The very remarkable progress which Dianetics and Scientology has made is apparently pretty well unprecedented now. But we must remember that we've had an awful lot of clever people associating with one another, doing things, demonstrating that things couldn't be done.

And when an organization is sitting where a living being should sit, it's time to call a halt.

We've had some cases around who are absolutely certain that they have been of no assistance whatsoever because they've just stuck, you know, right there: "Nothing's happening." Some of them have had this as a motto. (audience laughter) And having hung this motto high, they gave others something to shoot at.

Now, I'm not talking now about anarchy. Anarchy is not even vaguely possible amongst aberrated peoples. An anarchy is predicated on the basis that it is possible amongst aberrated people. What I am talking about, however, is we need better men, not better signs.

And most of these cases at this time, I am happy to announce to this congress, have been shot down. That's very remarkable. I know of very few of these hold-out cases — matter of fact, I don't know of any of these hold-out cases — who have experienced no change or betterment from processing. I don't know of any now.

We need a better social order, and not one or two better individuals, and a better organization. And when an organization gets into the fantastic levels of being above reproach, or when an individual sets himself up as so infinitely superior to his fellow man that he cannot be touched, chaos no matter at what distant date is bound to ensue. Do you see that?

We had a very famous one. I'm looking at one of his auditors right now. And this case was in black basalt. It was not a case of energy deposits; it was a case of black mass deposits. And auditors chipped away and the guy got better and he acted better, but he did not know he was any better. And he went on like this for a long time — from 1952 to early 1955. And that's a long time for auditors now and then to take a run down, and break out a hammer and a chisel, and see if they couldn't get him a little bit more pleasantly situated, at least, in this black mass.

The control and direction of man depends upon the goodwill and the good state of man, it does not depend upon iron bars and handcuffs. It doesn't depend upon cells or electric-shock machines.

And the auditor is present today who gave this person several weeks of processing in Phoenix a relatively short time ago and exteriorized this case fairly stably. And even this case said, "My golly, things sure happen in Scientology."

A society is sick as it has sick people within it. The way to make it well, however, is not necessarily to work only upon the sick and make them well.

All right. The reason why we've made quite a bit of progress is because man has been making quite a bit of progress. He's had a little bit of leisure. He has been a little bit less hepped on the idea of food, food, food, and he has bought himself a little bit of time so that some amongst him could think or — along other lines than mere bare survival. And that's actually why we've arrived where we've arrived. But we have arrived someplace. Don't let anybody that you're trying to talk to Scientology about tell you we haven't.

If the members of that society were sufficiently well and able themselves, they would never apprehend the slightest difficulty in pulling out of the mud any fallen fellow. Pulling people up and back into the ranks is not a function of an organization; it is a function and responsibility of man himself. Pulling people back up into health and good fellowship and the game is not dependent upon a group of specialists. It's dependent on man.

Now, the hideous thing is that people at large are not aware of a very interesting thing — that anything at all can be done about anybody. They are not aware that anything can be done about anybody.

And when helping one's fellows becomes a specialized action to be performed only by the anointed, to be performed only by somebody who wears the right star, badge, or sign — man's dead! Because the best of man comes into being when he is willing to aid and assist any of his fellows and is permitted to do so.

The cop who gives you a ticket takes it in his normal stride that this is just the way it is. The hospital attendants who've picked the remains out of the drunken-driving wreck, the very best thought in various professions that should have to do with this, are all agreed that there's nothing you can do about it.

We allow any dog to come around and sympathize with us when we're hurt, and even in a cave society they let a dog lick the wound to help it heal. But not in this society! And when men are made to feel that they do not have the right to aid and assist their fellows, but that Joe or Bill or somebody down the street is the only one who should be permitted to wave a magic wand or rattle a magic healing crystal, somebody had better look at the society real good because it's not a well society. Do you see that clearly?

And that is the principal agreement you are running into when you try to tell somebody about Scientology. Now, that's how far south you have to go: Something can be done about it. And if you were able to tell somebody, not about Scientology, past lives or Dianetic prenatals, but just this: "Something can be done about maladjustment, poor behavior, poor control and human relations that leave something to be desired." Now, if you could just drive that message home — "something can be done about this" — you would have accomplished more in getting that person into two-way communication than almost anything else you could do.

Now, it does not immediately presuppose that because a person has a right to heal that he is able to heal. That doesn't immediately follow, does it?

And why? It's because in saying Scientology works and it does this and it does that and it came from here and there, and there's auditors and preclears and this is the way it all goes and so forth — instead of going into all this sort of thing, you should realize that when you're talking to even a professional man, who should have kept up with the times and hasn't, that you are talking to somebody who doesn't believe anything can be done about it. Quite a bit lower than that — who hasn't even thought something could be done about it. But if he did think something could be done about it, or was saying something could be done about it, he knew he was talking about fakery or quackery.

But today we are at a level of understanding in Scientology sufficiently good that almost any human being alive could be put into possession of enough of that data to make anyone around him better and happier, including himself. And that is the goal toward which we are trying to win. And we are winning, using some of the artificial supports of the society which already exist. And one of those supports is organization.

So automatically anybody who comes up and says you can do something about this condition is a fake, a quack, a charlatan, a bum. Why? Because it's an obvious lie that something can be done about it. So therefore anybody who can do anything about it can't do anything about it, so therefore he's a liar.

But I would be a very sad man to realize, after years of work, that we had created not a greater freedom in the society but a stronger and more powerful organization in place of existing organizations. And as Hendrik Van Loon once said, "The more things seem to change, the more they remain the same." He says that in a book called Tolerance, which I recommend to you — Tolerance, by Willem Hendrik Van Loon, a very great writer, recently dead. Very fine man. But he says this in regard to revolution.

And that is the principal barrier which stands before the communication lines of Scientology and prevents a better dissemination of information.

We have this enormous mass of people swelling up out of the ditches and byroads and gutters and alleys and overwhelming a despotic government on the motto that "Everybody is going to be free. We're going to have liberty, fraternity and equality" and we get despotity! Instead of setting up a new free regime, all they do is use the extant communication lines of despotism in order to rule and govern. Anyone who would recommend the overthrow of a nation by force is a fool. He doesn't understand the least semblance of politics or of people. Because no nation is ever overthrown, they are just substituted for.

Now, that's a simple barrier, isn't it? It's an amazingly simple barrier. But it's sort of "How far south do you have to go?"

If you want to know what kind of a government you'd get after you revolted against a government, look at the government you revolted against. Things will be a little bit bullet-nicked, but that'll be about the only difference.

In other words, you have a cop down here and he's on the juvenile delinquent unit, and he goes around and he arrests them and he throws them in jail and they get out of jail and he throws them in jail and he gets them out of jail and . . . And he says, "After a while they'll go to the big house and then they'll, you know, serve two years and they'll come out and we'll put them back in and then they'll come out and we'll put them back in and they'll come out. And that's the way this all is and there's nothing can be done about it anyway." And he says, "What's the use of arresting these car thieves? What's the use of arresting them? You just send them to jail and they spend a year or so in jail and they get out and twenty-four hours after they get out, why, they steal another car. There's nothing you can do about these people. They're crazy. And there's nothing you can do about the mind, and so it's all hopeless. So why should I be nice to anybody? Why should I be decent to anybody? It's just all a sorry mess and there's no piece of string you could pull out of it and start it getting unraveled, noplace." That's his state of mind. Only he doesn't even know he's in this state of mind, usually.

We could, at this time, put together an organization or a group in Scientology sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful to run over everything it came to. This would be a fascinating thing to do. Be a game in itself. And then someday — me gone, other guys gone — all of a sudden there sits this thing, this organization. And somebody has to rise up and say, "Auditors of the world, unite; overthrow this monster!" And everybody would see it go down very plainly, you see. Down it'd go. Then they'd say, "Fine! Now we are free." And they would get another handful of letters cancelling their certificates. (audience laughter)

Now, let's see how this barrier all by itself would influence a large society such as this. Here we have this remarkable thing: a computation that the only way to bring about law and order, or to bring about control or direction or even betterment, is by applying more restraint, more law, more handcuffs. And that is the computation.

I try to look far enough in the future to forecast and predict what might be, so as to not do too many things wrong. You must allow me some percentage. And as I look into the future, I see that we are handling here, material of a potential control and command over mankind which must not be permitted at any time to become the monopoly or the tool of the few to the danger and disaster of the many. And maybe in this I am simply being overly proud, conceited or optimistic. But I would never for a moment step back from the role of being conceited just to be approved of, or just to be wrong in a prediction. And I believe that prediction is right.

Now, it's not a willful computation particularly. It's just the way it's all done. The more force we apply to the criminal, to the juvenile delinquent, to the stupid — the more force we apply to the student who will not study — the more stupidity, the less study, the more juvenile delinquency, the more crime. In other words, we're just adding to it — add, add, add, add.

And I believe that the freedom of the material which we know and understand is guaranteed only by a lightness of organization, a maximum of people, good training and good, reliable, sound relay of information. And if we can do these things, we will win. But if we can't do these things, sooner or later the information which we hold will become the property of an untrustworthy few. This I am sure, because it has always happened this way. But that's no reason it has to keep on happening this way. I am not of an inevitable frame of mind.

Now, someplace along the line, some group has to take the responsibility over of turning the tide of this course of thought. And in view of the fact that we are dealing with thought and not with masses, we can do it. In view of the fact that we are dealing with the spiritual side of life and not its swords, it can be done. If we tried to do it with the sword, we would still be doing the same thing that the society is doing: control with handcuffs, jail cells, operations, electric shocks, duress, punishment, bad 8-C, threat, fear. All of these things give us simply more deterioration. But we don't have to go along that line.

I have no illusions about either the unimportance of Scientology or its importance. You see, it'd be very, very easy to get a swollen idea either way.

We have found a singular fact. And this fact you needn't particularly communicate to other people because they're not likely to take it. They're not likely to assume this fact. And that is that a small increase in freedom brings an increase in civilized attitude.

It'd be a very simple thing, you know, to take a look at it and then take an opinion of it, independent of its actuality. Scientology, well understood, is a very powerful thing. Well used, it can do a great deal for the social order and for the individual. Poorly relayed, poorly communicated, monopolized or used exclusively for gain, it could be a very destructive thing.

Here's a great oddity, because the society at large doesn't believe this. If you increased somebody's freedom you would increase the amount of trouble in the society; that's the way they would think about it. And that happens to be a lie.

I have already had three offers by persons in places of power to hand over a great deal of information and stop talking. I'd be very happy to stop talking; doesn't matter to me one way or the other. I talk, I like that. I sit back silently, I like that — doesn't matter. Get a kick out of both of them. But I wonder why anybody would be interested in suddenly having a large mass of information they couldn't digest — my notebooks and things like this — and have me stop talking about it? Why would anybody be interested in this at all?

By decreasing freedom you increase trouble. By increasing freedom you decrease trouble. That's the truth.

Also received an offer once to work in a certain place in the world, to make men "more suggestible." It was at a dinner party. That was no less an official offer, because that's why I was at the dinner party — I didn't find out till I got there — to make men more suggestible! And I sat there, and the fellow evidently thought I was in a stunned silence. And I sat there with my dessert spoon halfway suspended, hoping against hope that I wouldn't break out in the hysterical laughter which I felt. I held it back, but I have never heard a better joke. That's carrying coals to Newcastle. Make him more suggestible! All you'd have to do is lean on him slightly and he'd go sound asleep!

Now, somebody comes up to me once in a while and he says, "Now, under processing, under processing isn't it really true — now, confidentially, Ron — isn't it really true that you uninhibit somebody?"

Now, many people have a feeling that I often talk rather wildly about the healing profession and so forth. Well, once in a while I get mad. I'm entitled to get mad. I reserve that as one of my human rights. When somebody comes in — they wheel in some kid, something of the sort, and they just got through cutting him all up, you know, and they say, "Well, that didn't do him any good, now you audit him." And I say out loud, "Why didn't you bring him around here first when he wasn't sick? He's sick now! He was just unhappy before. Now what do you expect me to do?" Well, I almost never turn anybody away, but I can get mad about it!

I don't know what field he's talking in. See, "uninhibit somebody." He's assuming that everybody's inhibited. This isn't particularly true either. He's assuming a whole bunch of irrational things — that there are big, black beasts that crouch just below the surface and thin veneer of the society, and these beasts at any moment are liable to bounce free. His level of belief in his fellow man could not be written and sent through the mails! But he believes that the second we would take off any restraint, we would find ourselves confronting a bunch of rather poorly behaved gorillas at the very, very best. If you make somebody freer, they immediately jump for the trees and begin to swing by their tails.

Now, there should not be any animosity particularly between a Scientologist and a member of a healing profession unless it's the animosity which one feels when he is certain that he's confronting stupidity of some kind or another. The only animosity I ever feel, really, is why in 1947 — why didn't they listen? Why in 1955 don't they read a book?

It is a completely unjustified conclusion, because we discover that when a calm, permissive attitude is taken around a child who has been in bad condition — who has been upset, nervous and so forth ... Calm — that doesn't mean no control. You people who have inherited from psychology the idea that the modern way to do with a child is just to leave them alone and let them run — no, that's not the way you raise children. You have to put a little bit of control on them, otherwise they get sick. You have to control them with certainty and good 8-C or they get sick. Remember that.

But I can tell you that we are worrying or thinking about such a small section of society that, as one of you said to me the other day, "Why can't we just overlook this entirely? Why do we have to mention it at all?" We don't! It's the most sensible thing I've heard in the whole congress — "Why mention it?" Why mention the healing professions or doctors or psychologists or anything else? Why not just forget it? All right. I said, "Gee, that's a good idea. Best idea I've heard in a long time." So I decided I would, so I thought I'd better tell you tonight that I've forgotten all about it.

And we take this child who has been nervous and upset, and we give this child a little bit greater freedom, a little more participation in the game. We consult with the child as to whether or not it's all right to go to the show. And sure enough, the child's liable to get kind of discombobulated for a few days, wonder what on earth is going to happen. Something's wrong, see? And they'll rattle around and then all of a sudden they'll say, "You know, there's — there's a little reality about this. They really do want my opinion as to whether or not to go to a show." And all of a sudden the kid settles down and becomes a civilized person.

Of course, it's very easy for a victor to be charitable. When you've won enough knowledge to do a great many things, the chief of which is to permit your fellow man to know and do a great many things, you'd better stop thinking these small thoughts, you know. You better go off and sleep on cloud nine after this. And one of these days I'm going to fix it up so I can actually feel like that!

The way you make an uncivilized person is to deny him civilized conduct. If you assume his civilization and give him the freedom necessary to participate in the game called life, you guarantee his good behavior.

Now, we have had five years — five years of consistent, continual research, theory, technique, advance. Five consistent, continual years. The progress of this work has not been interrupted by anything for five years. And we have had five years of organizational chaos. That's interesting, isn't it? Now, when I say chaos, I mean a human organization — where everybody passes slips of paper back and forth.

How do you suppose we're ever going to get rid of a criminal population if at all times the criminal on being released from prison is then shunned by the society and never hired for anything? Where can he turn but more criminality?

No, I am afraid that freedom does not depend upon or thrive well within the iron channels of organizations. Let me tell you something very amusing that occurs — that did occur in Dianetic organizations and that does occur in Scientology organizations — and why executive personnel and clerical and office personnel gets terribly overworked. They do.

Similarly, the backward child has to study longer, has to sit there longer, has to work harder, has to grind harder, in order to get anyplace: less freedom, less freedom, less freedom. They actually get more and more and more stupid. They're dumb, so the thing to do with them is really pour the education to them. Give them examinations; tell them that if they don't get A in arithmetic, Pop and Mom are going to feed them to the garbage man. In other words, threat and duress. Funny part of it is that every child that's being educated already knows arithmetic. The chief invalidation is teaching him again. He already knows how to read, so we teach him how to read.

This happens whether you're in London or South Africa. It doesn't matter where you are, you can count on this happening. You hire this girl, you know, and she's supposed to sit there and she's supposed to type out some letters. She's supposed to get answers to all these people, you know. And she sits there and she types out letters and she's very happy about the whole thing, chewing gum, you know, and she — "Gee, you know, that's interesting." And the next thing you know she's in the HCA Course! She'll drop her work at the drop of a typewriter simply to talk to somebody about Scientology. The kids in the organization work hard, but it's the darnedest thing you ever saw. It's utterly impossible to put together a business organization and keep it as such. So I just gave up.

Nobody ever assumes this child can know or do anything, and this attitude continues on throughout his life. Very few people assume anything good about him at all. Nobody assumes that he can do anything. And as long as this is the attitude of the society, look at the enormous danger poised before that individual's eye at all moments. Look at that danger. The danger is "If I really fit myself into this society — a society of people who believe that I am stupid and incompetent, that I have to be taught everything eight times — if I really fit myself in and cooperate with my fellows and do unto others the way I'd like to have them do unto me, with the prevailing attitude, I would be the deadest duck I'd ever met. So I don't dare let myself get into a position where I am in cooperation with my fellows. I have to hold back and stand aloof because it's too dangerous to let these other people run my machinery."

Now, this means we really, in Scientology organizations — that people do their very best to answer your mail, ship out your orders, give you tapes, copy them, do things — they do do their best this way. They're usually short-handed, they're usually working about fifteen hours a day and usually auditing somebody else another five. Everybody in the organization's an auditor. I mean, that's the way it goes. Sooner or later, why, they turn up there, and they're sitting there back there pounding the typewriter again. They don't leave, you know — pounding the typewriter again and all of a sudden they call in the young executive who wrote this letter and say, "Well now, you've made a mistake. I think there's a much better process for this case than the one you've just recommended." They got their certificate up right there, you know? They could actually leave the organization and probably go out someplace and make themselves a considerable amount of money but they don't; they stay in close to the organization and where things are going on.

Now, what do you suppose somebody is doing when he talks to you, but running some of your machinery? And what do you suppose you're doing when you talk to somebody else, but running some of his machinery? And if you thought he was going to run your machinery very, very poorly indeed, you'd sort of pull back the machinery and let him wiggle this corner of that antenna and just about no more.

Another odd thing occurs, is a Scientology organization becomes home for an awful lot of people. That's the darnedest thing. That's been going on for five years — that's home. You see somebody every day, he's sitting on the back porch and he's talking to somebody else and you wonder, "Where'd this guy come from?"

And this is about the existing state of social intercourse. People are willing to let other people run about one one-billionth part of the machinery, because it's too dangerous, because the belief, one person to another, is too poor. And people at all times are being convinced of this with jails, handcuffs, little blue toys standing on corners whirling nightsticks. Everybody's being policed beautifully. The banks police you. The job is always there. They say, "All right. Well, I don't know how long we can let you stay on. You're not really earning your salary, but we tolerate you somehow" — you know, this sort of an attitude, every hand. Quasi-participation — call it that.

Now, if you were running a laundry, or if you were running an industry that manufactured cars, you wouldn't find the place full of guys all the time that simply were just interested in the cars or interested in the wash coming out. You just wouldn't find this. Another thing, you wouldn't fire the fellow who was in charge of all of the inch-long parts or something like that and then find out he never leaves the premises. You fired him, but he's not gone anyplace. (audience laughter) It's horrible!

If you had every player on a football field afraid to touch the ball, and every player bound and determined that the others were not going to touch the ball either, you'd sure have some football game, wouldn't you? You'd have twenty-two men out there and the ball sitting in the middle of the field, and these guys would be arguing with each other: "Well, you're really not trustworthy to touch that ball. I don't know whether I want you on my team or not, because of so on and so on." Be a great game, wouldn't it?

So Dianetics and Scientology organizations, I know after five years' experience, will never be a business — never be.

Did it ever strike you that life at large could be as much fun, on its broadest scale, in the fullest definition of a nice football game? There could be as much enthusiasm to even the small, mundane, ordinary things as there might possibly be to playing a very exhilarating game? It's almost far-fetched, isn't it, to think that talking to one's fellow man and engaging in cashing a check and doing this and doing that could be a continuous, exhilarating experience, even though it wasn't big and huge and dramatic.

Now, the efficient parts of the organization — the efficient parts today — are the processing center, auditor units, and training units. Now that we aren't changing techniques every twenty-five or thirty seconds (audience laughter) and now that an auditor today can talk to an auditor who graduated eight months ago, an odd thing is occurring: The auditor who's doing the processing is very certain of his tools and he converses very, very easily with the other auditors who are also processing; and the auditor who's training has the strangest frame of mind — I never heard of anybody teaching biology could possibly be as much a purist, as much a hound, as picayune and as ornery as some auditor teaching somebody Six Basic Steps. And then this person says, "Well, all right. Now, the way I do this is to — I say — I say ... What — what do I say now? Well, I — I say, I say, 'Remember something real' and then he remembers something real and then I say, 'Okay.' Is that right? All right, fine, now here we go. All right, now. 'Remember something real.' "

Well, the television sets today convince us that we at least have to be named Webb in order to have any excitement in the society. The only way we can get some excitement is to have somebody bad enough to murder people. The comic books, those serious dime novels they call "the comics" on Sunday — these things are all selling the level of message which the society believes is a game. They believe that there's terrific action and bullets and . . . As a kid, anyone of our generation undoubtedly had the feeling like, well, life wasn't really worth living unless you at least had a war or something going on. You know? We had to have big violence, big game, big stakes. Oh, I've been through a few wars in my day, and I've never been so bored in my life. Why? Because nobody in them knew how to play a game.

And the person says, "Mm-mmm-mmm, yes."

It isn't the amount of motion or action, it isn't the stake, it isn't the grandeur of the trappings that make a game. It's the willingness of those about us to play a game which makes a game. And when we lose sight of that, we lose the game and life becomes a serious, onerous, arduous, dog-eat-dog endeavor.

And the auditor says, "Okay."

And the degree that people are unwilling to play the game in this society is measured by the number of handcuffs, the number of jails, the number of hospitals and institutions and the number of laws.

Well, his Instructor's standing right there, you know. Instructor says, "(sigh) Show some interest!"

Now, it takes a few laws to make a game. You'll always have to have some barriers and restrictions to make a game. But when you get too many, you get no game, except this game: the game of making more laws that will make more laws necessary. And that's a game for attorneys, but not for citizens.

But training, processing units today are coming up into a state of efficiency and interest which is quite interesting. The HASI auditor, for instance, used to start his staff auditor conference at five o'clock. See, he had nothing to eat since lunch, and he starts staff auditor conference at five o'clock and still be there and the conference still going on at eight with no dinner. So that noticing this and taking pity on this, I pushed it back to four. And have still had one going on at nine! Everybody real interested, comparing notes, squaring it all around and so forth.

Now, wherever we look, then, and find people miserable or unhappy or believing that they could not possibly survive or have a good time, all we're looking at is a community which is composed, in the majority, of people who cannot play a game and will not let other people play one.

Another thing is, of recent months, become increasingly apparent: that the people in Scientology were increasingly — in the West there — getting MEST-conscious, you know, a little bit. They are starting to dress up and wear ties and so forth. Darnedest thing — darnedest thing I ever saw was a Director of Processing who, up to that time, auditor comes in in shirt sleeves, you know, and so forth — Director of Processing all of a sudden went on a complete military martinet binge! She'd just got some auditing squared around and her tolerance level or her unwillingness to run other people's machinery had been run out. And she takes a look at this auditor — he walks into the auditor's conference, he's in a very neatly pressed, clean shirt and tie. And she says, "Well, I hope you didn't audit your preclear looking like a wreck like that!" She had everybody in coats. Fantastic. Yes, times change. I suppose some time in the future I'll probably develop a process that will make a business executive.

Now, that's — that's an interesting thing. If we want to classify and qualify the last stages of psychosis, it would be "no game anywhere with nobody and that's that, period." That's also a cactus, like they grow in Arizona Arizona grows good cacti.

Audience: No!

Now, the last stages of exit is simply "no game." And when we get duress and punishment all out of proportion to the communication necessary to continue a game, we get no game.

And will make one devoted to a business executing. Well, I've studied this and I don't know whether you have to push them down scale or bring them up. (audience laughter) We've gotten people much more alert and much more competent on an executive line, but we haven't gotten them to a point where they lost all interest in their fellow human being and would just sit there and stare at that paper chain and shuffle it. You know, that's what an executive's supposed to do. You know, shuffle the pieces of paper. People put a piece of paper here and he's supposed to put it in that basket. That's an executive job.

Well now, some people may believe that there is a game in going around and shooting, arresting, fighting, drawing people up in battalions and firing by volley, or playing catch with atom bombs between one agency in Washington and another agency in Russia, but there aren't very many participants to this game, are there? There's no slightest chance for the average citizen to participate in a game called atomic warfare — no slightest chance. They haven't even got a good civil defense outfit that you could join, you know? You couldn't even wear a tin hat — whatever good a tin hat would be.

It's the number of pieces of paper which you can handle in any given hour which determines your importance as an executive.

But here we have the common denominator of what we could call civilization. Civilization would be, of course, a gradient term. But we could say a good civilization would be that civilization in which the individuals of which it was composed could play a game and knew they could play a game and were playing a game called culture. And if that attitude could exist, you would immediately, of course, have human rights, respect for one's fellows — all these things would fall into line. These are symptoms of how well the game is going.

Well, an unfortunate thing, however, with all this is that doesn't determine a successful businessman. That's another thing. That's something else. And the way you do that is you get a fellow that can look at the situation, estimate it, get the answers necessary to resolve it and put them into effect and carry them forward to a successful conclusion. Well, we can make people like that, but they won't sit at desks.

And when human rights are being thrown aside, ignored, well, there's no game in progress, that's all — in spite of the childhood bible, the comic strip. It believes that only when you're permitted to murder, kill, rob and burn can a game be in progress. That is the message carried to us by the Sunday papers. And that is the message which every child erroneously learns.

Well, we have many quandaries, many difficulties. Now, Ability magazine is scheduled in the next many, many months to become a national newsstand publication. As you can realize, that takes a great deal of time, effort and expenditure — great many contacts. You couldn't possibly print a national newsstand publication from the Southwest; they don't have that much paper. That's the truth.

They think of the Western badmen. It's a lot of fun, by the way, fooling around the West — it used to be a lot of fun. There was very, very little connected with hauling out one's six-gun and shooting somebody else. I mean, there were always a few bad apples around someplace or another, but they killed each other off and the rest of the guys had a good time. That was really what the West was all about.

It just doesn't seem that paper grows on the desert. Until they learn to make it out of cactus, they'll continue to have a shortage. Furthermore, it costs more to print in the West, Ability magazine — by a factor of two — and do all the work ourselves, than it would cost to have it printed professionally with no strain or pain to us in the East.

Any primitive culture, any frontier, has a characteristic which is not mirrored in our Western stories, which is not mirrored in our Western movies and that great authority on everything — driven home with its gamma rays — the television set.

And the second it started to climb up on the circulation lists, I reversed the motto of Horace Greeley, and I said, "Ronnie, go East."

Now, these great authorities all agree that a frontier was a place where everybody shot at everybody. Do you think people who would shoot at you could handle your machinery well? They wouldn't. They wouldn't.

Now, rumor is an effort to supply an existing scarcity of information. A rumor is an effort to remedy lack of data. That's all rumor is. And an effort to get out enough data that people know about — or would like to know about — about what's going on is rather difficult. It's a little bit difficult because often they're not interested in what you're saying.

The actuality of conduct on a frontier is quite different. And having lived, been raised, on a Western frontier in Montana before it got very civilized, I know very well what I'm talking about. And having seen one later in Alaska, I also know what I'm talking about — that isn't civilized up there yet worth a nickel — and other parts of the world which are frontiers. And everywhere I have gone where men were few, men were valuable, and they ran good 8-C on each other.

But we have these days solved this to some degree. I believe you'll like Ability magazine, the way it's going — more or less its tone and so on. And the number of pages it can have must not be limited and restricted simply because the Southwest doesn't know that you use paper to publish magazines.

Up in Alaska you go back of the — well, go back in the muskeg someplace, and you see a cabin sitting there. It's unlatched; there's no lock on the door. There's firewood stacked there, there's a frying pan, there's some bacon, there's some flour. All you're expected to do is at least leave as much firewood as you found. If you've got a few more supplies than you can usually use, you could leave those too and you probably would.

So we'll try to make it bigger and try to make it go further. Naturally, when Ability goes national it will, to a large degree, lose some of its personality or tone — less intimate detail — so it will have to be supplemented by an additional bulletin to the membership.

Here is the level of hospitality and friendship which would be unknown. Wonder how long it's been since somebody in Washington left his front door unlocked so that anybody could walk in and cook himself a steak?

Now, as far as the HASI is concerned — I was just talking to Phoenix a little while ago — everything's going along very smoothly, HCA, BScn Course running well, the processing unit running very well. They're trying to get things squared away, because what we did was take some of the business facilities in an effort to print Ability and so forth, and move them East. Now, that is what has moved East — some of the business facilities of the organization and its equipment and machinery.

So here we're presented with a lying picture of a frontier, and our children are led to believe that the finest thing in the world that you could do is go out and kill everybody.

Now, actually it's a good thing to have the business office at a distance from the school and the processing center. And I hope now we'll be able to hire a stenographer and she'll sit there and she'll go all the way through and write dozens of letters before all of a sudden she goes out to Phoenix. (audience laughter)

Well, why does the kid believe this? And we get to the root of the trouble immediately: because he can't have a game as a kid! He can't even have a game with his fellow children because they're insufficiently well respected, one person to another, by the adults. No respect given them to amount to anything. There isn't any game to play; they can't participate.

The plans for the future of Scientology are actually in the run right now. They are materializing. They are going forward at this time. The die, in other words, is cast. The modus operandi behind this planning is a very simple thing to understand if you'd only care to look at it. That is, with a minimum of organization, a maximum of dissemination, and still at the same time guarantee the training excellence of an auditor and guarantee the skill and knowledge of those auditors he trains. That's what we're trying to do.

They come in and they try to — you watch a little kid about a year and a half, two years old, he's liable to come in and grab a dishcloth while you're washing dishes and try to wipe the dishes. And if you're indoctrinated thoroughly in this Western-hemisphere civilization — heh! — you'll take the dish away from him and put it back up where it won't get broken.

Now, lack of communication brings about rumor. There have been more rumors about less in Dianetics and Scientology than can easily be printed by Time magazine. I'm not saying that Time magazine prints only rumors. I saw a news notice in there, in I think 1947, which was a fact. Yeah, see — it was a fact. I checked up on it. Everybody was quite surprised.

And after you've done this from two years of age to seven years of age, you have somebody who has been thoroughly trained that he can't work. And then when he's thirteen or fourteen and fifteen, that's the time to sit around and hold your head because he's never going to be any good.

But this flood of rumor, you should understand, that you hear about this and that, is normally simply an effort to be wise or smart, but principally an effort to fill in a lack of news. An effort to fill in a lack of actual news. Well, I very often wish sometimes that some spectacular occurrence had happened in order to put some real news on the line so as to knock a few rumors out. Man is very scarce on drama and sometimes dreams up drama with a most alarming result. So that we occasionally hear all sorts of things, see. Hear everybody — "all the auditors in the East have just decided to jump into the Atlantic" or something. And we hear that "the HASI has just burned down the courthouse in Phoenix," or .. .

Where'd he get no good? Two to seven. That's an interesting thing. Because he might break the dish. Well, for God's sakes let him break the dish, but don't break the kid!

But some of these rumors are quite interesting in that they are consistent and continual, and one of those was thrown at me the other day: that I was in an institution. And I looked at the fellow, who was a newspaper reporter heh! — a real bad one. I looked at this character, and I said, "Where the hell did you learn that? Now, where did you pick that up?" Well, he couldn't say. But I was very intrigued because this rumor has about five times been traced back to the Menninger Institute as having emanated from there.

Now, wherever we look, we find this bad 8-C going on, which is simply a protest by the individual: "I'd better not have anybody else run my machinery because he'll wreck the whole works. And I'm convinced of this, because on every corner, where he's not needed, there's a cop. I'm convinced of this because there are terrific, terrific numbers of books written about the — what you can and can't do: people have to be restrained." And all of this stems out of the fact that we'd better not associate with our fellows or we'll get in an awful lot of trouble. That's kind of it, you know? It's kind of a lesson driven home.

At one time we did publish this fact, however: that Menninger was not, at this time, in an institution in Wichita. But in view of the fact that there's no fight going on in this direction, I don't think there'd be much slapping back along this line. We are not trying to monopolize healing in the United States. We are not trying to monopolize insanity.

Well, if that is an existing sort of state of affairs where people — where a half a hundred people can live in an apartment house, as they do in the East, for fifteen years and never even know their next-door neighbor's name — if this sort of thing can happen, they must have fallen apart rather badly, rather widely.

And I'm going to say something here now about insanity that I wish to say as just a public statement: that a great deal of experience, observation, on the subject of insanity and insane people has finally forced me to the conclusion that helping the insane is usually an effort to reverse what self-determinism they have left.

Well, if they've fallen apart it becomes an interesting problem to hook some communication lines back up. Because the only way they'll ever be happy is with some lines hooked up. You can sure count on that.

A person who is psychotic has, at one time or another, decided to die. He has not now, or subsequently, decided to live.

It's a very easy process. All you have to do is hook some communication lines up and the rest more or less starts taking place. Because it's just a failure of communication, and these people learn by communicating that their machinery and their beingness and possessions aren't necessarily going to be ruined simply because somebody else tells them something or gives them something or they go out somewhere. You see? They'll learn this on a kind of a gradient scale.

Now, almost any of us have at some time or another felt bad enough or been sick enough to say, "I wish I were dead," and really mean it at the time. But then we say afterwards, "Well, this life isn't so bad — go on living," you know? Psychosis doesn't do this — what makes it psychosis. They say this so hard or they come so close to death, that they abandon the body and then hang in the middle, unable to completely let go because it's still alive, and unwilling to take over any control of it again. And there they sit, trying to die.

But let me assure you of this: that if everybody in such a society were to believe that nothing could be done about it at all — let's say they weren't particularly in apathy about it, but they'd simply been taught this as an educative datum, that there is no remedy for antisocial actions — if they all believed this, then you have a guarantee that the situation will deteriorate.

And this society says that we must keep everyone alive, because we're all machines, you see? And there is no other life and this is all there is to it, so everyone has to live. And the society says this urgently and continually — they have to live. As a matter of fact, it would be a very, very, very dangerous thing if anybody were to legalize what they call euthanasia, which is murder. See, it would be a very dangerous thing because somebody could always figure-figure his way around this law. And you'd be walking down the street feeling perfectly happy about life, and they'd say, "You know, that person's liable to have pups," or something of the sort. Bang! Very dangerous to legalize this thing.

So that's our primary barrier. That's the primary thing we have to overcome with Scientology: Something can be done about it. Not what can be done about it — see, that's up there too high. It is possible for something to occur that would put a person into better relations with life and his fellows. The society doesn't know that, has no inkling of it.

But maybe we shouldn't put all the stress in the world on the idea that just because something is breathing, it wants to keep on living! How about a plant with all of its leaves hacked off and so forth? It's trying to die. Why? So it can go be another plant. And the longer you stop it from going and being another plant, the harder off it is, the more difficulties you've put in its path!

You go to some fellow and you say, "Well now, things are pretty bad and so forth, I know, but have you had anything done about it?"

Now it's an unfortunate thing that psychosis would fall into this category. But the person who is insane is, according to my observation, trying to die to the degree that he has practically moved out and gone into the between-lives state. See, he just — "No more. Don't want to come near it again." And then you're going to come along and make him well, when every single vector, stress and concentration in that being is to die.

And he'll say, "Oh, I went to this one and I went to that one — there's nothing can be done about it."

And it is not that insanity is an unsolvable problem. But it is an unsolvable problem in this society, bent as it is upon survival at this time.

There's, by the way, an organization in this country which calls itself the "Better Gyp Bureau." And the Better Gyp Bureau is heavily endowed by anyone who wants to pull a fast curve on the society. This organization, with an office everyplace in the United States, writes continually this message: "Anybody who says he can cure anything is a quack. If somebody tells you that something can be done about it or a condition can be bettered, you should immediately call the Better Gyp Bureau so that we can tell you that the man is a fake."

Now, that doesn't mean now that you cannot take a person who is disturbed and make him undisturbed. You can reverse this vector. But the seriously insane are trying to die. And unless one had complete and utter, uninterfered-with freedom to give these people space, to give them sunlight, to give them some associations and company of one kind or another, to minimize these restraints of one kind or another, difficulties in the cure of insanity are imposed to such a degree that no auditor or no minister, unless he believes that there is some small chance, should concern himself with insanity. Why? Because we haven't got enough auditors.

Oh, it's fantastic! But that is the truth; I'm not exaggerating it. "Anybody in the country who says he can even start research in any direction toward doing anything about cancer should be immediately shot." And it says continually there that people coming in, saying they can do things for illnesses "which have already been found impossible to heal by competent authority ..." What competent authority is there on the face of this earth that can tell you that there will be no progress in the field of healing? I would say that anybody that said that was an incompetent authority and ought to be asylumed. And yet — yet this is the propaganda we face: "Nothing can be done about it."

Now, it is perfectly true that a case could recover. The hope of insanity lies less, then, in auditing than in providing enough space, enough lack of restimulation, enough quietness and rest — since exhaustion and insanity are almost synonymous — to provide enough quiet and rest, space and food so that the person might have a chance to change his mind and decide to live again. Until he does so, there's very little you can do.

Do you think it's right for the highways of this country to have strewn upon them more dead and wounded than occurred in the US forces in World War I, every single year? Do you think that's a good, sensible sort of a society? Or does that sort of put people on their nervous edge when they take that wheel? Anybody who can think at all, who can look around him as he drives, is liable to some of the sillier antics. I know I've seen some interesting things occur. I haven't had any accidents myself but one, and I hardly would call it an accident. A woman suddenly — her name was Wanda; she was a psychic reader. She all of a sudden — I was traveling at about twenty miles an hour and all of a sudden she came from the fourth lane over of a four-pass highway. There wasn't even any corner to turn there — car went out of control and suddenly ran into the side of my car, just like that. Didn't hurt me or the car any to amount to anything. I made sure of that — picked the car up and moved it over quickly. But I looked at this girl — she was going hyu-hyu-hyu-hyu-hyu-hyu. She had a driver's license! She couldn't talk for twenty minutes. No two-way communication possible, much less "What accident has occurred?"

In Dianetics, there was therein proposed a solution to the problem of insanity: to provide space, to provide quietness, let somebody get a rest and let them change their minds. There is that solution. Perhaps someday some part of this society will see such a solution put into effect or will try to put such a solution into effect.

I thought, "That's an interesting thing," drove on down the road myself, skipped the whole thing. Few days later I was threatened with having my driver's license revoked for not having written a certain paper in to the driving bureau. You know, you had to make a certain responsibility statement of some kind or another, and not having made out the piece of paper within the twenty-four hours or something that was allowed — not knowing it was necessary, not being guilty of the accident — I find out all of a sudden I'm going to have my license revoked. So I call up and I say, "Now, by the way, I don't want to be facetious or anything like that, but are you revoking the other driver's license?"

To take a person who is insane in a very closed, confined area and audit them may or may not succeed, simply because of the existence of the barriers and restraints — everything cooped up in their vicinity. This doesn't mean that an auditor has not, and that an auditor in Dianetics particularly could not, bring about a considerable change in the insane. It does not mean that this could not happen. It does not mean that because a person is insane, it is all hopeless. I'm telling you what I am satisfied insanity is, which I think you might find an interesting observation.

"No."

Insanity appears to be that thing of a death wish of such strength and magnitude that the person will see almost everything die around him in an effort to carry it out. And sanity returns when the person decides again to live.

"Why not?"

And out of all these years of study and observation, that's really all I know about insanity. Because I have seen preclears in much more serious condition than an insane person seemed to be in. I have seen them with all the manifestations that an insane person had and yet they were not insane. I have seen them with engrams in restimulation that would have killed an elephant, and they were still sane. I have seen them so nervous and shaking that they were practically shaking the threads out of their sleeves and they were still sane. But they wanted to live. And so, by themselves or with the help of an auditor, they overcame the ghosts and things that go boomp in the night. But that person wanted to live. And so that person was sane. That person was willing to take responsibility for some part of his difficulties. And so that person was sane and so that person could recover.

"She hasn't done anything."

What we call the insane — desire to die. And they might have some very minor thing wrong with them, but they desire to die. And that is the vector that they go.

No, all she did was run into a car. I failed to make out a piece of paper!

As far as psychosomatic illness is concerned, I have felt that psychosomatic illness was overrated. And I would continue to feel that it was overrated until I found a man who did not have one. And I have begun to believe that psychosomatic illness is a misnomer and it should simply be called "unwanted sensation" or "unwanted absence of sensation." And to classify it as illness was to make it unsolvable. Because illness infers that some bugs or some malfunction of organs or something else is basic causation.

Now, that's a gorgeous state of affairs, isn't it? Yet if you walked into the state police or the licensing bureau or the drivers' license bureau of any of these local governments and you said, "Well now, I am a Doctor of Scientology and we could probably do considerable to decrease the accidents which you have in your state by giving a ten-minute examination to each person who applies for a driver's license. And now we could give them this little examination and then we'll carry it against the records for six months. And at the end of the six months we will have marked everybody who will have had an accident by that time. And then if you agree that this is what happened, then we can institute it as a regular affair, and this isn't going to cost you a thing. We'll even provide the person to stand here and give the thing while the people are taking the other examination."

And we find that psychosomatic illness is apparently simply unwanted sensation or lack of sensation. And that psychosomatic illness comes about when an individual is called upon to prove something and fails. So much so that if you were going to process a chronic somatic you could do this fascinating thing: you could say to an individual, "What have you got that would prove it?" See, you're not talking about a thing. You just ask him, "All right, what have you got that'd prove it?" And he'll have an answer. And he'd look himself over and he — "My head, that proves it. I've got a body, that's the reason. Because people were mean to me; that's why I have a body."

Place after place this has been offered. But it's being offered to people who know nothing else, but they do know that nothing can be done about it.

You can ask a person and solve the entire service facsimile that was described in 1952 simply by asking that person, "What would it get you out of? What would it get you into?" You ask him these questions alternately.

Yet there's a great oddity about this little examination. It was to determine the accident-proneness of the individual. And we tested it for quite a while and made a very reliable little test out of it. And it's just two sides of one piece of paper. And it actually does — it actually does coordinate beautifully. You can tell, practically by the grade of the person, how long he's going to drive until his next accident, or whether he's going to have one or not.

"Oh yes, you have a bad arm. All right. Now, what'll that get you out of? Now what'll it get you into? Okay, fine. What'll it get you out of? All right. Fine. What'll it get you into? Fine, that's fine." And then you could finish it up, if you had that flat, with "All right, what can you prove with it?" and you'd find out he had a whole category of things he could prove with this psychosomatic illness.

And we found something very interesting when we started to coordinate this accident-prone test with tone tests and psychometrics — standard psychometric batteries. We found out that they coordinated one for one. They were right straight across the boards. In other words, we weren't testing anything peculiar when we were testing accident-proneness. We were testing just the same things that were being tested over here with personality

So I think that in treating psychosomatic illness, we are running straight up against the computation of a thetan that he ought to have some sensation, and that any sensation is better than no sensation. And that he should have something with which to gain a little sympathy and to prove his lack of guilt, because when we touch these buttons, all of these fancy psychosomatic illnesses that are so beautifully described and cataloged endlessly, fade away. "What'll it get you out of? What'll it get you into? What'll it get you out of? What'll it get you into? What'll it prove? What have you got that'll prove something?"

In other words, this little accident test, which was designed to clean up a few highways, operated as efficiently in telling the capabilities of a person as very elaborate tests over here did. So there isn't very much trouble involved and it's quite an accurate thing to do. It isn't even hard to dream up. But it's being offered to people who know nothing can be done about it at all. Now, you'd think it'd be a very worthy endeavor.

So we couldn't possibly be looking at an illness if we're looking at the human race, unless being human is an illness. So we have to immediately come out of the category of illness in order to treat a chronic somatic. And a chronic somatic is not a psychosomatic illness! I suppose some chronic somatics could be bad enough so that they would then be classified by one of the healing sciences as a psychosomatic illness. I'm just not throwing words around; I'm trying to give you a bigger breadth — a look at this.

We coordinated the grades of this test against the ability — because it was given to a lot of students, too — against the ability of the person to run 8-C upon his fellow students. Exact coordination.

One person is on crutches with his legs and another one's on crutches with his mind. Doing what? Trying to get out of things and get into things and prove it.

In other words, we were selecting out of the society the people that nobody ought to let run their machinery until they had some processing and knew what to do with a machine.

And you take somebody whose parents never listened to him. He'd go in and he'd say, "Sniff, sniff!"

Now, here again we have the interlock of interpersonal relations; and this interlock is a very easy thing to look at, to plot, because it's simply how well can a person give a command and see it through to its end of cycle before giving another command? Or how well can a person receive a command and carry it through to its end of cycle before taking another command?

Mom would say, "Go away now, I'm busy."

This is a great oddity, but this give-and-take is civilization. And when people can receive and give commands with ease, when they can control each other to this degree on a give-and-take basis and with certainty, we have a very positive and dynamic culture.

Next time ... (pause; audience laughter)

If everybody is simply walking around saying, "Well, they're all responsible and we're just — everybody's going to be responsible and there's no reason for me to give anybody orders and so on," we have everything falling apart. That's an oddity, isn't it? Well, we found out that a person who shouldn't be at the wheels of somebody else's body also shouldn't be at the wheels of a car.

Mom would say, "Go away, I'm busy."

And so it's a very interesting thing that with the greatest of ease you could pick out of the society those people who would cause the accidents. They evidently amount to about 10 percent. All you'd have to do is knock out their driver's licenses until they had enough Group Processing till they could run 8-C and tolerate a few orders.

Next time — whole arm, you know, "Look!"

How can a person possibly drive according to the law if he cannot receive the content of the traffic law? What else will he do but speed if he can't even assimilate the speeding signs? You see? Now that's a command, isn't it? It says "Thirty miles per hour this zone." This person can't receive any orders. Sixty! Ninety! And believe me, if he's in that condition, he doesn't know whether he's got ahold of a steering wheel or a baby bottle. Usually the car is driving him!

"Go away, I'm busy."

I said to one of these new cars, I said, "How are you driving your people lately?" You know, it didn't answer? You know, the thing was out of communication? It was crazy!

Finally he takes the whole body, see, and he says .. .

Well, all right. Here we have across the boards, then, the anatomy of a culture. And the anatomy of a culture is the willingness and ability of the people in that culture to play the game with one another, to give orders and complete cycles of action, to receive orders and complete cycles of action, to cooperate. And to form up teams and sides and argue about it. Not necessarily, you know, go out and kill everybody, according to the TV — it's not necessary to fight to have a game.

Mama says, "Go away, I'm busy."

When you are playing an interesting game of chess with somebody, are you fighting with that person? No. When you're playing football, unless everybody on the other team is mad or everybody on your team is mad, it doesn't generate into a fight. It's a game. It's only when things get very gameless that we have to have a fight; and that convinces everybody, you know, that a game is in progress.

The fellow says, "I haven't got anything that'll prove anything. I give up. I'm dead."

Now let's take a look at somebody who is unable to receive an acknowledgment. Do you know there are a lot of people around who are unable to receive an acknowledgment? An auditor in Phoenix the other day did a very interesting thing. I told you all about this: Got in front of the lady and said, "Good!" You know, received an acknowledgment.

And he sees an auditor years and years later — he sees his co-auditor, he sees his wife, friend, somebody auditing him. "I feel pretty apathetic. I ..."

The actual thing about it is, never in her life had she ever received anybody's acknowledgment. She had said yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, and they'd said yes, but she never heard the yes. She just went on yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap. And they would — people would say, "Yes, Gertrude." And it never got through. Stuck telephone line, you know? It's one way only. Such a person requires an impact before they know they've been acknowledged.

Here he is, still trying to prove it to Mama. Only he's got a lot of substitutes for Mama by this time: gateposts and wives and all kinds of things, you know. He's trying to prove it to somebody.

I had a fellow one time; he was quite drunk on board ship. He came roaring aboard ship at about 2:30 in the morning. There wasn't hardly anybody around. We'd just come in; everybody was dog-tired. The boy on the gangway was standing his watch without an officer of the deck. And this guy, who had just been assigned to us in a draft, slips off the ship and comes back roaring drunk, going to bust everything up. I peeled off the bunk and went out to see what all this commotion was.

But if you look into the computation behind it — what'll it get him out of? what'll it get him into? what'll it prove? — thing's rather simple.

He'd thrown the quartermaster's notebook and a spyglass and so forth — he'd thrown these overboard. And I said something to him — just said it straightaway — told him to snap out of it. He didn't receive any acknowledgment. There was no statement made to him; he didn't receive a communication at all. He received no acknowledgment for what he'd been doing. I told him he shouldn't do that — that was an acknowledgment of what he'd been doing. There wasn't any communication there at all.

But there's another factor involved which makes psychosomatic illness a very suspicious thing. And that is you have to make the thetan capable of inventing a whole new category of ills before he'll give up any he's got.

He went on roaring around, practically walked through me and so on. So, took him by his tie and ptock, ptock, ptock, ptock, ptock, ptock, ptock, ptock, ptock, ptock!

So, as far as illness is concerned, I do not for a moment believe that any auditor, treating any thetan, is going to heal anything. He'll change him, he'll give him another pattern, but to put him into a category where he'll never have any feeling anymore of any kind? Where he could never get ill again? Where he could never go into Selective Service headquarters and say, "Huh? You want me? Ha-ha!" (audience laughter) What kind of a dirty trick we trying to play on people?

He said, "Oh, hello, Skipper."

We should put it into his command to be able to do these things knowingly and not have to hide the fact that he's doing it and do it obsessively. That's about the only thing we could change about this characteristic.

All right. There's a certain percentage of people like that in a society and they kind of spoil it for the rest of us. What's their idea of an acknowledgment? Let you run into them, of course. Crash, crunch — "(sigh) Somebody else is in the world, too."

Therefore, any great fixation on our part on the subject of illness, as such, will not be rewarded — ever! But a great deal of attention on our part on increasing abilities to the point where he's even able to be ill would pay off heavy dividends. Therefore, in Scientology you couldn't possibly be dealing with a healing science, because one of its functions is to make the fellow capable of getting sick!

When they've finally badgered you and hounded you and so forth .. . There's the lighter variety — they've badgered you and hounded you and talked to you and said the same thing over and over and over and over and you've kept saying, "Yes. Yes. All right. We'll do it. Okay," and so forth, they just keep right on, keep right on — you finally say, "Damn it, shut up!"

Now, these are the things which I have had to think about and talk about for a long time with auditors, with preclears, and these two conclusions I have reached very positively. That our own health, the health of the organization, and the trueness of processing itself, dictates that we do not consider ourselves to be healers of the insane or the sick.

"(sigh) Somebody spoke to me." They found it out right then.

If a person wants to die, if he finds life completely unsupportable, who are we to come along and say, "You have to live," particularly when this overset of his self-determinism would not be possible. The insane only stay insane — they only stay insane — because they don't want to live. It's a level of death deeper than death itself. And as a matter of fact, death is the substitute for insanity. You can examine that on the whole track. You'll find out that death was the substitute — that's the quickie — that's a good, fast method. And the only one that was before that was "Look, you have made me so crazy — you'll have to stop punishing me because you've made me so crazy that now I can't do anything and I have no control of anything and I have no responsibility and my postulates won't work. So you can go ahead and punish me if you want to, but it won't do you any good, because I'm not even responding now. I don't even know who's punishing me." And this insanity was sufficiently insupportable that after a while somebody invented death.

Well, you know, my machinery — I don't know about yours — is delicate. And when people tell me that sort of thing and so forth, I generally short-circuit a couple of antennas and things like that.

They went around and got a couple of guys and they said, "Hey, you know? What do you know? Huh! Look at this, I'm dead! Now watch!" Boom! Big invention. The wheel and the arch have nothing in it at all!

But gee-whiz, it's hard to have a civilization where you've got these terrifically base levels of contact — where it's only an impact that can communicate, you know? Because these people go around and find impacts so they'll know they're in communication. They're not the kind of people you want running your machinery. And so we get a society falling apart.

So, as far as I can see, life can be a pleasant game for almost anybody unless he has decided entirely and completely that this is impossible and he isn't going to change his mind about it. If you can communicate with him, you can always change his mind about it, if you are talking to him as a thetan — as a spirit. If you're talking to him as a body . . . Did anybody ever find that part of the body you addressed in order to get it to change its mind? Be almost impossible if we waited for the body to change its mind like some black Vs do. They sit there getting audited, waiting for the body to change its mind, you know. "Well, it hasn't changed its mind yet. Hasn't changed its mind yet. No, I ran that process — hasn't changed its mind yet. Well, guess there's nothing to Scientology — can't make my body change its mind."

We run into one of these people, we'll run into ninety-nine good people. We run into one of these people — we're hit hard enough, we say, "What do you know, ninety-nine other people are just like this, that makes a hundred." We say, "Well, that's life. That's society."

An individual who is given a security of his immortality, who recognizes his own immortal character as he very easily does on exteriorization, has achieved the greatest gift he could be given by a fellow being — is a very great gift, believe me. Do you know that man has fought and bled and vituperated for thousands of years on the off chance that somebody was right when he said we could go to heaven? And you as an auditor or as a student of Scientology have it in your hands to hand out immortality, not at death, but right now.

And here we are, a vast number of people who are good, decent people, going around, looking at life, not having too bad a time with it, successful in our own way, able to talk to our fellows very well — making, really, two errors. One: that it's — there's any liability at all in talking to anybody. There is no liability at all in talking to anybody. We make an error when we suppose there is. There isn't even any liability in talking to a cop.

And therefore I do not think you have to go into the healing sciences or consider yourself a treater of the insane or a healer of the sick when you have at your disposal a gift of such infinitely greater magnitude that there is no possible comparison. And therefore, I do not want you to hold yourself, or what you know, too cheap. I want you to come into possession of all that you know and I want you to be able to use that knowledge with security.

Of course, I'm not going to say what you have to say to a cop to get an acknowledgment through. I ran into one cop one day; I had to ask him, "Where did you learn to drive?" This was non sequitur enough so that he kind of blinked on this. "How do you know what good driving is?" I mean, I wasn't the guy who was arrested, by the way. He was pestering somebody on the sidewalk, so I merely went over and horned in. None of my business at all.

And any mission I have here on this planet at this time will be successful at that time when what I have just said has been accomplished.

So I asked the cop where he learned how to drive, where he thought he was going, what kind of a car he was driving, if he was married. Why was I doing this? I asked him for his license and his identification card. By the time I reached into my pocket and pulled out a notebook, he got in his car and drove off.

Thank you.

It was none of my business. Or maybe a society is everybody's business. If you're playing a good game at it, believe me, it is everybody's business.

Now, the other mistake that we make is that nothing can be done about it. Yeah, an awful lot of things can be done about it. We see somebody sitting there and they look thuuh, you know? We ask them, "What's the matter with you?"

You know, that person would have to be practically psycho in- order to give you any kind of a growl or be offended or anything else. They usually answer you, and they tell you and so forth.

We bump into somebody in a streetcar or on a bus, in a hall, so forth, we don't say anything to them at all. Why not? Somebody talks to us huffily, snaps and snarls a little bit. What I usually do to them is say, "Gee, what did you have for lunch?" Anything to snap them into another communication line.

But there isn't any reason for either ourselves or the society to go on making these errors. Auditing is basically communication. We have the vast, vast advantage today of knowing the formula of communication and knowing what communication can do and how to use communication.

There's one point I would like to make now, is that a lot of auditors penalize themselves on communication by being auditors. Therefore this group, or the group of Scientology, could penalize itself. Because it knows so darn much about communication, it then feels totally responsible at all times for using it in its most optimum state. And this is a rather sorry state of mind, believe me.

This fellow walks all over your toes, you know, and bumps into you and knocks the package out from underneath your arm and so forth, and you want to say to them, "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Instead of that, because you're a good auditor, you figure the guy is pretty badly out of communication and you pat him on the shoulder or something like that. You either don't talk to him or you give him some auditing or something, you know? Liable to do the most remarkable things. Well, this is a kind of a slavery in itself, isn't it? Hm?

Well, let me tell something real funny about this. Although you know optimum communication, even if you know optimum communication — or because you do — not one person present could be sloppy enough in the use of communication to deteriorate this society in any way. Because you know what communication is, you have at once some responsibility for the way you communicate, and to communicate perfectly when you have to. But you also need not assume the total responsibility of always communicating perfectly. This would be irrational, wouldn't it? It'd be . . . (applause)

Now, I want to tell you a little process, just to wind up this lecture — little process. Very germane to this. Very remarkable. You sit down and ask a preclear who is worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry — you just ask him over and over, "Well, what can be done about it?"

And he'll give you the social response: "Nothing."

Ask him again, "What can be done about it? What can be done about it?"

Now, somebody rushes in to you — maybe you're running an office or something of the sort — and they rush in and they say to you, "And the mail all got ruddy-rodded and we didn't put any stamps on it and it went in the mailbox and — ooh!"

And you look at them and you say, "Well . . ." You know that you're perfectly at liberty to say, "Well, you damned fool! Next time I catch you doing anything like that I'm going to fry both of your ears." You're perfectly at liberty to say that.

As a matter of fact, people feel better and that's usually more acceptable when they've pulled a boo-boo than anything else. I know I practically made somebody well one time: I just started — sat down and started insulting him. Found out his level of communication acceptance; it was insults. I said, "You're one of the dirtiest louses I ever met in my life. What a dog."

And the fellow — "(sigh) At last you understand me."

Well, you could just ask this person, "Well, what can be done about it?" or "What can you do about it?"

If you wanted real smart help around you, you'd never solve their problems for them. You'd go on solving the problems on an executive level, but you'd just keep asking them, "Well, what can be done about it? What can you do about it?" Person after a while will sit down and consciously lay out a half a dozen solutions, one right after the other — bang, bang, bang, bang, bang — instead of no solution or just one solution, you know? They could lay out a half a dozen solutions. "What can be done about it?" You've rehabilitated their ability to independently arrive at a solution to a situation, no matter how bad it is.

In the first place, they believe that doing nothing is a solution. And I can tell you from our researches that the one thing that you must not do about things is nothing. No matter what you do, no matter how wrong you are, don't do nothing. That's the most fatal course. Sounds odd, but it's true. To do nothing is fatal.

You know why? It'll even turn off your memory. It pulls you right straight out of the responsibility level and drops you down into ownership and then hide. See? You say, "Well, I can't do anything about it. That's the end of that." And you know, you'll feel terrible, right away.

You run this process on a preclear — ask him things that he doesn't have to change. Now that sounds like a good process, doesn't it? Things he doesn't have to change, he doesn't have to control, he doesn't have to work with, something like this — and he'll just get sadder and sadder and sadder and sadder.

The things wrong with a person who is very hectically worrying about all the things he has to do, is because he doesn't have enough to do. That's all. It's just a scarcity of doingness. That's what's wrong with him.

Well, a scarcity of communicatingness is usually what's wrong with communication. So, when in doubt, communicate.

Now, we used to have in Dianetics a great deal of understanding, and we still do have, of what can be done with words to an unconscious person. Here's this fellow lying there, he's unconscious and we start talking. Nyyaah!

Do you know what's wrong? It's the scarcity of the words in the vast absence of words. We put a few words in this complete vacuum of words and they stick. Do you see that? They become so valuable, he cherishes them so much, that he pulls them straight in with total command value. Doesn't question them at all. And that's how an engram phrase becomes aberrative. There are too few of them, and so each one, to an unconscious person, is a pearl or a diamond, and they hold it — you know communication is real scarce right there.

What he hopes is that he'll get enough communication to run it out. And if you stood there and you said yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, on and on and on and on and on, and quoted the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta and the Volstead Act, you know the person would finally wake up? "Phew!" And if you added a few more and got him out of that state there wouldn't be one phrase you uttered to him that would be aberrative! Give him enough communication and you run it out. Give him a little communication and he'll hold it pressed preciously to his bosom. Now, that's something to know. That's something to know.

So you could say to an auditor who has done a lot of auditing the following process with considerable result, and that's "What could you say to an unconscious person?" He's liable to comm lag on this quite a bit, because he doesn't feel free to talk to people under certain conditions.

Well, a person ought to feel free to talk enough to run anything out and that's how free you ought to feel. Don't inhibit your communication; enlarge it. Don't be upset because somebody's liable to say you are obsessively communicating. Tell them they're obsessively inhibiting!

Just because you know a lot of these things puts a responsibility on you, but just because you know Scientology is no reason or license to stop living. You should be able to live much more fully. But you feel very free to use or not use exactly what you know, to use it as you think it ought to be used, to create the effect you want to create or just to create a random effect. That's a wide license, isn't it? The material is yours. Go ahead and take it.

Thank you.