditor. The goal of an auditor is to return to the preclear more and more self-determinism. It is to make him capable of being at Cause point and at Effect point by his own self-determined choice.

It is hard for parents to duplicate their children even after they have grown up because for in their eyes, children always remain small. A parent may think the child has grown up when he becomes more like him. The goal of the auditor is not to make the preclear more like him, but to make him capable of being at Cause point and at Effect point by his own self-determined choice.

How many dozen ways could you run Duplication? You could run it the basic way. Highly stylized, very pure technique and simply run it like that. That is the most effective of all processes we know on duplication.

If an auditor failed with this process it would be because he didn’t maintain two-way communication. He lets the preclear go on to an automatic endurance run without actually finding out what the preclear really feels, really experiences, what it’s all about, what the sensations are. This doesn’t mean that the auditor even vaguely varies his auditing commands. The auditing commands are always the same. They’re given in the exact order in which they’re given in R2-17: Opening Procedure by Duplication. But let the preclear talk to you! That is the difference. If you don’t get him at the Cause point of the communication line, you’ve failed. So we make the preclear talk.

How do we do this? We give the exact command. This is one thing an auditor must learn — to keep continually in two-way communication while you’re running any process without actually varying the process or coming an inch off the process, while you throw in on the communication line what is known as “dunnage”, the stuff you put around the cargo to keep it straight in a ship.

The preclear goes over woozily and picks up the book. You say, “Look at it.” You ask him to describe it.

He says, “Book?” Something’s wrong with this bloke’s communication! No, there’s nothing wrong at all. You see you’ve got to get those commands in there just exactly in the order in which they are given. You’ve got to get him to the book, to the bottle, to the book, to the bottle, to the book, to the bottle. Just exactly. And then if you failed to demand to be answered, by failing to insist that the action be knowingly accomplished, and by failing to listen when the preclear says something — you would lose. He’s picked up the book for the 565th time and all of a sudden the whole room goes purple, and he says, “My God!”

And you say “What is its weight?” Well, cut your throat — you’ve just cut the preclear’s! Then, when he says “Ooohhhh,” and you say “What happened?” it’s not going to do any good. You’ve missed it.

When you see something happen to him, find out what it is. If you see that he’s really going through it like an automaton, for heaven’s sake pick him out of it. He’s told you for the 55th time, “It’s cool.” I’m not above putting some two-way communication in there, getting him to say something. For fifty-five times, automatically, he was saying “Cool”, “Cool”, “Cool”. He wasn’t feeling it any more. He was still running the command you gave fifty-five times ago. Now if you don’t make him communicate, if you don’t make him describe, and if you don’t listen to him, it all goes on an automaticity. It just goes on, and on, and on… and I swear if he ran it on a total automaticity, you could run it for 250 hours with no change in the preclear except that he’d get tired legs.

Now the key to this thing is that each moment must be a new moment. Each action must be a new action. And gradually he peels apart these actions so they are different actions so that each moment is new, and that is the primary manifestation of Opening Procedure by Duplication. The newness of each moment.

Therefore, in the Opening Procedure by Duplication you do not let the preclear go on to an automatic endurance run without actually finding out what the preclear really feels, really experiences, what it’s all about, what the sensations are. So, you let the preclear talk to you, while you run the process without varying it. When you see something happen to him, find out what it is. If you see that he’s really going through it like an automaton, pick him out of it.

So, when he just gets repetitive, repetitive, you get suspicious. You say, “What color is that book?” I’ve even gone so far as to say to a preclear who has been describing the object as “a book”, “a book”, etc., — “Will you please describe it as an object.” New frame of reference. “Well… it’s a… it’s… it’s a… rectangular… it’s a rectangular object… made out of paper… cloth… cloth on the outside. How about that! You know, books, they’re cloth on the outside.” He’s back into an interest in the process. I’ve seen this process run, by the way, with two typewriters!

That’s incorrect. They have to be two dissimilar objects. The preclear did get a lot stronger.

You could even get that on automatic. But the second these responses become monotonous you’ll know that your preclear has simply settled down to being an Effect. You’re trying to get your preclear to be Cause. So let’s make him originate communications to you concerning the object. That doesn’t mean that each new communication has got to be new and original, but it does have to tell you that he is experiencing that instant and not some other instant.

Opening Procedure by Duplication pulls apart all the moments of a time track. It pulls them apart because of the duplication. Unless each moment is a new moment you don’t have that occurring. Book, bottle, book, bottle, book bottle, boooo — it’s a book! It’s not a word! Very difficult realizations come through to a preclear.

Opening Procedure by Duplication pulls apart all the moments of a time track because of the duplication. Unless each moment is a new moment you don’t have that occurring. The second the preclear’s responses become monotonous you’ll know that he has simply settled down to being an Effect. So, have him tell you what he is experiencing that instant and not some other instant.

You’ve got to know that your preclear can talk, and he must talk, and he must describe what is happening to him. When something happens he’s expected to call it to your attention, you’re expected then to pay some attention to it.

That doesn’t mean you go off the process. But let him tell you about it.

A preclear will exteriorize on Opening Procedure by Duplication. And when he’s just about ready to exteriorize and wants to tell the auditor about the fact that he’s just about to do this — that is not the time to give the next auditing command or not be interested. The moment the auditor’s not interested there is no auditing going on. I’ve seen preclears who’ve just gone “dead in their heads” through not being permitted to communicate.

The auditor is not there to suppress communication on the part of the preclear.

Remember that an obsessive overflow is not a communication. You have to know that. But actual communication on the part of the preclear must not be suppressed by the auditor. So there’s the trick, and it shows up in Opening Procedure by Duplication because you do have to keep to the exact process commands. He does have to go repetitively through these exact motions. But you have to make sure that he’s experiencing these things. You do that by communicating and you’ll find Opening Procedure by Duplication working for you much more speedily than it ever has before. You are not looking out the window when a preclear has an enormous piece of news to impart. You don’t sit there looking out of the window, auditing on a sort of prank basis — “Go over to the book, now touch that wall,” or something of this sort, and without letting the preclear communicate, because the preclear gets a very sudden tone drop as a result of this. It’ll actually stick him in his head. It has turned off perception. It will do all kinds of things.

Remember that an obsessive overflow is not a communication. But actual communication on the part of the preclear must not be suppressed by the auditor.

Letting the preclear talk, demanding the thing really be described, keeping it out of the automatic machine category, making each moment new and fresh in Opening Procedure by Duplication, and never varying its auditing commands — that’s how you win on this process. You can say other things than the auditing commands, but that doesn’t give you any license to vary the process.

You just make sure that a communication is going on.

.

FINAL COMMENTS

In the Opening Procedure by Duplication you do not let the preclear go on to an automatic endurance run without actually finding out what the preclear really feels, really experiences, what it’s all about, what the sensations are. So, you let the preclear talk to you, while you run the process without varying it. When you see something happen to him, find out what it is.

Opening Procedure by Duplication pulls apart all the moments of a time track because of the duplication. Unless each moment is a new moment you don’t have that occurring. The second the preclear’s responses become monotonous you have him tell you what he is experiencing that instant and not some other instant.

Know that an obsessive outflow is not a communication. But actual communication on the part of the preclear must not be suppressed by the auditor.

Letting the preclear talk, demanding the thing really be described, keeping it out of the automatic machine category, making each moment new and fresh in Opening Procedure by Duplication, and never varying its auditing commands — that’s how you win on this process. You can say other things than the auditing commands, but that doesn’t give you any license to vary the process.

You just make sure that a communication is going on.

.

Project: Hubbard 1954: The Phoenix Lectures

This paper presents Chapter 18 from the book THE PHOENIX LECTURES by L. RON HUBBARD. The contents are from the original publication of this book by The Church of Scientology (1954).

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the understanding from Buddhism.  Feedback on these comments is always appreciated.

.

OPENING PROCEDURE OF 8-C

It is utterly fascinating what you can do with a process which is apparently as permissive as the Opening Procedure of SOP 8-C. The exact details of the process are given in Issue 24G of the Journal of Scientology.

The number of case factors which are handled in 8-C is fascinating, because here you are processing straight toward simplicity.

We know that what is wrong with a person is his subjective universe. That has gotten into trouble. Now, in view of the fact that he could mock up a tremendous amount of space if he had to, he could mock up lots of energy, he could mock up objects, and he could do this any number of times, then why he’s lugging around something called “his universe” is a little bit difficult for a reasonable man to understand, and yet that is what people are doing. You get a sort of idea of somebody walking around with a great many clanking chains, old tin cans, old cigar butts, and so forth and calling these possessions. “His universe” looks like a kid’s toy box. If you’ve ever looked into a three-year old’s choicest possessions, that’s about the order of havingness the thetan pulls along with him.

He gives these things up with the greatest of reluctance, yet his total health, you might say, is dependent upon his ability to make, to have, new fresh things, and to do almost anything he wants to with them.

What is wrong with a person is his subjective universe. He is attached to certain considerations and lugging them around even when he can mock them up any time.

But, remember, it was always very, very difficult for him to get an object into such a circumstance that it was actually somebody else’s object. To procure an object which was somebody else’s is what he has to do in order to have that object. If we look at the four conditions of existence, the “Ises”, we discover just exactly why these things are so very valuable to him. They are so valuable because they mean to him a period when he was actually in communication with thetans as such, and he could blame them, and if he could blame them then he could have something. And if he couldn’t blame them then he couldn’t have anything — unless he duplicated himself, and so had another thetan to blame. This way he would get a persistence, he would get survival in terms of motion. Otherwise it would all seem completely motionless to him.

Now again all of these things are simply considerations, and in view of the fact that they are all considerations, we can get enormously baffled as to how considerations could be so important.

Remember they are only important because of the considerations which one held in common with others.

It would be one thing simply to change one’s own considerations all over the place, and it would be quite another thing to do this when one has a series of considerations which have been thoroughly agreed upon with others.

So the thetan, with his old cigar butts, torn playing cards, and clanking chains — you see he’s been in communication one time or another and the system of communication was all established and therefore he could have an other-determinism so true and so convincing that even he, would not be able to question its convincingness. Nobody could possibly question the validity of these objects he was carrying around.

It’s simply, then: he will have some way of blaming somebody else for having put that mass of energy there, and then that energy mass will persist. If he can’t blame anybody else, why it can too easily be As-ised and so disappear. Other-determinism becomes vital.

Now, when we look over this problem, we discover that an individual can go just so far down this line, and then he becomes himself disabled. He begins to count on other-determinism more and more and more heavily to produce his own survival. We can see this in terms of attention — an individual in this society without any attention from anybody else would not have much chance of surviving. An individual, just on the basis of food alone, would have great difficulty, but he’s gotten down to where those objects really have to be solid, and so we get this physical universe, and the particles of this physical universe are so beautifully lost, so completely confused, so misplaced away from point of origin that they can be subjected to a law in physics known as the conservation of energy: that energy cannot be destroyed, can only be converted. Anything that’s lost, misplaced, confused, can only be converted, unless you discover the point where it was actually manufactured.

This universe thus becomes valuable. It becomes valuable because we’ve gone to so much trouble to lose enough things that we then have a continuance of objects.

A thetan who has become upset about the various agreements in existence believes that he no longer can communicate with something. He is a nothingness; therefore, he has to communicate with a nothingness, he thinks. The communication formula places him at fault.

Here we have an individual who is living by the communication formula and yet cannot recover his own ability easily to follow the basic of communication, which is all things are on the same point. When you consider a consideration, you find out it doesn’t have any dimension whatsoever. And a thetan has no dimension. So, he’s gone to a lot of work, to make a universe that’s as heavy as this one. And he’s blamed it all on God, and he’s blamed it all in various directions, and he has made what amounts to a considerable investment. He has a big investment. And now he has gone so far that having made this investment he can no longer look at it, because he has to follow the communication formula. He cannot occupy the same space as an object. Two objects cannot occupy the same space. Therefore, he is not a thetan- plus-body. He is a body.

And once in a while we run into some materialist, in processing, and just the barest thought that he is something other than a body is completely, completely contradictory to him. It’s utterly assaulting. You’d think that you’d held a gun on the man and asked him for his money. He’ll become very excited. “I am a body. I know I am a body. That is all I am. I am one,” exclamation point, exclamation point. He gets real worried about it.

This person at the same time is likely to be the one who is most concerned with God. This is curious isn’t it? Well, he has to have an other-determinism. He has to avoid responsibility. His field of awareness will be relatively black, by the way.

That’s not a criticism of the individual. That is just the state he is in. Why is he in it? He knows two things can’t occupy the same space. Obviously if he is there, and the body is there, then he must be the body. That’s the most elementary thing we could possibly put together. This individual has himself mocked up as something and is being something so thoroughly that he cannot disassociate himself from it. So, you tell him to be three feet back of his head — and he can’t be three feet back of his head.

Hubbard thinks that the person is doing so because he wants these things to persist continually all the time in thorough agreement with others. The person accomplishes that by blaming others for it. This is how this universe has become solid for which he blames God. But this deteriorates his ability to communicate because as a nothingness he cannot communicate with somethingness. So, he comes to see himself as a body.

Now, we’re processing something which has four parts: (1) the thetan, (2) his machinery, (3) the body, and (4) the reactive bank. The reactive bank is a stimulus-response machine of some magnitude.

The body actually is something capable of collecting an enormous number of molecules and electrons and converting energy and doing all sorts of interesting things.

An auditor occasionally makes a gross error in that he processes any one of these things other than the thetan.

So, there are that many engrams? — well, does this so assault our sensibilities, that these things exist, that we must vanquish and make every one of them, one by one, disappear? Actually, what we want to do is improve the thetan’s ability to handle reactive banks.

Or an auditor comes along and he starts processing “the body”. The body, the body, the body. What kind of auditor would this be?

It would be an auditor who had to have something. This auditor can’t possibly have nothing, yet if he’s auditing he’s actually auditing a nothing. He’s trying to free a nothingness. And if he can’t conceive of a nothingness and has to go in the direction of a somethingness he will not actually audit the preclear.

Every once in a while, some preclear has such an observable surplus of thetan machinery that an auditor just can’t stand leaving that machinery alone. He just can’t stand it. He’s got to get in there and get all these mechanisms out of the road, get ‘em all mopped up and wiped out, and the next thing you know the thetan is very, very sad indeed. Look at all the years he’s spent blaming this machinery on somebody else. But when you’ve gotten through processing all this machinery, what’ve you done anyway? You’ve just processed some machinery. And it wasn’t sick!

So, we have these four major parts, but we are processing the thetan. He doesn’t have any mass, he can make space, he can make energy, and he can locate objects in space. He has very definite capabilities. Very positive, definite capabilities. And by the improvement of these capabilities we improve his ability to communicate, and so, improving his ability to communicate, we make him able to handle not just the reactive bank he’s mixed up with at the moment, not just the body he happens to be inhabiting or hanging around at the moment, and certainly not his bank of machinery. We make it possible for him to handle large quantities of things — other people’s machinery and anything. It’s very interesting what he can do. But he cannot possibly be hung up on the basis of “two things can’t occupy the same space”. He couldn’t be hung up on that one. Another thing he couldn’t be hung up on, if you’re going to separate him easily, is that it’s all other-determined. You see, if it’s all other-determined, then he would depend on other things to place him in space, and if he’s depending on other things to place him in space, he will sit there and “wait for the auditor to exteriorize him”. So our point of approach here is the thetan. Now, the easiest way to approach this is simply to make and break communication with the immediate environment.

Essentially a person’s thinking has become more mechanical. Auditing does not address mechanical thinking. Instead it addresses the person’s ability to handle mechanical thinking. The person is usually sitting there and waiting for the auditor to do something for him. The easiest way to approach this is simply to make and break communication with the immediate environment.

Environment is the physical universe, security, it’s right there, it’s solid. This is the space of the room, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the objects there, and if we happen to be looking through these things, then it’s the walls in the next room, and up through the roof, the air about the house and down through, it’s the earth underneath the house. And environment means how far can this individual perceive with great certainty in the physical universe. And that’s what we’re interested in when we say environment. We don’t have the preclear in Chicago, for instance, and then because he is an inhabitant of Iowa, process him in the environment of Iowa. Now this sounds, this sounds too utterly stupid, that anybody could do this, but believe me, it has happened. And what would they be processing? They’d be processing a set of facsimiles.

There is an immense ratio between the amount of facsimiles or energy masses a person has, and his ability to communicate. The more energy masses and more facsimiles which a person has, whether white, or green, or purple, or whether they’re black curtains or actual apparent solid objects — we don’t care what these are — the more energy mass the individual has, the less he is capable of communication. A fellow runs a concept — and gets a flow past his face. He feels something moving past his face. Ah, we’ve got a case of energy masses. How did they get there? They got there by the thetan directing his attention in various directions, manufacturing energy the while — and you’re going to process this case as a preclear, this thetan in such a way that he sprays out new energy masses around his body? That would be a curious thing wouldn’t it? And you know there are processes that you could run — not any listed in Intensive Procedure — which would lead an individual to immediately mock up more, and more, and more and more energy masses in the vicinity of his body. You could actually artificialize his condition.

He’s as well off as he doesn’t have to have energy masses.

A preclear has to have energy masses to the degree that he believes he cannot create space and energy. That’s a direct index. So, we find somebody who has large floating ridges and that sort of thing and this individual is having just that much difficulty. No question about it and no exceptions. It doesn’t matter what manifestation he’s exhibiting at this particular moment; a person is as bad off as he has these energy masses which are not placed but are floating. You could say they are “floating” energy masses because — everywhere he walks he’s got them. Now he’s as well off as he can simply take or leave the walls and other items of the physical universe wherever he finds himself. He can take them or leave them, see them or not see them at will. He’s well off when he can do that.

A person has to have energy masses to the degree that he believes he cannot create space and energy. The more energy mass the individual has, the less he is capable of communication. The immediate environment provides stable data. He’s as well off as he can simply take or leave the walls and other items of the physical universe wherever he finds himself. This helps him align his considerations.  

What process would you tailor up in order to accomplish this? Well, you could simply have a preclear sitting in a chair and looking around the room spotting spots in one location after another. It’s a fantastic technique. It’ll do quite a bit for a preclear, just to have him do this. And actually, you are applying this further when you have him get up and walk around and PICK OUT the spots, and TOUCH them, and then at will, BREAK COMMUNICATION with them. And SOP 8-C is actually a gradient scale, and 8-C’s Opening Procedure is a gradient scale of getting this done.

There is an additional process that could go along with this. You could have him close his eyes and start checking off spots in the environment.

The case that has had his perception turn on very fully, and then promptly turn off and it has never been on since, has simply practically scared himself out of his wits. His perception turned on and that was too much Is-ness. It was too steep a gradient, he could see everything too clearly, and this made him nervous, it upset him, it has disturbed his thetan digestion, and made him very unhappy — and what is this? This is just simply a case of too much, and instantly he said “It isn’t”. He said “Not-is”. He took a look at all this environment and said, “Dull down. Get real dull. It better be unreal around here, it’s just too bright, it’s too loud,” and so on.

Well, what happens if we have this person sitting there in the chair with his eyes shut and we just have him look around and spot spots in the room, and a facsimile shows up? We just have him go on spotting spots in whatever he can see. We don’t suddenly stop and say, “Oh, you’ve got a lot of blackness. Let’s spot some spots in the blackness”. No, you just keep hounding him for some sort of perception of the room. That’s what you want. And he keeps spotting spots in the room and spotting them and spotting them and spotting them and spotting them. Just that and no more. Spotting them behind him, above him, below him. If you don’t watch him a little bit he’ll spot them all in front of him. You’ve got to direct his attention behind. A thetan has a 360 Deg periphery of vision. There is no “behind” or get thee behind me thetan.

Now, here we have in a thetan, then, a possibility that the moment he really saw the room he’d turn it off again. He’d flinch. And then you keep right on processing in the direction of the room. You see what this would be. They’d flinch, their perception would go off, and you just take it from there and have him spot spots in the room. So, he says his perception is all turned off — well, you just have him find something he can perceive. He says, “I think it’s a facsimile. I don’t know what it is, really. It doesn’t seem to me to be terribly real…” You just say, “Close your eyes. Now spot some spots in the room.” The preclear says, “I… what d’you mean close my eyes and spot…”

“Well, can you see anything when you’ve got your eyes shut there?” “No… of course not.”

“Well, why don’t you look around. Get an impression of anything?”

“Mmmm. Well, what do you know. It’s all black.” He never noticed this before.

You say, “Well, all right. How about this now — you say it’s all black — well, is there any place where the black is thinner?” Behind you for instance, or above you or below you? Do you make out anything at all about this room?”

“No.”

“Well, as you’re sitting there with your eyes closed, do you know the location of anything in this room?”

“Yea, well, I know where my body is.”

In course a case like this will probably assert to you violently, if he wasn’t prepared otherwise, that he was a body, had always been a body, would always be a body, had never been anything else but a body, and that you live but once. And he would also tell you that during his study of Korzybski’s Science and Sanity he agreed with him entirely that two things could not occupy the same space. He’ll tell you all these things. It would be a very informative conversation if you let him proceed. You only let him proceed on such a conversation, by the way, long enough to keep two-way communication going, then you get him doing something.

“All right,” you’d say, “Well, do you know of the location of any object in this room?” And the fellow says, “Well, there’s a table right over there, I know that.”

“All right. Look at that table.”

Probably his eyes will pop open and he will stare at it — but you have him keep his eyes closed. You’d get an exchange something like this: He knows there’s a table over there, and you say “Spot some spots in it.”

He says, “I can’t possibly spot any spots in the table if I can’t see it.” “Do you know it’s there?”

“Yes, I know it’s there. I saw it when I came in.”

“Well, all right. Spot some spots on it.”

“But I’ll have to open my eyes.”

“Go ahead and spot some spots on that table.”

He finally does. And the blackness starts to get a tattle-tale grey around him, and then it flickers on and flickers off, and perception comes on and all of a sudden he’s aware of the fact that it’s all real, and then he convulsively shuts off all of his perception, and then he lets it turn on again, and then he shuts it off again, and then he flinches this way and flinches that way. Why? He knows it’s dangerous to look at things. He knows that. He knows, again, that it is dangerous to communicate. And he shuts it off before something else shuts it off. He’s there ahead of ‘em. But after it goes on and off and on and off a few times, it’s likely to be more and more upsetting to him for the time, because it’s likely to be getting more and more real. The room is likely to be getting more and more real, more and more solid.

Now you don’t let him completely fly out through the doors and the walls on this process and let him spot at unreal distances — spotting at a thousand yards, when a thousand millimeters would be much too great, and three millimeters is about what he can tolerate. So we keep him in the immediate environment, and we mean the physical universe when we say environment, and we mean objects that he’s fairly sure are there, and we just work him on that basis, and then, the first thing you know, the walls will start to disappear on him and then they’ll flicker on again and then they’ll flicker off, and it gets more and more real, and he gets upset about it and then he becomes calm about it and he goes through a lot of variations — and doing what? Just sitting right where he’s sitting and you don’t care where that is, spotting spots in the room whether the room is black, green, purple, or whether he’s got facsimiles that he’s really spotting or not. We don’t care what this preclear’s doing as long as he continues to spot spots. If he’s got a facsimile sitting there, and he shifts his attention on the facsimile he’ll go of it. He gets rid of some of this mass.

If he’s really just spotting into blackness, really changing his perception direction, you see, then Boooom, he’ll start looking through the blackness. If you have him look at the blackness and spot spots in the blackness you are validating these masses of energy which a thetan is as bad off as he has. What he’s witnessing with all these possessions and masses of energy is his own inability to really mock up something and have it belong to somebody else. That’s what he’s witnessing.

To accomplish this, you get the person to carefully observe his immediate environment and then have him close his eyes and visualize that environment as best as he can. He may sit in a chair and just look around observing one location after another. He may even get up and walk around and pick out the locations and touch various things there and feel them. The basic idea is to really become aware of his environment first using his physical perceptions. And then returning to the chair, closing his eyes, and visualizing mentally the whole environment in 360 degrees periphery of vision. The whole idea is to attain better coordination among physical and mental perceptions.

During this process long forgotten memories and startling facsimiles may show up. The person may acknowledge them but then he must continue with the process of improving perception of the immediate environment in as much detail as possible. He should not to get distracted by those memories and facsimiles and get involved with them.

In the beginning the mental visualization may just be spotty, turning on and then turning off. But with practice it would continue to improve and stay turned on. Finally, the mental visualization may become as good as the physical perceptions. The visualization may then start to increase to larger distances from him. But he must let it happen gradually and naturally.

Essentially, he is becoming aware of one spot, letting go of it and then becoming aware of another spot continually. He then learns to do the same thing with his facsimiles—spotting them and then letting them go continually. The physical environment acts as stable data to help him do that.

So there is that process. And out of this basic you get Opening Procedure of 8-C. But you can also do Opening Procedure of 8-C with the thetan, without moving the body. You could have the thetan touch things in the room. But actually, you don’t have him touch things and let go, you have him look at and look away. And you can carry through all the steps by more or less drilling the thetan in the room — preclear sitting there with eyes closed, and this becomes a tremendously workable procedure.

Actually, its most simple form is to just tell him to close his eyes, and if he knows of any object in the room at all while he has his eyes closed, spot spots in it.

Now the classic Group Processing example of this is a very simple one and that is “Three spots in the body, three spots in the room”. Have them spot three spots in the body, three spots in the room three spots in the body, three spots in the room, back and forth and at the end of this time, at the end of an hour’s group processing on perfectly green people, you’ll have four or five out of the twenty of them exteriorized — the usual run of people you run into.

8-C done with the body, however, and with no further tricks, its most elementary auditing commands as given in Intensive Procedure, is the only process—please mark this one down, please remember this—it’s the only process to use on the very, very low or difficult case. Let’s put that down, and recognize that when a very low level preclear comes in he has already determined exactly the processing he’s going to get. It’s down below Two on the Tone Scale, and what it takes to handle this case is Opening Procedure of 8-C, because in essence it is a purity of communication and is a very simple process to use, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be an artist to use it.

A person’s attention is usually fixed on his body, and his considerations are usually fixed on himself. This is introversion and interiorization. The whole purpose of this process is to get his attention extroverted towards his environment, and his considerations exteriorized from himself towards the universe. This is the most elementary auditing process that you can do. This works with everybody.

.

FINAL COMMENTS

What is wrong with a person is his subjective universe. His attention is introverted on his body and his considerations are fixated on himself. His thinking has become more mechanical. The procedure to remedy this condition is as follows:

The person carefully observes his immediate environment. He sits in a chair and just looks around observing one location after another. He may even get up and walk around and pick out the locations and touch various things and feel them. He then returns to the chair, closes his eyes, and visualizes mentally the whole environment in 360 degrees periphery of vision. The idea is to attain better alignment among physical and mental perceptions and become more aware of the environment.

During this process all kind of mental pictures and thoughts may turn up. The person may acknowledge such facsimiles, but he must not get distracted. He must continue with the process of becoming aware of the immediate environment in as much detail as possible. In the beginning the mental visualization may be spotty, turning on and then turning off. But with practice the visualization may continue to improve and stay turned on. Finally, it may become as good as the physical perceptions. The visualization may then start to expand to larger distances from him.

The purpose of this process is to get the person’s attention extroverted from the body towards the environment, and his considerations exteriorized from himself towards the universe. This is the most elementary auditing process you can do. This works with everybody.

.