During these last many PABs, I trust that something has been happening to your own case. I am trying to bring it along on a self-auditing basis. All techniques I have been giving you since we started in these sessions can be self-audited.

You will find, however, as you self-audit things, that a very basic law is at work. This law consists of THE ENTIRE PROCESS OF THOUGHT IS AN EFFORT TO OBSERVE SOMETHING WITHOUT LOOKING AT IT. You will find yourself, if you self-audit, dramatizing this by preferring those techniques which deal with thoughts and concepts rather than those techniques which specialize in looking. Thus, I dare say, you will have avoided doing the Six Steps to Better Beingness and will probably have done Viewpoint Processing in preference. Let me assure you, however, that the Six Steps to Better Beingness are on a higher level than any process which merely processes thoughts.

There is another law involved which explains this matter of not wanting to look which we will take up in PAB No. 12. In this present PAB we will set forth what the thetan is trying to do.

As we have gone forward in Dianetics and Scientology, we have come into possession of more and more significant evaluations of the interrelated factors of life. One of the simplest and yet one of the most significant emergences has been the factor of communications as the most important single factor in the triangle of Affinity Reality-Communication.

This ARC triangle, when I formulated it in Elizabeth in the early summer of 1950, resolved a great many things for auditors, but for the following three years much discussion ensued on the nature of the triangle itself. Generally, though, acceptance of it was swift and glad, for with its use came an understanding of human behavior, and with that triangle the tone scale itself, as it appeared in Science of Survival, was born. The earliest tone scale is in Book One, and is the first chart in that book.

With all the books of philosophers before you, with all the religions of the world to consult, with all the closest scrutiny of Man and his involved behavior, it would still be difficult to guess what the thetan is actually trying to do. Indeed, one would be more prone to believe that the thetan is entirely idle and is not trying to do anything; for, such is the complexity of behavior resulting from the extreme simplicity of the original effort that the entire activity is lost in a maze of complexity.

Communication did not certainly emerge as a more important factor than either Affinity or Reality until the inclusion in the science of new data concerning the physical universe. It then became apparent that communication was, in essence, the shift of a particle from one part of space to another part of space. In its crudest definition, this is communication. It does not matter whether the communication particle is a bullet, a word, a thought or a light particle. It is still communication if it travels from one part of space to another. Not even terminals are necessary in order to establish the existence of a communication, but in the accepted sense of the word, communication is something which emanates from one terminal and travels through space to arrive at another terminal.

The thetan is trying to do something very simple: he is trying to put up mock- ups of his own; that is really all he is trying to do. But in order to do this, he comes in conflict with other thetans and he finds that his effort is complicated to the degree that these thetans, putting mock-ups in front of him, seek to obstruct him, even when they only want these mock-ups admired. Thus the thetan’s activity enters its second step, which is to nullify or divert mock-ups placed before him, which is to say his viewpoint, by other thetans.

To achieve a full understanding of how communication is important, one need only do a very simple exercise to discover that almost any process involving itself with communication is powerfully effective on the mind.

As soon as he enters this activity of trying to destroy or divert mock-ups placed before him, he runs into the first levels of subterfuge. These consist of the various emotions by which people seek to convince him that his activities in shunting their mock-ups aside are very bad. Of course he himself has begun this subterfuge in trying to put up mock-ups of his own. He is trying to convince others that when they destroy his mock-ups, they are doing something very vicious and wicked to him.

If one seats himself in one of two chairs which are set facing each other, and looks at the other empty chair, and then gets up and sits down in the other empty chair, then rises and sits in the first empty chair, then goes and sits in the second empty chair, he will realize that something can happen with this technique, even though no words are spoken and no thoughts thought.

After a few failures in getting mock-ups of his own which persist and failures in destroying or diverting mock-ups which are thrust in front of his face, he conceives the idea of being multiple. He becomes more than one viewpoint or he teams up with other thetans and these, together then, seek to put up mock-ups which persist. These are fought back against by other groups of thetans and so on up the dynamics. This, in effect, is the basic game all of us are playing. This is adequately proven out by processing.

In the most accepted sense of the word, communication expects a return. In other words, a particle going from Point A in space to Point B in space is expected, if Life has anything to do with it, to then of itself, or with an approximation of it, go from Point B back to A again. A complete communication cycle is from Point A in space to Point B, and Point B back to Point A. In order to demonstrate the degree to which this affects human behavior, one need only perform another simple technique.

The field of least certainty is the observation of what others are trying to do to others. This, then, becomes aberrative. One doesn’t quite know what the rest of the world is doing or thinking. And this becomes complicated because others pretend to be the friend of the thetan, only to betray him. As soon as this occurs he begins to watch very closely the behavior of other thetans’ mock-ups in order to gauge what is happening to them so as to prevent things from happening to himself.

One takes two chairs, sitting some few feet apart, facing each other. He sits down in one of the chairs and looks at the empty chair and says, “Why don’t you answer?” He says this aloud to the empty chair. He then gets up and sits down in the empty chair and faces the chair he just vacated and refuses to answer. He gets up again and returns to the first chair, sits down, and says, “You must answer me.” He then removes himself to the second chair, then actually looks at the first chair, then says, “All right. What do you want to know?” He then gets up out of the second chair and goes to the first chair and says, “Are you all right?” He then removes himself to the second chair and says, “Yes, I am all right.” He will experience full relief if he does this.

With these three things — the thetan trying to put up mock-ups of his own which persist, trying to divert the mock-ups of others, and trying to observe what others are doing to others — we have what we call a “bracket” in Scientology.

Almost any computation of this chair act can be worked out, but the one having to do with answering is the most effective. This explains to you why a communication lag on the part of another person can be transferred as an aberration.

The processing of this activity is of the simplest kind. You will find, even on an occluded case, that there is a zone beyond the occlusion where the preclear can put up a mock-up. The worst cases will not be able to see it, but they will know that they have put a mock-up out there. In view of the fact that the basic impulse of the thetan is simply to put a mock-up out there which will move and which will persist, we have as our most certain — if by far not our shortest process — that one given in Self Analysis in Scientology. One simply has the preclear go on putting mock-ups out there until the preclear at length can put them up in excellent order and condition.

We discover, then, that the most basic communication is one which does not have any reason connected with it. It is simply the interchange of a particle from one space to another space, and, preferably, the return of that particle, or a particle like it, to the first position in space.

One can enter this in a little more complex vein and have the preclear receiving before him mock-ups which “others” have put up and destroying these mock-ups. It will be found at first that the preclear has a very hard time destroying mock-ups which so appear before him, even though he himself is putting them there for others. After a while he will be able to divert and destroy these mock-ups at will and his tone will improve as a result.

Any communication is an anchor point. In order to understand the significance of an anchor point, one only has to realize the actual definition of space. For many centuries, in fact, during all of written history, man has not had an accurate, workable, definition of space. This omission is extremely peculiar, because he lives and exists continually in space. Of course, he really avoids space. He would much rather look at a person who is occupying a space, than the space surrounding the person. He is avoiding space to such a degree that he is always trying to work toward something, and is never trying to work toward the gain of nothing, except during some low-toned activity like war.

No matter how much complexity may enter into this, no matter how many lines of thought, how many values of knowledge or evaluations occur, at any given instant the basic impulse of the individual is to create something and maintain it while preventing the mock-ups or creations of others from interfering with his activity. The best test of this process is its workability and it is found that the process is extremely workable.

You can readily establish for yourself the correctness of this definition of space.

Very few auditors have the patience to sit through a couple of hundred hours of Self Analysis in Scientology. They are prone to assign it as homework or to avoid it. However, remember it is the very best process which we have, for it exactly parallels what the thetan is trying to do.

Space is the viewpoint of dimension.

As the auditor processes this on the preclear, the preclear will begin to notice various things, which is to say he will put up three mock-ups, one after the other, and will find that the third mock-up is much weaker than the first one he put up. This is because he believes that the first two have been destroyed and thus his impulse to put up a mock-up is lessening. One alters this simply by having him put up more mock-ups.

In the earlier editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, one discovers under the heading of “Time and Space” a long article which says bluntly that time and space are matters of psychology, not matters of physics. They must be resolved in the field of the human mind before they can be resolved by the physicists. This proves to be true, for with the introduction of space as a viewpoint of dimension, not only human behavior, but many intricate and complex problems in physics fall apart. Like all things worth knowing, this definition is idiotically simple, but tremendously workable. It is workable to the degree that its direct application in processing can produce, with no other aid, a clear.

Additionally, this process feeds energy into an energy-starved bank.

The first application of this definition in the theory of processing is to have the preclear sit in a chair and from “inside himself” reach out to the two upper corners of the room behind him and simply hold on to those corners, without thinking. If he does this for a long period of time, he will simply become better and better. He may have some bad periods while he does this, but nevertheless the technique inevitably results in a better condition. If just this technique and no other technique were used this person, at the end of perhaps fifty or eighty hours, would be in good physical and mental condition, if not a Theta clear.

By using this process in company with the other five steps of Six Steps to Better Beingness and with SOP 8, results are enormously speeded. But remember, whatever else you know, you would be able to make clears simply if you persisted with the process given herein and which is detailed at some length in Self Analysis in Scientology. Perhaps with this understanding and evaluation of what the thetan is trying to do, you may care to go more deeply into this, even on your own case, to using Self Analysis half an hour a day.

In this technique we are putting theory directly into practice. More and more, we are beginning to use these two things as identities. Theory is practice, and that auditor or that instructor who is trying to separate theory from practice is missing a great deal in the science, and is not getting too good results in his practicing.

In essence, holding on to two comers of the room is making space, but again, this is maintaining a condition of communication. One has an anchor point of his own up in each of the two back corners of the room. One can just as well hold all eight corners of the room with an anchor point of his own and his eyes closed. However, this technique is often too vigorous for a preclear. He can also do a total spacation, which is to say, perform Step III of SOP-8.

Change Step 6 (Opposite Poles) of SSSA to be done as follows:

When we understand that communication is a fundamental, and is a first action of space, as well as the first action which takes place in space, we can advance our processing markedly. In the first place, we have an immediate index as to how aberrated our preclear may be. Preclears are aberrated if they have a communication lag.

Get a point before, above, etc. the preclear to say “You will be ridiculed” and have the preclear say “Nothing there.” Then have the preclear say to a point as before “You will be ridiculed” and have the point say “Nothing there.”

They have a communication lag as long as they have no space. In other words, communication lag is inverse to the amount of space a person has. This may sound very technical, but it is only as technical as you care to make it. There is nothing simpler than sitting down and making with eight points a cube of space, and then moving a particle, which you have created, from one point to another point inside the space you have created. In this way, it is possible to understand both space and communication.

In “Wearing Heads” have the preclear put on various heads and have others take them off and hold them away. Then have the preclear take various heads off (mock-up) people and have him hold them away.

Affinity and Reality have taken secondary roles because they are dealing with nothing more than the particle pattern or the number of viewpoints which agree upon the particle pattern. The pattern or velocity of the particle creates the degree of affinity, whether emotion or effort, and the reality depends upon the number of viewpoints which are in agreement upon the pattern of the particle. In both affinity and reality it can be traced that these are secondary to the condition of the existence of a particle and its change in space.

The reason for this change is my observation that everyone suffers from contracted space. This inferred that they were most afraid of expanded space. Expanded space (held out anchor points by others) gives the emotion of ridicule and this change when I tested it on preclears brought the highest tone rise observed for a single quick process. People are afraid of ridicule — they prefer the serious attitude of betrayal. Ridicule includes scorn.

In working Standard Operating Procedure 8 (as given in Issue 16-G of the Journal) one does not have in the seven steps an immediate index of the sanity of the individual. These are steps relating to techniques used at various levels of difficulty with techniques. These are not necessarily an indication of the sanity of a person, even though Number VII is marked “Psychotic” and Number VI “Neurotic.” VII and VI are so marked only to direct the auditor’s attention to the fact that these two techniques are so good that they can be used on any level of case and that he should not use other techniques on psychotic or neurotic people. These definitions of the steps are not to be construed by a preclear, if they are used upon him, to mean that he is psychotic. In order to have a theory of evaluation of cases which matches with the seven steps of SOP-8, it is necessary to move the preclear out of the seven steps and into a step gradient we could call A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

This technique can be employed using brackets and all pronouns.

This step gradient would be the gradient scale of the communication lag of the preclear. This is a direct index of sanity. A, which compares to Step I, would be an almost instantaneous response, and G, at the other end of the gradient scale, would be a lag so long that it did not return. In other words, this is a communication-return index.

In using SOP-8, if one exteriorizes an individual by using Step III, he often finds that the individual’s communication speeds up markedly or slows down. If he is to continue the practice on the preclear while the preclear is exteriorized, then it is necessary for him to re-evaluate the preclear. If the preclear remains at the same communication speed as before being exteriorized, the auditor simply goes on using the same step level which exteriorized the preclear. However, if the communication level of the preclear speeded up markedly, then the auditor shifts from the step which he used to exteriorize the preclear to a higher, faster motion step. If the preclear’s communication lag became greater when exteriorized, then the auditor moves over into the ABCDEFG scale, locates his communication lag, and moves back into SOP-8, using a lower level step such as VI or VII on the preclear, after the preclear has been exteriorized. As communication is the single most important factor today in processing itself, the auditor will do well to regard it as such.