All right. Here we are, lecture two, Saint Hill Special Briefing Course, 1 Nov. AD 12.

Thank you.

I could give you a very masterly lecture now on the subject of truth. Truth. You see, I don’t really feel up to it, but that’s one of these histrionic-type activities-giving lectures on truth. I’ve stated it much better in other times and places; I didn’t keep any notes on what I was saying. It’s very difficult. Go around remembering everything, you know, you get stuck.

When you were building this country, why didn’t you fix up the weather? You know, really, I have my opinion of planet builders that go around designing weather like this, and that sort of thing. There’s a great deal to be said for rain, but it quickly becomes hyperbolical.

It’s very applicable to talk about truth. If one knows anything about missed withholds or really got the idea of what missed withholds are, why, you have to get some grip on this thing called truth.

Well, now tonight, I’ve made notes for lectures, so I probably won’t talk about that. And this is the 1st of November, isn’t it? What year is it?

There was a fellow by the name of Pontius something-or-other; I think he went around washing his hands all the time. He had some kind of a fixation on it. Freudian complex. Before Dianetics. And he asked this „propoundous propunderance“: „What is truth?“ And it was a very good thing that he asked that at that particular time: solved everything.

Audience: AD 12.

But the point here is that truth is a very near ultimate. See, it’s quite close to an absolute in its most severe interpretation. And if you were to say that something is true and not know at the same time the Axiom that absolutes are unobtainable, why, you would fall into the error of putting positives where there existed only maybes; and that is a very, very severe error.

AD 12. All right. Lecture number one.

Ah, there’s been a lot of blokes on the track of one type or another, some of them wearing kimonos and some of them wearing togas and some of them wearing sandals and some of them wearing nothing at all, and these fellows were always going around telling people what truth is. Chaps like Plato and Socrates and fellows of various moment – philosophers, religionists, vast numbers of people – have been peddling a commodity called truth.

This is a brand-new subject to you. It’s an entirely new subject to you. You have never heard of this subject before. In fact, you have never run it or handled it or had it done. I want to recommend, then, this lecture to you very, very seriously. There have been several bulletins out on it, but you apparently haven’t read those. Now, therefore, this is new material here. And I want you to take to heart what I tell you in this lecture.

Well, truth is a relative commodity. And the best approach to truth is contained in a mathematics that you probably will have very little knowledge of and I have very little conversance with-it’s almost pretentious of me to discuss this mathematics-but it happens to be the mathematics which is used to connect up your Telephone switchboards in major cities. It’s how they select out subscribers and so forth; they don’t select them out with arithmetical truth.

And the subject of the lecture is missed withholds. Now, it may surprise you that the first bulletin out on this particular subject of missed withholds is February the 8th, HCOB February 8, 1962, and it’s marked, as a bulletin, “Urgent.” And it says, “The one item Scientologists everywhere must get an even greater reality on is missed withholds and the upsets they cause.” That’s the first paragraph of this. It says, “Every upset with Central Orgs, field auditors, pcs, the lot, is traceable to one or more missed withholds.” That’s what it says. Well, anyhow, on February the 12th, because nobody got it then, I issued another one – rote formulas for missed withholds, and so forth. That’s HCOB February 12th. It’s HOW TO CLEAR WITHHOLDS AND MISSED WITHHOLDS.

Arithmetic is a theoretical truth but only so because there’s no commodity or definiteness connected with it. It is a truth of symbols as long as the symbols remain symbols, and the only errors turn up when people say the symbols mean something and then they get into a great deal of trouble.

Well, they didn’t get it then, so we issued another one on February 22nd. And on February 22nd, 1962, we had WITHHOLDS, MISSED AND PARTIAL, see? And it has a lot to say on that particular subject. And it says, “I don’t know exactly how to get this across to you except to ask you to be brave, squint up your eyes and plunge. I don’t appeal to reason, only to faith at the moment. When you have a reality on this, nothing will shake it and you’ll no longer fail cases or fail in life. But at the moment, it may not seem reasonable, so just try it and do it well and day will dawn at last.” Well, day didn’t dawn. Well….

They say, „Two minus two equals nothing.“ Now, that’s a very true statement as long as it remains totally in the abstract and is not applied to reality. As soon as we say, „Two apples minus two apples equals no apples“-I don’t know, I think this is a pretty good magician’s trick. Let’s look it over.

So, on May the 3rd, 1962, you have the HCOB ARC BREAKS AND MISSED WITHHOLDS, and it says, “How to use this bulletin: When an auditor or student has trouble with an ‘ARC breaky pc’ or no gain, or when an auditor is found to be using freak control methods or processes to ‘keep a pc in-session,’ the HCO Sec, D of T or D of P should just hand a copy of this bulletin to the auditor and make him or her study it and take an HCO Exam on it.

A „no apple“ is a relative thing. What happened to this apple? Well, the chemicals which composed the apple are still intact. I don’t care if it was eaten or boiled or baked or burned or buried, there is still something of an apple.

“After some months of careful observation and test, I can state conclusively that: All ARC breaks stem from missed withholds.

We say, „Well, there’s two apples on the table, so we take two apples off the table and we have no apples on the table.“ Ah, well, that’s true. That’s true, there are no apples on the table-providing time is right. Providing we can accept time as a truth, which I consider rather adventurous, too. Because there were two apples on the table. So we have to say, „If there are two apples on the table and we took two apples off the table, there are now, at this moment of mention-which is coincident with the exact removal of and with no reference to the past or future, and with reference only to this table in this place at this time-no apples.“ Now we’re getting much more positive about this, you see? And yet again, that passes as a truth. Well, it probably is, relatively speaking.

“This is vital technology,” and so forth.

But the idea of saying, „Two apples minus two apples equals no apples“ is very, very adventurous indeed, because nobody – no thetan since the beginning of the world – if an apple existed, ever totally as-ised an apple. It presupposes the total as-isness of something. See, it presupposes the perfect duplication of a somethingness. It presupposes all kinds of magic. And yet in the course of fact digestion, study, all that sort of thing, over the trillennia, we have become accustomed to accepting such things as true.

It says also, “There are no ARC breaks when missed withholds have been cleared up.” And it goes on, technically.

Now, the figure two minus the figure two equals the goose egg, nothing. Well, as long as that is an abstract „think,“ we can say it’s true, but then it’s only true because we have set it up to be true. And the second we write it on the blackboard, we have pieces of chalk now which are representing the symbols. We have the symbols represented by a symbol. There’s a commodity has entered into it and a somethingness has entered into it and it doesn’t go someplace. You ever erase a blackboard? You have to wash it pretty darn hard to get rid of the last problem in arithmetic that was written on it. See, you get all these relative facts, relative truths.

Well, on May the 21st, we have one: MISSED WITHHOLDS, ASKING ABOUT, and so forth, but that’s just a little more data.

Now, the person who adventures out on the road to truth adventures with great desperateness. And I wish to pull a long, gray beard at that particular statement because no statement about truth was ever relatively truer than that one. A person who would adventure on the road to truth is taking a terribly adventurous step, very adventurous. A philosopher who seeks to teach – discover and teach truth, is taking his life in his hands. And that wouldn’t be very important, that he is taking his life in his hands. What is far, far, far more important than that is he is taking in his hands the lives of a great many other people. Therein lies his responsibility. I’m not speaking about me. I’m just speaking about philosophers.

And on June the 28th, 1962, we have DIRTY NEEDLES, HOW TO SMOOTH OUT NEEDLES. There it is, and it talks all about missed withholds and so forth. It’s not obviously and directly on the point, but it does mention withholds, missed withholds, overts and secrets and so forth.

Now, what do I mean by „It’s a very adventurous thing“? What do I mean by that? It’s because that is the only track you have to go the whole way on. There is no short stop on the road to truth. That is the only track that you have to go all the way on. Once you have put your feet upon that road, you have to walk to its end. Otherwise, all manner of difficulties and upsets will beset you.

And on July the 4th we have BULLETIN CHANGES which include missed withholds, and then on July the 12th, 1962, we have MOTIVATORISH CASES and so forth, and that goes on talking about how to get missed withholds out of people.

There is no such thing as a relative philosophical truth which is safe if it does not approach the actual composition of the subject matter it addresses.

And then on August the 13th we talk about ROCK SLAMS AND DIRTY NEEDLES. And there’s some more about missed withholds then.

Now, to be just a little less pedantic about it, you address the subject of this universe in the subject of the physical sciences – the sciences, and you’re going to find that there are many weird things in your path if you are going to simply address it through the savants of the various (quote) sciences (unquote). Heh! The insouciance of these people, you see, to actually use the word „exact science.“ It’s an incredible impudence.

And then on August the 30th, while I was stateside, why, Mary Sue got desperate and issued some bulletins. And of course the first subject that she picked up was missed withhold handling. Well now, that is a lot of bulletins. Let me call to your attention, there’s weight here, man. There’s weight. There’s been a lot said on this subject, see?

You walk into the chemistry department, you find one construction of an atom. There it is; it’ll be sitting up there someplace around the department or the laboratory, and it’ll show you the exact relations of molecules, one to another, in any given element. And there it is; it’s all in model form; it’s put together with wires – and students can go and look at that, and they’re all very fine. And that student will be perfectly all right unless he goes over to the physics department. Because in the physics department they have an entirely different model and that is the same molecule of exactly the same element.

And it’s just about the most important subject in an auditing session and keeping the show on the road, short of actually clearing and helping people, you see, it’s just about the most important subject there is. And there isn’t one here got it. None of you. You haven’t got it. So I’m going to give you a lecture on it.

This is marvelous to behold because these two departments are, each one, departments of „exact science.“ And yet they are very often across the hall from each other. The student gets very confused. He goes into the chemistry department and if he doesn’t say, „The atoms are composed this way, that way and the other way,“ he’s gonna flunk, man! And he goes across the hall and here’s an entirely different model, has no relationship to the first model, and that is the atom of the same element that he’s just been studying. And he’s going to get flunked in physics if he doesn’t say it’s that way! I think that’s very fascinating. These are exact sciences, are they?

And I might as well start this lecture with, “The one item Scientologists everywhere must get an even greater reality on is MISSED WITHHOLDS and the upsets they cause.” Do you see? That’s out of the February 8th bulletin. And “I don’t know exactly how to get this across to you except to ask you to be brave, squint up your eyes and plunge,” on February the 22nd.

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica at the turn of the century, there’s an article there about time and space which is highly informative. A very wise man wrote that article. And he said he didn’t think many people will ever find out very much about time and space until they studied in the field of the mind and got the conceptual basis which preceded time and space. Now, that’s in the Encyclopaedia Britannica at the turn of the century.

Listen. All you’re doing and all you go on doing and all you keep on doing and all you do, endlessly, every time you’re told to pick up a missed withhold, all you do is pick up a withhold. Honest. You’re picking up withholds. I don’t think you have ever picked up a missed withhold off of a pc in any session you’ve ever run. You’ve only picked up withholds.

With that much wisdom confronting them, you would have thought that the exact sciences then would have pursued some interest in where all this came from. But their mud theory got in their road; they got all stuck up with it, you know? And there was that mud theory. And, oddly enough, it isn’t even a new theory. It is found – oh, I think, about three thousand years ago in India, is the origin of our modern, „exact science“ mud theory. And I think it originally was described „and it was mud from there on down.“ They got tired of explaining all this.

You ask the auditor to pick up the missed withholds and the auditor promptly picks up all the withholds. You got the idea? Everybody says this, and I guess it’s because of the semantics of the word missed. It says they’re missed withholds, and by God, they are! Everybody misses them! See?

Now, there are the boys with their exact sciences and their exact truths, and they’re playing with fire. Actually, it may be called „exact science“ to them, but when they start telling people that these are truths, that these are absolutes, and then make a model of the atom one way in the chemistry department, and make it the other way in the physics department, I think it’s time for somebody to decide they didn’t know what they were doing.

You see, it is so pat and it’s so plain to the naked eye that this is what happens: Pc has a withhold, and you haven’t picked it up. So therefore it’s a missed withhold. No! That is wrong.

The world right now is in most of its trouble because of the (quote) advances (unquote) in the field of physics. In the field of physics they know how to blow something up but not how to keep it from blowing up or retard its blowing up at a distance. See, they have all the overt weapons but none of the preventions for those weapons. I consider this very fascinating because before you build an atom bomb, you should have built a sane man. A sane man precedes the structure.

So, when I tell you to pick up the missed withholds, all you’re doing is picking up withholds. You say, “Well, he wants us to pick up the missed withholds, so therefore I better pick up the withholds I’ve missed. So therefore, ‘Do you have a withhold?”’ When sometimes you even say, “Have I ever missed a withhold on you?” “Has anybody missed a withhold on you?” and the pc gratuitously gives you withholds; gives you more withholds and more withholds and more withholds.

Now, you have a subject known as workable truth. If you put glue on one piece of paper, you can make it stick to itself or another piece of paper; and that’s a workable truth. You can use that. Post Office Department uses it to keep stamps on envelopes and – all kinds of uses for this, you see?

No pc has ever given you a missed withhold. I’ll bet you you’ve never picked one up. Now, I may be very harsh on this line, but let’s get down to tacks here, man! Brass, iron and otherwise.

If you dig a hole through a mountain, you can pave the bottom of the hole and cars don’t have to drive over the top of the mountain. Don’t you see? And a whole series of workable truths go into the construction of this tunnel and this roadway.

A missed withhold is a withhold that people nearly found out about but didn’t. And you’re only looking for the nearly found outs. You don’t give a damn what the guy did. You don’t care what the person did. You only want to know what people almost found out!!

Those are workable truths. And this gives the „exact sciences“ (quote) (unquote) a very bloated notion of themselves, because they deal with workable truths.

Honest! I’ve been talking since February, you know? I’m getting hoarse.

Now, in the field of man, the first workable truth that anybody will try to give you is that „Nobody can do nothing about him nohow,“ see? „Nothing can be done about it.“ No truth exists in this field. „Man is an animal based on chemistry.“ Where the hell did that come from? It’s an animism*Maybe a pronouniciantion error and he wanted to say „animalism“. [Note: Next student should listen exactly what LRH is saying.] of some kind or another. It’s some kind of an odd theory or philosophy that grew up in a revulsion against the control by religion of men’s faith.

You see, a withhold is something the pc did. That is something the pc did – do you understand? – that he isn’t talking about. See? He did it and he isn’t talking about it. Now that is a withhold and that is all a withhold is. And please don’t keep saying also it is a missed withhold just because you didn’t get it in a session.

Psychology – psyche-ology – is a study which is peculiarly religious and is entirely and completely so up to 1879 when a fellow by the name of Wundt at Leipzig, Germany, concluded that men were animals and had no psyches. And he has taken off from the point of no psyche as a theory – but just mud – and has gone forward and you have your modern psychology. Don’t let anybody tell you that modern psychology is a product of the physical sciences. Psychology, in general, is totally a product of man’s religion of yesteryear; the only place it’s been taught has been in seminaries. You get 1515, faculty psychology is taught in religious universities. You get Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1200 and something, writing textbooks on the subject and so forth. This was entirely a religious affair.

You see, it’s all very neat. You got it all figured out that if you didn’t get the withhold in a session, why, therefore, it’s a missed withhold. And that’s not what a missed withhold is! A missed withhold has nothing to do with what the pc said. Nothing! Not anything to do with what the pc did and then withheld. It actually hasn’t a damn thing to do with what the pc is withholding.

Well, nobody moved in on it sensibly; somebody moved in on it in a spirit of revolt, just like religion has been blown up here and there down the track, as the years have rolled on, by the advances of the exact sciences, so-called. There had been an awful war in these two things. So the exact sciences have now entrenched themselves in a total falsehood in the field of the mind, at the same time developing a totally unworkable psychology to back up the exact science of blowing up the planet. Isn’t that an interesting area to dead-end?

The missed withhold is something people nearly found out. It’s an other-person action! Look. It’s not the pc’s action! It’s nothing the pc did or is doing! You keep trying to pick up missed withholds by asking the pc what he’s withholding, you never get anything but withholds and then you miss some more of these and you’ve got a pc even further upset.

Well, that gives you some of the liabilities of embarking on the track to truth and not going toward truth.

Look, here are – here are absolute pearls on a silver platter. They’re actually beyond price. And I’ve never got it across to you. A missed withhold has nothing to do with the pc. But nothing! It is an other-person action and the pc’s wonder about it. I just know right now I’m not making any sense to you even this minute. I’ll betcha I’m not making any sense to you.

Now, Buddha – Gautama Siddhartha – nobody should say any hard words about this man, because he told everybody he was just a man, he was trying to set men free and he was trying to help people out and so forth. And all that was perfectly true. And he discovered how to exteriorize without being able to stably exteriorize, without discovering any of the rules or laws of exteriorization, without making it possible for anybody else to exteriorize at will.

It hasn’t a thing to do with what the pc is withholding. Let’s just sever the end off of the “missed.” Let’s forget that it is even a withhold.

How many hundred million people, since twenty-five hundred years ago until now, did Gautama Siddhartha totally condemn to utter and complete slavery by not walking down that road all the way?

You’re looking for exact moments in the lifetime or lifetimes of this pc when somebody almost found out, and he’s never been sure since whether they did or they didn’t. And we don’t care what they almost found out! We only care that they almost found out something! And that is the address to a missed withhold. It’s an other-person-than-the-pc’s action. It’s an other person’s action.

Because that – those half-truths have been used and used and misused and abused and booby-trapped and monkeyed up and so forth. That’s merely because he didn’t go all the way down the road, don’t you see?

I really didn’t realize that I hadn’t gotten it across to you in bulk and in gross form till not too long ago in a catch-as-catch-can session I said to a pc – this pc was going natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, yap, yap, yap. So I just routinely was running a little bit of – I said, “Well, what have you done?” “What have you withheld?” “What have you done?” “What have you withheld?” “What have you done?” “What have you withheld?” “What have you done?” “What have you withheld?” you know, that sort of thing. And got stuck in this area of the track and started saying natter, natter, natter, and natter, natter, natter, and natter, natter, natter, and started giving me withholds and withholds and withholds and withholds out of that area of the track, and withholds and overts and withholds out of that area of the track, and they would have been going yet if I hadn’t – that’s one of the dangerous things is Instructors are actually going to stop you sometimes practically right here. Because once you shove this down the pc’s throat, it looks just like a Q and A. It’s almost in the teeth of the laws about Q and A. You understand?

Now, knowing this sort of thing, it takes a rather brave man to walk in the direction of truth because he knows very definitely that he must go on down the road. If he knows anything at all, he realizes that the traps of existence and the upsets of existence are composed of half-truths, and that all work to amuse or enlighten or something is susceptible to being employed in the field of enslavement.

But the pc isn’t clearing this. You’ve got this thing called a recurring withhold. You understand? You run into these things all the time. You were auditing a pc, so they’re going to run some withholds, and they run the time that they locked their husband out. And you say, “Ha, ha. Thank you very much.”

The slave makers always use it; it serves as the mechanism to trap by the two-way flow, don’t you see? Somebody comes along and want to set everybody free and naturally the reverse flow on it is to trap everybody. One has to recognize this as an action.

And you note down this fact, and a few sessions later, they tell you they locked their husband out, see, and they didn’t tell him that they were the person that had locked him out, you know? Never confessed to it since, and he got pneumonia, and it was all pretty rough.

Well, we take this fellow, Aesop. You’ve heard all about Aesop; you’ve read about the fox and the grapes, and you read about all kinds of Aesop’s fables of one kind or another. Now, I’m sure that you are today a much more moral person, and much better for it.

And so, a few sessions after this, you know, why, you’re running down the track and they tell you they locked their husband out. And a little while later some other auditor is auditing this same pc, and they tell him they locked their husband out.

The only trouble is that the original manuscripts of Aesop were recently located and there’s not a moral in the lot. They are just amusing stories about animals. There is no final lesson in any one of the stories. Every one of those lessons has been added to Aesop’s fables. And we today are accustomed to think of the moral as a sort of an Aesop’s fable thing, you see: he tells a parable and that teaches us to be good. And that wasn’t what Aesop’s fables were; they were simply something to amuse people and lighten the tedious hour. I think it’s quite wonderful. It even enters the field of fairy tales.

Look. Sometime or another, won’t you get tired of hearing the same withhold? Isn’t it boring? It’s like watching a “C” movie that wasn’t very good in the first place for the tenth time. That is a missed withhold.

Now, all of this is extremely – not apparently very pertinent to what you are doing, but in actuality it is, because in the microcosm of a single human being, of the single person, you have the pattern of the macrocosm of the universe. And one could deduce that the universe exists from a series of basic postulates and proceeds on down the line in development from those postulates. You could even spot the goal of gold, the goal of lead. You could even spot the methods of livelihood of quartz, serpentine schist, hornblende, to name some combined elements – the rules of what they do. It’s not that these things are alive at all; it’s that they follow a certain dictated behavior pattern.

Look. It has a very special anatomy: It isn’t the moment they locked the husband out; it isn’t when they withheld it from the husband; it isn’t when they withheld it from you. These things have nothing to do with the reason this is charged up! That it is an overt, that it is a withhold – ahhh, yes. But there’s this special thing called a missed withhold, and it hasn’t got anything to do with either one of them. It merely uses them for fodder to feed on. And the overt and the withhold won’t blow if a missed withhold occurs.

I was sitting looking at a fly this morning while I was eating breakfast. And he washed his face in exactly the way that all flies have washed their face for a long time. And he fixed up his wings in exactly the way flies fix up their wings. And I thought, „I wonder how many hundred trillion scrillion quadrillion flies have washed their face that way.“ And I thought to myself, „By golly, it’s wonderful the way some postulates stick.“

Now, what is the missed withhold? The only thing you have to ask this recurring - withhold pc is “When did your husband nearly find out about it?” Not “When did he find out?” – see, that would have blown – but “When – when did your husband nearly find out about it?”

You get dead matter, the world of insects, lichen, moss, man – it doesn’t matter; you’re actually looking at the same cumulative structure based on certain intentions and dedications. The whole world of chemistry could be reanalyzed on the subject of postulates and intentions. The world of physics could be similarly analyzed.

Now, here’s the actual mechanics of it. A few days later while he was lying there suffering with a fever of 118, why, his eyes opened slittedly and suspiciously and looked at her and glanced toward the lock on the door. Now, that was his action, not hers, see? That was his action. And ever afterwards she hasn’t known whether he knew or didn’t know. Ever afterward! She doesn’t know! And that’s why the recurring withhold hangs up.

Instead of sitting there wondering how many „microjilts“ are supposed to be imposed into the ohm, an electronics man would much better spend his time, if he really wanted to make some progress, in an effort to analyze the pattern of intention which goes up and constructs a certain power behavior. What is this? And if he could grasp that, then he would grasp electricity. But he shirks his duty by the simple reason that the first statement made to him, as he walks into his polytechnic school or as he joined his Boy Scout troop – doesn’t matter where he connects with this stuff called electricity, he always connects with it – and his first postulate on it is „Nobody knows what electricity is.“

Now, I lowered the boom on this pc, and I said, “All right. Fine. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Now, tell me the exact moment you suspected somebody knew what you are telling me.”

And this is said to him as though it means something. I think that’s wonderful. In fact, everybody knows this statement, but exactly what have they said? Analyze what they’ve said. They’ve made a remark. They haven’t said anything. They’ve just remarked something. They haven’t even given anybody any reason why nobody should; they haven’t told you nobody could.

“Ohhhh.” And that was dead easy. It was right there. The whole package blew, and that was that.

They just say nobody knows anything about it. Of course, everybody is willing to agree that everybody is stupid, so they let it ride.

Somebody had made a comment which might or might not have been interpreted as the fact that they knew about it. And the pc goes off in this fantastic confusion. Now, how can it be a confusion? Well, it’s a confusion because there is an overt and there is a withhold. And these are the primary mechanisms which sit back of all this. But they actually aren’t very serious until they get a mystery on top of them.

That’s the craziest thing I ever ran into: „Nobody knows what electricity is.“ I imagine that’s taught that way in Japanese today; I imagine it’s taught that way in Swedish, German, French, Italian, to say nothing of English. It’ll be soon taught that way in Africanese, Ghana-ese, or whatever they talk down there. I can hear it now: „Now, this stuff that goes snap, crackle and pop – you see it here, you know; goes snap, crackle and pop. Well, now, the first thing you should know about this“ – they always say this, you see – “the first thing you should know about this, is that nobody knows what it is.“

Now, you take an overt, a withhold, plus a mystery, and you’ve got a missed withhold. It’s a mystery! Now, did her husband know about it or didn’t he? “Did-did-did he find out – did he re – and – and is he withholding? And is he – did he – as he was lying there in a fever and so forth, did he – he really mean that look toward her and toward the lock of the door as an accusation for having accidentally locked him out in the snow storm? Or did he – did he ever know, or – or – or wasn’t that? Or did it or didn’t it? Did he fi – . No. He couldn’t have known about it. Oh, he – he did – no. No. He couldn’t have. He - he did, but still he looked straight at the lock of the door and he looked at me. He must, I – I – I – I don’t know.”

Well, that effectively keeps one from entering any road of truth; that just puts one in a bracket where he can be shocked, blown up, exploded, fried, where he can run out of batteries, where he can go out in the cold morning and start to start his car and not have one start. The direct and immediate results of this statement are everywhere around us today.

Do you understand this? Now, that is a missed withhold, see? Had nothing whatsoever to do – you can say, “Now, what have you done?”

Well, that isn’t a road that has not been walked down; that is a road that is effectively barred. Everybody is saying by inference that you can’t walk down that road. That’s the wildest thing I ever heard of! And yet people have been telling people they couldn’t find out about truth for a long time.

And she says, “I locked my husband out in the snow and he got sick with pneumonia and he was sick for seventeen months and eighteen days. Lost his pension.”

And the only reason I really make fun of Immanuel Kant is the outrageousness of his premise. I’ve even used some section of it – to my shame, but I’ve really used it – but it’s nice stuff to explain with. You say to somebody, „You don’t have to know – to begin this subject and to look it over and get some result in it – you don’t have to know the totality of everything before you can begin on it.“ You know, in other words, you don’t have to have walked the whole path before you start to walk the whole path. Well, to that degree, „the unknowable“ has some use.

A few sessions later, you say, “All right, rata-ta-tatta-ta-tatta. What have you done?”

But Immanuel Kant didn’t use it that way; he used it entirely differently. He said there was the knowable and there was the unknowable; and he said the unknowable ain’t never gonna be known by nobody. And what I want to know is how did he find out about it?

“Well, I locked my husband out in the snow, and – and he – he got – he got sick, and – and he was sick for eighteen months and eighteen days and he lost his pension.”

And yet people at this minute are sitting in universities in the world listening with reverence and awe to those outrageous words: that there’s an unknowable that nobody will ever know anything about. That’s one to really tangle with, man. It’s outrageous even by philosophic examination. If you can’t ever sense it or experience it or be in time with it or have any clue of its existence, then how do you know it exists to not be known about?

You say, “Good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good. (Maybe if I acknowledge it this time, maybe the pc will find out that I heard it, see?) Good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good, good. Good. Tha – thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I got that. I heard exactly what you said there. I heard exactly what you said. Thank you.”

Now, I think you will find that there is a considerable effort on the part of man, wittingly or unwittingly – aberratedly, certainly – to say that certain roads are closed and that those roads must never be opened. „It is very bad to know about the human mind.“ Well, let me tell you something: if you’re alive, you know something about the human mind. And I’ll tell you what’s dangerous: is never to find out any more about it. That’s dangerous!

Next morning in session you’re running some General O/W, see? “I locked my husband out in…

And man today faces that danger. And in just the last few days – just the last few days – the cobalt 60 was very close to spreading its fallout far and near over the steppes of Russia, and „made in Moscow“ (or its suburbs) was about to be scattered, trademarked on scrap iron, all over America. Because of what? Because it is so dangerous to begin to know anything about the human mind.

Now, of course, that isn’t as comprehensible as some offbeat – because this society is a bit offbeat on the subject of the second dynamic – you get some juicy second dynamic withhold of some kind or another. Get this girl, and she’s making love to a dog, you know? You get this, you know? And then you, the auditor, get pulled right in on this. You say, “Well, of course this is heavily charged! Of course the pc is having trouble getting this off. Of course, of course, of course!”

Now, people recognize that it is dangerous to some degree, but don’t really realize what really is dangerous. Because they know of the existence of something, not to know all about that thing is dangerous. And they are conceiving that they don’t know anything at all about it. And let me propose that to you as the most idiotic premise in the field of the human mind.

Don’t be so damn reasonable. There isn’t any reason why the magnitude of the overt has anything to do with the readiness of its blowing. The magnitude of the overt has nothing to do with the speed of its evaporation. I don’t care if you’ve blown up a husband or a planet. It’s an overt. And it – one doesn’t blow any harder than another.

There’s little Joe Blow down here. And you say, „Do you understand women?“

Well, therefore, we have to ask this question. “How come this doesn’t blow?” Don’t sit there and say, “Well, because the society is rigged the way it is and because so forth, and it’s on her terminal chain, and it’s probably something that rock slams. It’s on the oppterm side, dogs are oppterms, and – and so forth, and I’ll fix that. Actually she is stuck on the se – and that’s why that overt worft blow, see?” Figure, figure, figure, figure, figure, figure, figure, see? That’s why you get this second dynamic overt ten minutes deep in every session, or every third session. Or every Prepcheck, it comes up.

He says, „Hell, no. No man’d ever understand women.“ He says, „You can’t figure them out. One day they’re this way; one day they’re that way.“

Wouldn’t you be a little bit curious why this thing keeps recurring? Well, don’t be so reasonable. It is not recurring because it is badder than other overts, see? It’s not recurring because it weighs heavily on the pc’s conscience. I don’t know where people keep their consciences – lunch boxes or something like that. Obviously, it’s very dangerous to squash a conscience because things are – shouldn’t be kept on the conscience, and so forth. It’s all a very interesting mechanical problem to me, this whole problem of consciousness. Because you see, everything that is on a conscience is unconscious. It’s all confusing. And you can just figure yourself into a grave with this if you don’t know this mechanism.

You ask his wife, and you say, „You understand anything about men?“

One day they had this elderly man and he came to the house for dinner. And he had a rather false smile. He had false teeth, see? And he had – and he had a false smile, and he looked straight at this girl, and he says, “You like dogs, don’t you?” And that’s the missed withhold, see? The pc that you’re auditing didn’t do it. And ever since then: “Did he know? Did he really know? No, he couldn’t have known. Yes, he….”

She said, „Yes, they’re a pipe. You know what they’re doing. You know what it’s all about. Except you never get your way.“

Now, you getting hold of the corner of this thing’s tail, huh?

What are they talking about? What are they talking about? They’re talking about knowing something about somebody’s mind, aren’t they? Somebody’s behavior pattern, aren’t they? In other words, they’re aware of the existence of think, figure, calculate, in other beings. Well, that has already started on the road to research and knowledge in the human mind; and it is very dangerous to go no further.

All right. I – maybe I haven’t been as articulate as I could be.

So where do we get this thing if you embark upon a line of truth as a special action only proposed or done by a few select individuals. No, it’s the shopkeeper and the bus driver and everything else. They’ve all started to know something about it. But it would be very dangerous indeed. In fact, it will cause their deaths not to know any more about it than they do.

Actually, I figured and I figured and I figured and I thought and I looked at it and so forth. And on this demonstration the other night, I actually couldn’t believe it when the pc said, “I never thought you had to remember a specific moment in time to get off a withhold.” Even the pc had missed it, but the thing had evaporated. There was no more natter in that area. There were a whole bunch of overts and a whole bunch of withholds. But this was just pursuant with natter until the exact moment when somebody was standing there – see, this is the moment we had to find – and I said, “All right. Let’s look for it. This is the exact moment I want, see?” Pc is just going off answering questions, answering questions, getting noplace, see? I say, “This is the exact moment I want. Who almost found out you were doing that?”

I mean, that’s such an acceptable fact to you, it doesn’t even seem to be a startling fact. Not knowing any more about the mind than they do will bring about their demise. They will die from this! Everybody says, „Yes, of course.“ You see how accepted it is? And yet it’s quite a startling fact. They’re going to get an ultimate extinction through starting upon this stupid line.

“Oh, well.”

But let’s take a specialized case where a group of individuals decide to go for broke on the subject of knowing about the human mind. They’re going to make a clean break; they’re going to go through this, and they’re going to go down the line, and they’re going to know all about this, and somebody amongst them is going to tear the answers up left and right, and dig them out from underneath this and that and the other thing, and they’re really going to make some progress along that line. Listen, the more they know, the less dangerous it is.

And we picked up this exact split instant in time and it was just somebody making a casual remark that it indicated that they might know about these overts. You get the idea? They might know. But they didn’t. But did they? See, there’s the mystery sandwich.

The really dangerous entrance point is to suppose that people think, and know nothing more about it than that. That’s dangerous! Not to walk off that point further in the direction of truth, is a dangerous action.

If you want to see what is sticking a pc to something, always look for the mystery sandwich. Mystery is the glue which sticks thetans to things. Mystery is the glue. Even overts wind up in mystery. You shoot somebody. Now you don’t know whether you shot him or you didn’t shoot him or if it was a lucky shot or you should have shot him or if he was a bad man, or if, if, if, if, if, if, if, or if you should have done it. So it’s the “if you should have done it” which causes you to pull back the withhold and sort of withhold a further action like that.

But any philosopher who singles himself out, or any engineer or any research person who singles himself out as the person who is going to be spotted as the person who is walking that track – now, that becomes very, very dangerous if this person doesn’t walk the whole track. See, that’s selectively dangerous. You share in some of that dangerousness.

All things boil down to right conduct. Here is the crux of this situation. If you go on asking the pc, who doesn’t understand what you’re asking for, “Have I missed a withhold on you?” or “Have we missed a withhold on you?” and the pc is glibly giving you withholds, you ain’t gettin’ noplace. You is on the Arkansas Special with its wheels locked, its brakes on and the rails torn up. You’re not going down any track anyplace.

It’s been so booby-trapped that everything is very suspicious of anything being known, because people who have jumped up and said something is known, have very often lied. Now, if they have pretended to know more than other people on this subject, they have then committed overts. And if they have then turned up some little piece of bric-a-brac and have never gotten any further than that, but spread this bric-a-brac in all directions as „the true wisdom,“ they have committed the overt of committing perhaps millions or billions of human beings to slavery. And I think that’s a considerable overt.

Now, you can take the edge off of a case. I salute the fantastic workability of General O/W, you see? See, it is – it’s the woof and warp of the GPM itself And it’s right on down the line. That’s why it’s totally unlimited in the amount of run it can have. But I don’t think you’d like to run out a GPM with General O/W. You’re perfectly welcome to try if you’ve got a few centuries. Numerically, to count up the number of withholds that the person has, pursuant to the number of overts which they have committed, gives us some figure that if we were to write it up on the wall behind me in very tiny figures, starting at that corner and then just keep on writing across the whole top of the wall with groups of three zeros, you see, and then without ending the number, come just down below it and start right straight across the wall again, and then come down another quarter of an inch and start writing zeros there, you’d get some kind of an idea of what this guy has done and withheld.

So there’s no substitute for walking the track. You’ve got to go on down that road, particularly in a spot such as mine. You got to bring this off, man.

Well, that many answers is not necessary to clear somebody. So although the overt is very powerful in its ability to aberrate the individual – the withhold which follows it is locked up by the overt itself, of course – and although this mechanism is the mechanism underlying the gathering up of energies which results in solid-mass terminals and gives you the game in the first place (see, the whole anatomy of a game is O/W).

Now, there’s never been any doubt in my mind about bringing off this particular study. This is not something I have engaged in any doubts about.

In spite of all that, why, you don’t have time and the pc doesn’t have enough body years to run out all those overts, even if you could keep him in-session that long, even if he could spot them all that long. And you don’t even have time to run them out for one lifetime. How do you like that? And you haven’t got time to sit around watching a pc’s dirty needle go bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, and try to settle it with General O/W. Recurring withholds will result.

I’ve sometimes wondered whether or not the time factor wouldn’t upset things, because we also have another time factor involved over here called a „world situation“ and I’ve needed a few clear years, and that has sometimes worried me a little bit.

General O/W, of course, is enough to straighten out the thing and get the session running, and all that sort of thing – a very valuable process; don’t think I’m running it down. I’m just going to say it’s too lengthy for that sort of thing.

But the fait accompli was pretty easy to envision, because we’d already made the seven-league boot strides necessary to put us way on down the track toward the end of track anyway.

And when I tell you to pick up somebody’s missed withholds, I want you to pick up another person’s action and not the pc’s action. And it’s best characterized as “nearly found out.” Don’t ask the pc for a missed withhold because he obviously, I have learned lately, he doesn’t know any more of what I’ve been talking about than you have. See, you’d have to explain the whole anatomy to him. So there’s got to be a better thing, see?

But now, if you have a reputation for knowing, you enter into a mechanism known as the missed withhold. And as you go down this track, separate from and distinct from your fellows, as being one specially gifted in the subject of knowing about the mind, you have entered into, now, a peculiar liability that has nothing to do with the reaction or liability for simply treading the track of truth. That has nothing to do with that. This is a reputational action. People think that you know the truth and to them the only truth that exists is themselves. It’s a first dynamic truth; their conception of truth is their own aberrations, misdeeds and ideas of right or wrong conduct.

It – “What did we almost find out about you?” It’s got to be that “almost.” It’s got to be “might have.” It’s got to be some conditional word. And then you will see a case suddenly go spoing! nyyow! and pick up the – a funniest, funniest series of disrelated incidents that case had never looked at before, never had anything to do with it before. You’ll see the tone arm do peculiar things and the needle do peculiar things that you’ve never seen it do on O/W because you’re running a different track. You’re running the “almost discovered” track.

Now, every philosopher has more or less been engaged upon a selection of ideas of rightness of conduct and wrongness of conduct. Particularly the Oriental philosopher has been engaged upon this point. It is totally missing and totally absent from the Western philosopher. He doesn’t much talk about the rightness of conduct. He talks about behavior patterns and he talks about social sciences, and he talks about other things. He doesn’t even talk about ethnology; this is an almost unknown commodity to him except as he applies this, maybe, to some savage race down on the banks of the Bongo-Bungo. He doesn’t realize that ethnology is equally applicable to a savage race living on the banks of Forty-second Street. He actually doesn’t approach this subject very closely. He talks about behaviors and he wants to get away from this.

Now let me give you an example. Once upon a time I was up in the wilderness and wilds of Montana, and for some reason or other, a wolf, gray timber wolf, showed up and I shot a bullet over his head. I don’t know just exactly why I shot at him because I never have any trouble with animals. I was very young at the time. And he heard this bullet go by over his head and he reached up and he snapped at the place where the bullet had been. And he decided to come my way. It upset him to be missed.

Well, one of the reasons he wants to get away from this is he’s totally blind to the possibility that there could be an exact right conduct. See, he speaks of a behavior pattern, not a rightness of conduct, whereas the Oriental philosopher, wishing to lead people in the direction of better ways and that sort of thing – Lao-tse, Confucius, particularly – these chaps are fixated on the idea of right conduct: the right conduct and the wrong conduct.

Honest, you never quite see anybody quite so upset as somebody who has been just barely missed. Look at a pedestrian who was not hit. The examinations flunks which you’re most upset about were those which you passed all except for the last half of the last question. See? That’s the nearness of the miss. In other words, missing things upsets things. It’s a misestimation of effort or thought or something of the sort.

And it’s to a point where, in Japan, if you drink out of the wrong side of the tea bowl, you know, you’ve practically had it; you’re socially ostracized. There’s another island country where if you don’t cross your knife and fork in an exact way in the middle of your plate, nobody ever invites you to dinner again. These are rightness and wrongness of conduct, and it’s adjudicated in those particular ways.

Now, a thetan’s main attention is on estimation of effort, estimation of thought, estimation of look. He wants to know how much look is a look and so forth, and his certainties are all based on proper estimation of how much look is a look and all that sort of thing. See, just look at your Know to Mystery Scale, you see? How much knowledge is knowingness, see? That’s an estimation. University is very simple. University hands you an old school tie, and you now know that you have the knowledge necessary, see? You can wave a pennant with your right hand so many motions to the left under the sis-boom-bah, and you’re all set in life. That’s how much knowledge, you see, is necessary to be knowledge. So that’s an estimation of knowledge.

The crux of the situation is that all considerations of behavior, all considerations of the O/W mechanism, are primarily based on ideas of right and wrong conduct. Back of the O/W mechanism is the idea that right conduct can exist. This is the only saving grace of the human race or of any race of beings. It’s a rather touching thing if you get down and think about it: the idea that right conduct can exist. It’s quite remarkable.

Now, you can go right on down the scale and how much emotion does it take to be emotional? How much emotion is emotional? Well, you get lots of answers to that: enough to create an effect on somebody. If you’re a TV actress, it’s very simple: enough to please the sponsor. You can go on down and take another one at random. What is a proper symbol? How proper is a symbol when it is a symbol, see?

Of course, right conduct according to whom? It’s the group mores, your survival factors are put together on this. Your Polynesian with his taboos was trying to maintain a very compact population in an area that raised very little food and therefore was incapable of supporting overpopulations and so forth, so he invented a taboo system, and he made a whole series of rightnesses of conduct. Actually, survival is your monitoring factor of rightness of conduct.

Well, you can estimate everything, except “How much mystery is a mystery?” And of course that’s a mystery. You’re into the no-estimation-of-effort band. No estimation of the think, no estimation of anything; it’s all mysterious. You don’t know. The not-knowingness of it all is what is upsetting.

But it is not that an individual acts for his self-preservation and commits overts because of his self-preservation. That is too direct a look. He commits overts because of survival. It is his rightness of conduct, see? It’s a slightly split-hair difference, if you follow the thing.

But now you take a not-knowingness which is probably known and play it both ways. Now, they knew but they didn’t or couldn’t have known, and you knew that they knew but you know they didn’t know.

The behaviorist would try to tell you that it was – he is a – there is a school of activity known as behaviorism; I didn’t refer to that. They try to say that it is totally and only and always a first dynamic existence, and therefore it isn’t survival, it’s self-preservation. And by this, they miss the whole boat. They don’t even put their foot on the gangplank. They hardly even walk up to the right dock, you know, and they go right on off into the river. No boat there. Never intended to be one there, either. I mean, that’s really missing the boat. Because right conduct is always a group activity and is never an individual activity.

Now let’s just get the four-way flows on a not-know and you’ve got a missed withhold. And it’s very painful to a thetan. So I really don’t blame you for avoiding it like a plague.

No matter how much the individual speaks about integrity to himself, it breaks down eventually into a group activity because his ideas of his own rightness of conduct are based on the group to which he belongs.

See, the fellow walks up to the girl and he smiles and he looks at her in a sort of a false smile and he says, “Well, little girl, I understand you like dogs.” Well, right away, her concept of him is – is “Did he know? Didn’t he know? He couldn’t have known,” she thinks to herself. “He must know.” But then complicated in to this is the fact that he looks like he knows but he hasn’t said enough to indicate that he did know, so he doesn’t know. It’s strictly ding, ding, ding, here comes the wagon, you know? Strictly. This is the stuff out of which insanity gets made, see?

So we get the third dynamic aberration of right conduct as underlying all O/W, underlying even missed withholds. The only thing senior to it is the pure, pure mechanics of existence: There is a thetan and a thetan does these things, you see? Your very early Axioms are quite unrelative as truths. They’re just about as close to truths as anybody will ever be able to push it, see? They’re right up there pushing the Axiom „absolutes are unobtainable“ so close that there is hardly any distinguishing it at all.

It’s a can’t reach, not reach, must reach situation, and so forth, in the effort band. When you get insanity in the mystery band, it’s a “did know, but didn’t know, but mustn’t know,” you see? But he must know, but he mustn’t know, you see, and it’s the sort of reach and withdraw, only it’s not a mechanical thing. And there it is and it’s just pure mystery mucilage. And a thetan will stick right to it, man. Now, in trying to pull off the overt and the withhold in the presence of something that has a missed withhold on it does not accomplish an as-isness of the section of track in which the pc is stuck. Because the pc is not stuck with the overt and is not stuck with the withhold; the pc is stuck with the “almost found out.” So, of course, nothing as-ises and you get a recurring withhold, see, because he isn’t looking at that section of track where he did it or where he’s withholding it. He’s only looking at that section of track where it was almost found out. And you ask him for what he did and what he withheld, you don’t as-is the section of track he’s stuck in. So therefore, it just perpetuates itself and goes on forever.

But the aberrations which he then engages upon are his efforts to discover right conduct: What is right conduct in self? What is right conduct in others? What is wrong conduct in self? What is wrong conduct in others? And, of course, from lifetime to lifetime he lives in different groups and his sets of mores change and change and change and change.

And if you want to see something very remarkable in a pc, just very remarkable in a pc, just sit down in apropos of nothing, after you’ve got the pc in-session and so forth, just start running in any command sequence, “Well, just get the idea of nearly being found out.” See, it has to be nearly being found out, see? “Get the idea of somebody nearly finding out about you.” “Get the idea of you nearly finding out about another” – that’s an unnecessary leg to the thing, but you could make it up – and the next thing, more track would be going by that this person had never heard of before. Didn’t matter what else you’d run. That’s got a brand-new track area. They’ve never seen this track before and it’s been with them all the time. It’s what’s stuck out in front of their noses. Directly in front of their noses.

So there is no road to truth on the subject of right conduct. You just study nothing but what is right conduct and then take what the group says is right conduct and you’re not going to wind up with truth.

I could just ask you at this exact instant to “Recall a time you were nearly found out.” Now go ahead, think of a time you were nearly found out.

Now, if you realize that it’s a search for right conduct and an effort to adhere to codes of right conduct and breaking of codes of right conduct, which then bring about the aberrated condition, then you are walking a road to truth.

Having any trouble finding this time you were nearly found out?

Now, let’s get this subtle difference; it’s quite important to thee and me. Borrowing liberally from the Book of the Winds and Book of Changes and so forth: Confucius, he say, „Young man who support elderly parents, he good man,“ see? Well, that’s perfectly all right, right up to the moment when somebody says, „This is truth,“ because this is not truth! This is only a species of right conduct; it’s only a belief of right conduct. In other words, it’s actually an entrance of arbitraries into conduct. And therefore, if the entrance of arbitraries can be considered truth, I think we’ve all had it.

Well, I shouldn’t think so because that’s the bulk of the stuff in front of your schnozzola. Most people can’t even find an engram, merely because there are so many missed withholds in front of their faces. They can’t get any clear view of anything, because they got missed withholds in front of their faces.

That would make all the laws passed by the US government, the English government, the Chinese government, true.

“Did they really know or didn’t they? Was I actually discovered at that time or wasn’t I?” See, that is the question.

Particularly today, the US government is always trying to legislate truth into existence. I think it’s the most marvelous activity; highly complimentary. I mean, fellows trying to lift elephants with their little finger should always be patted on the back and so forth. But I think it should also be pointed out to them that those elephants are a little heavier than the stress-analysis structure of the small finger.

“Who has nearly known about you?” Think that over for a while, you’ll come up with people you have been leery of or felt nervous around.

They’re always trying to say their laws are true. They no longer consult the customs of the people in order to pass their cotton-picking laws. And man, how crazy can you get? Where are you going to go for law? Because any law professor I ever had that was worth his salt and was a good Joe always made this practically his first point: Laws are evolved from customs of the people and are eventually solidified in the form of Legislation and become a law of the land. A law which does not so progress either operates as a total tyranny or is totally unenforceable.

And when I tell you to pick up somebody’s missed withholds on Scientology, I don’t want you to pick up the overts that they have been withholding. See? I couldn’t care less about these overts, don’t you see, that they have been withholding. That they have been withholding them, oh, all right, so they have been withholding them. You can get TA action by finding all the things the fellow has been withholding. That’s good. That’s fine. But this is a junior action. That would be asking you to run General O/W on a pc. That’d have nothing to do with missed withholds.

You want to know what’s a tyrannical law or a law you can’t enforce? It’s a law that doesn’t evolve from the customs and mores of the people. That’s unenforceable. Can give you numerous examples of this sort of thing. Prohibition: Somebody came along and said, „It’s evil to drink.“ I don’t know what the population of the United States was at that time; must have been upwards to a hundred million people. And there were only a few of them who agreed with that. They waited till some ten million men were in uniform, or something like that – or maybe it wasn’t that many – and couldn’t vote at that particular time, and then they passed this law into existence. And these fellows came home and found out that it was illegal to drink and they didn’t agree with this.

Now, when I ask you to find out something about missed withholds, get this pc’s missed withholds. Don’t you dare come up with any withholds. Just don’t you dare! I want the name, rank and serial number of the person who missed it. God, I couldn’t care less what was missed. You understand? I don’t want the pc’s actions, I want the pc’s guesses about the other guy, see? That’s what I’m asking you to find out.

So Prohibition was a mockery. I don’t know how many lives it cost, how much revenue it cost, how much property it destroyed and so forth, and finally even the great and mighty government threw in its sponge – said, „Lap it up; we can’t do a thing about it.“

Now, this is very arduous to run, because sometimes you actually have to bear down on it if your command has not been sufficiently explicit. You have to direct the pc’s attention rather heavily. Let’s say you’ve run a lot of O/W and so forth. Well now, you think you’ve got this all licked, you see? This person has been taking things from their company, you see? And you’ve run this – and they’re taking things from their company and stealing them, actually, and you think you got it all licked. You’ve got the number of fountain pens and the number of stenographers, and all these things they’ve stolen from their company, you see? And you think you’ve got a tabulated list now and you say, “Well, that cured it” and so forth, and next week, why, they take a typewriter.

In other words, not the whole Army, Navy, Coast Guard and everything else – nobody could enforce this thing. Nobody. It wasn’t borne out of the customs of the people. In other words, it went straight in the teeth of what people considered as right conduct. In those days, if a man was a man he held his liquor. What if there was no liquor to hold? He had no definition for a man. In other words, you just pull the rug out, man. Pull the rug out.

There’s something missing here, something – something went wrong. You got all of the overts, and you got the fact they were withholding it. They’re not now withholding because they told you – see, there’s the rationale. And so therefore it’s now all hunky-dory, and so they go back and steal a typewriter and the week after steal the boss’s secretary, see? They’re still nervous about the company. The person is not in a forgive – or – forget mood about the company. See, that’s because they’ve gotten off these overts, why, you have a feeling, and your feeling is quite right by the way – you’re not totally stupid – your feeling is quite right when you suppose that after they’ve gotten this straightened out in their mind they’ll feel all right about the company. And they very often don’t. They feel propitiative or they feel sort of guilty, or they feel some other weird misemotional way about the target of these overts and withholds, and you don’t feel this is right. And so you keep plunging and asking for something else they did. And if there’s anything guaranteed to drive the pc round the bend, it’s after he has told you everything he has did, you insist there must be something else the pc has did – did. You’re in essence cleaning a clean, see?

Well, this concerns you very vitally. At a very – I very seldom talk to you at a high level of theory – but actually does concern you considerably. It does, because all around you, people are determining truth from what people say right conduct is. See, they say, „Well, you’re supposed to do this and supposed to do that and supposed-to’s, supposed-to’s, supposed-to’s, and these things are true.“

Now, actually, because you sense that this pc is still a little bit “mnyah” about the company, why, then you assume there must have been some other overt. Well, he can always dig up another one or two, or something like this, and the basic on the chain, and… And the trouble is you so often have a near win on this that you really never get your win. You sort of quit eating just before dessert.

I’ll give you one of these data – one of these data that’s very, very interesting – a datum concerning kleptomaniacs, developed in the field of psychoanalysis. „When a kleptomaniac can’t steal anything, he always burns down the house.“ That’s a scientific datum in psychoanalysis. You think I’m joking, you know. I never actually throw a total punch in this particular line till I can get these textbooks and open them up and start actually reading them at random.

And there was a lot of people that were with us in 50, 51, that sort of thing, are starting to write me now and they’re starting to get in contact again and that sort of thing.

You want to really have a ball sometime, get somebody like Karen Horney, textbook, and sit down with four or five – well, fairly sensible blokes of some kind or another, and just start reading them, with a straight face, from any point in the book forward. Anything I’ve ever said in the field just turns pale. You see, I’m a moderate in this line; I don’t like to exaggerate. But they wont believe you. If you sit there with your face toward them, the back of the book toward them, and actually just read out of the textbook, they will not believe that you are reading the latest and best school of psychoanalysis. They’ll think you’re pulling jokes. They’ll think it’s just nothing but solid gag from one paragraph to the next.

I just sort of laugh rather raucously, by the way. The last one that did, I said he quit before dessert, you know? I’d realized after I had mailed the letter that I had missed a wonderful sort of an epigrammatic sort of thing that he deserted before the dessert, you know, but it’s – that’s what you’re denying yourself You’re denying yourself a forkful of strawberries and cream, see? You quit with the gravy and mashed potatoes, you know? There’s still one more course.

I finally one day saw an engineer – to a group of engineers that were being treated in this fashion – actually, just in a rage, get up and go around back of the fellow who was reading it aloud, and jerk the book out of his hands. And he didn’t even want to read it! And that engineer that pulled the book out of his hands had to actually be forcefully held up against the wall and the book had to be shown to him, and that the person in that chair was actually reading exactly what was in that textbook on the subject of psychoanalysis. And when he did, at that moment the engineer, for the first time in his life, realized there wasn’t a science of the human mind extant on the planet. Up to that time the reason he paid no attention to Dianetics and Scientology: he thought there was a science of the mind.

So, he stole a typewriter, and he stole an eraser, and he did this, and he withheld it from this person, he withheld it from that person, and he stole the boss’s secretary, and he goes so, and yes, all fine. Yes. And he’s withheld it all these years, and now you know about it, and that’s fine.

Now, that’s one of the primary things that you run into. People have a whole bunch of data over here which are what they’re supposed to do, and these are right conduct – and that to them is truth – and what you’re not supposed to do.

And he’s sort of still kind of blowy and sort of nattery about the company a little bit. A week or so later, you see him; he really doesn’t feel good about the company, and so forth. Well, you just quit before the dessert was served, that’s all. You’ve got to find out who nearly discovered this, when and how often? And he’ll give you exact split instants. Now. Now. Now. Now. All of a sudden he goes “Uu-huugh-coooo. I should say so. Ohhhh!”

For instance, the law defines sanity as the ability to tell right from wrong. I consider this marvelous. In what land? Well, don’t ever try a Zulu in an English court. And don’t ever try to try an Englishman in a Zulu court. Because there’s going to be some things messed up, going to be some withholds missed.

See, the idea is you’ve gotten off all the overts, you’ve gotten off all the withholds, and he still doesn’t like the Materiel Executive. Got the idea? He still feels a little peculiar in some parts of the organization. You see, you really didn’t clean it up. Because the key-in – the bullet that passed almost into his ear but not quite, you know, just fanned air – was one day the Materiel Executive stepped out of the back door putting an inventory sheet in his pocket and looked at him rather frowningly and went on by into his office. Like somebody who has been in a hotel that has thin rooms and floors, you know, and the guy upstairs drops one shoe, you see? Five o’clock in the morning, he’s still waiting there for the other shoe, you see?

Now, here’s your peril (your period of peril is past, to be alliterative): It was over a period of time as to whether or not – taking you as a unit of truth – you, individually, could have your state of understanding of yourself and those around you materially improved by study and processing. Now, if anybody will sit still long enough and if the auditor will do the right things at the right time, why, this is going to happen today; this is going to happen.

Next action, you see, never proceeds from this point. We have started a piece of time track here which doesn’t go anyplace. Next action is he’s – you see, he’s doing all this quite reactively, and it’s down underneath the surface of analysis, you know? I mean, at the surface of his analytical processes. And he saw the fellow do this, and he knew it made him nervous, and he goes back in, and he doesn’t want to have the phone ring. Because he knows what’s now going to happen, you see? If the fellow did know, this is what’s going to happen: You see, the phone is going to ring, and he’s going to be sent for by one of the directors of the company, and then one of two things will happen. They will either hand him the pink slip, or there will be a policeman standing there, see? And then there’s two choices that come out of that, and if it’s the policeman, that’s got one choice, you see? And you get a big dramatic sequence about the trial, you see, and he has to have all of the bad things the company did to him, and how it’s actually one of the junior directors trying to cover up. See, he’s got to have all the whole story manufactured for this, but is there any reason to manufacture the story? Did the Materiel Executive really know? See?

You could also carry it out to very nearly an ultimate, very close to it. You can get the fellow back to a point of his total realization and recognition of exactly what he has done and where he has gone – in other words, clearing – and exactly how he’s done it, and how it formed up, and so forth. And if you were to take raw meat and push them up to a three - or four-goal Clear, why, they might not tell you for other people, they might not be able to articulate it (which is the main trick, after all), but you hand them a book of Axioms and they say at that time, „Of course. What are you showing me these for?“ Or „Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, yes, of course, of course. That. Oh, yes, yes. That, right. Of course, naturally. Yeah, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s – of course. Yeah, that’s pretty good.“ And mostly what they’re saying is „pretty good“ is „That’s fairly well stated. Yes, I’d say the same myself if I could.“ All they’re doing really is expressing some kind of an agreement. You’re not teaching them anything, because they now have a subjective reality on it.

Here we’ve got the track that goes nowhere, don’t you see? And it could develop into track, but is it going to develop into track or isn’t it going to develop into track? Here’s where this thing – just as far as time is concerned, it becomes a mystery sandwich and there’s no time in it because those events don’t take place. So therefore, there is no time track for it so the – which hangs it. It’s not spotted in time. It doesn’t fire off right, don’t you see? There’s nothing goes right about it at all because this isn’t any estimation of it. You can’t figure out what you would do because it didn’t happen. You can’t figure out what you would have said because nobody said it. You can’t figure out what explanation was the right explanation because you never had to explain it. You see? But you should have explained it, but you didn’t. So there’s just nothing known and you just get this terrific area of just total – it’s not even hardly a positive-negative. It’s just 1haah. And that’s a missed withhold.

We’ve got a reverse-end look on this thing and we’re starting at the point which is hardest to start, as everybody is stupid as hell on the subject, see? And originally and basically that included me, see? So you see where we have went to.

And the missed withhold depends on the other guy – the accidental action of another person.

Now, we are essentially in the business of individuals and you must never forget that. On the road to truth, you are in the business of individuals. I could give you a long and tiradious lecture on the subject of the third dynamic and how it gets loused up, but I don’t think it’d serve anybody’s purpose. Just let me say en passant that most organizations, as they exist on Earth today, exist, in their first instant of genus, on the fact that they could not handle an individual, one individual. The failure to handle that one individual then brought about, not their demise, but their construction.

Sometimes it’ll be a piece of paper, or something like that. He’s sitting there. He’s sitting there in conference and he suddenly notices that just showing in the boss’s in-basket is a memorandum with his own name just showing above the covering pieces of paper. That conference is ruined for him. You see, he never has another thing to say during the whole conference. He sort of sits there and sweats, you know? But he really doesn’t quite realize what he’s sweating about. You see, there’s his name on a memorandum. He doesn’t know what the memorandum is about except that it concerns him in some way and he can’t see what the subject of it is, do you see?

All organizations on this planet today can be evolved from the first moment of failure to handle one individual. They couldn’t handle him, they couldn’t understand him, they couldn’t reach him, they couldn’t help him, they couldn’t solve his problems, and so they set up an organization to do it. That organization directly and immediately evolves from the failure to handle that individual.

Now actually, three people are standing together in the hall, you come by and they shut up. There’s a very good missed withhold situation. If that was preceded by an overt which the person wasn’t telling anybody about, if that was the morning after the high-school girl’s first raw escapade – see, the truth of the matter is that they probably had their mouths full of candy and couldn’t talk when they went by. But then one never really knows what the truth is, you see? No, there’s no truth contained in any of it. It’s just one huge glob of mystery. And that is a missed withhold.

Now, this doesn’t tell you that this is true of all third dynamic activities. This only says „Earth,“ and this only says „aberrated third dynamic activities.“ But it’s an inversion. You’re on the lower scale. You’re way below the first dynamic. They couldn’t handle the first dynamic, so they developed an organization not to do it.

It’s a “should have known” as it has been described, but you will pick it up and be able to relay it much more ably if you call it a “nearly found out.” It’s a nearly known, see? Nearly found out.

Oh, I’ll give you an idea. An organization tends to grow up even around me, to this degree. Yet we’re the one organization or the one activity on this planet at this time that doesn’t follow this. But it gets pulled in toward it every now and then, as you – every one of you – know, to your experience. At some time or another, an organization in Scientology has not given you an answer or sent you a book or done something or served your needs at that particular moment or purpose. See? Well, it’s all based on this thing. It’s just not enough MEST or time or space or speed or something of the sort, in order to have delivered that service. But we are the only group that would be capable of doing it and that do succeed in it. We are handling the individual.

Now, if you wished to clear up somebody’s missed withholds on Scientology and you said, “What have we failed to find out about you?” he would give you a whole string of withholds. And this would then go no place, see? No. You want another word, and this will clarify it to you and this will clarify it to the pc and everybody will be as happy as clambakes. Now, “What have we nearly found out about you and when did we nearly find it out?” comes much closer in to what you want, see?

And you will never, in your whole history, handle more than an individual. I don’t care what you’re trying to handle or if you’ve set up a government for the planet. You will only be handling one individual; not one individual multiplied many times. Russia shoots individual and loves the masses. I think that’s quite marvelous. How did they get that way? Well, it’s a total aberration on the subject. You follow what I’m saying now?

See ‘ you want to know what. Well, he’s not likely to give you the rest of it until he has identified, to some degree, what. See, “Well, my escapades with young boys,” see, or something like this, see, or wild women or something, see? “That’s what you failed to find out about me,” you see? That’s what he kind of answers. “What did we nearly find out about you?” “My escapades with wild women,” see? Oddly enough, that doesn’t clarify the situation at all. That doesn’t make him like you any better, or anybody else. That doesn’t keep him from getting ARC breaks. You’ve got to follow it up with a second question. Now you’ve got the missed withhold, see? You’ve merely identified what the missed withhold was about. You haven’t got the missed withhold. Takes some additional step. All right.

Now, you can do this if everything you do do, does serve the individual, individually and peculiarly tailored to his needs so that he is not overlooked in the process. But you set up an eddy and an upset every time you have failed to handle one individual. You handle one individual and everything is fine; and you handle – you fail to handle an individual and you will set up an organization to try to do it. You’ll set up all kinds of things to try to do it! You’ll set up all kinds of brutal laws and jurisprudence and everything else to try to do it! Where you have failed to handle an individual, you will set up all sorts of O/W.

“When did we nearly find out about it?” Now you could follow that through a little bit further if it wasn’t blowing well with “who?” you see? “Who nearly found out about it?” “When was that?” You get the concatenation of questions – the series of questions – that would deliver all of this data into your hands. You’re looking for moments in the HGC’s, D of T’s office. You’re looking for the instant when the PE Instructor all of a sudden paused. Fellow realized that he’d better cut this short because actually, he’s gonna miss his ride home, see? This thought suddenly strikes the PE Instructor, you see? He’s liable to miss his ride home, you know? So he’d better cut this short. So he’s looking over the class and he fixes his beady eye on one person. Seems to lose track of what he was saying, don’t you see?

In Scientology, we’re probably the only organization that has any capability at all of going in the direction of a clear third dynamic, and we’re going in that direction. We use O/W today to park somebody till we can handle him. We never forget we’re handling an individual. And I never forget I’m handling an individual. I’m not handling „people,“ ever. I’m handling you and you and you and you. Because you are truth. I don’t care what you look at as truth to begin with or what you will look at as truth at the end of the line; if there’s any truth to be found, you’re it. If there’s any truth to be known, it’ll be you who will know it. And beyond that and outside of it, there isn’t any truth.

Said, “Well, all right. Now you understand ARC and we’re going to have to conclude the talk this evening. And so, good night,” and hurriedly walks out the door. Now, the person his eye accidentally lit on in those pauses goes, “Beenk,” see? Nearly found out. “Did he know? Didn’t he know?” See? “Wa-wa-wa-was he on the ri-ri-ri-uh-uohhhh. What did he guess at that moment? What did he recognize about me at that moment? Which one of my various crimes?” You see, here’s something else, see? Now he doesn’t even know which one of his crimes have been identified. Maybe the Instructor has been talking about the fact that people with big heads have more brains than people with little heads or something, you know? And this person gets some kind of a rationale about this thing.

Now, you see what I’m talking about as the road to truth?

He couldn’t make up his mind whether he had lots of brains or little brains because he’s always realized that he had a medium-sized head. See? Now, that’s already got a little mystery connected with it, which is just nothing. Then all of a sudden the Instructor seems to completely look down, seems to completely change pace, and then abruptly leaves. And you know there’ll be some people leave that PE class very, very nervous, because they realize when they go out the front door that the police are going to be waiting for them?

Audience: Mm-mm.

What did we nearly find out? Well, it isn’t good enough to find out just what was nearly found out. We’ve got to find when it was nearly found out or might have been found out, but doesn’t know if it was found out, don’t you see? When and by whom? We got to spot these points. And all of a sudden, why, this person, tah! Everything is marvelous. Everything goes off beautifully, smoothly, and there it is.

Now, don’t you worry about missing withholds on Joe and Pete and Bill as they come into the PE class. Don’t worry about that. You won’t suffer from it. People won’t do bad things to you because you don’t know all about them instantly. As somebody just said to me, your confront is very high. A Scientologist’s confront is way up and very often when you look at somebody you almost cave him in, because he says, „What-what-what does he know about me?“

Now, you can give me a gold star tonight, at least, for trying.

Well, your only mistake at that point is not to reach him as truth. You are confronting, that moment, a road to truth and you’ve got to travel it because you’ve already started to! You have looked down it!

Audience: Yeah!

There is many a pc you’ll start to process, or many a human being you will try to tell about Scientology, that you will say, „Why did I get up this morning! It must have been I knew something was going to happen, because when I put on my left shoe I found it was designed for the right foot. And from that moment on, I could have taken warning and simply gone back to bed. And I didn’t. And here I am arguing with this person in this PE Course. And he’s saying, ‘I understand Ron doesn’t believe – doesn’t believe in God.“’ And you’re trying to make some kind of heavy weather out of it or make conversation out of it or trying to fend off this accusation or trying to straighten it up or handle it – you’re going to find yourself at that moment on the road to truth.

Thank you.

Well, I’ll tell you the wrong thing to do, is unload – jump in the ditch. That’s the wrong thing to do. Your success in the future totally depends upon your ability to walk that road and not to jump off of it because all of your disasters anyplace will stem from that exact instant when you failed to walk that road and turned around and did something else and set up an organization to handle this jerk. You see that?

Audience: Yes.

There’s this guy. He’s saying, „Well, Ron doesn’t believe in God. And I understand this. I heard this every place. So how can – you can say he’s a truthful man?“ See, this guy knows what truth is. You have faith in the big thetan, see? It’s kind of a 1984 in...with a cross above it, you know? And that’s truth! He’s been taught all his life you must have faith in this thing. He’s been taught that is right conduct. He sees somebody isn’t instantly following down this, and snapping and popping and making the sign of his particular cross. I know of several crosses and how to make several signs of the cross, but we’re not making his sign of the cross. So therefore we are not truth.

See, he’s got „right conduct“ mixed up with „rightness of conduct is the source of aberration,“ and these are entirely different remarks. He doesn’t realize he’s nuts! That’s one of the first things he has to find out. Well, you’re going to find there are many ways to teach him this initial step, and you will fail and you will succeed and you will do this and you will do that. And listen, you will only be wrong – and I’m not now talking about right conduct of a Scientologist; I happen to be talking about survival in the early Axioms at that level – you will only fail if you don’t try, if you don’t make some stab at it. Because if you make some kind of a stab at it, you’ll be surprised; he won’t go away even though if you didn’t handle him in that first fifteen seconds and you put him on the shelf to pick him up somewhere on the track.

You’ll be surprised. This happens to me every once in a while. I processed somebody one day; he was lying in a sickbed. I thought he was going to die. I thought I flipped the whole thing; I thought it was gone, sunk, that was it. Never processed such a lousy session in my life. You know? I couldn’t even get the pc practically to answer the auditing command. I got him to say it a few times, you know? And I finally patted him on the shoulder and said, „Well, I hope you’ll be all right,“ and so forth. Tried to put in a little hope factor before I walked out of the room. The man was dying, see?

I actually felt bad about it for – you know – a little bit bad about it for several days. I couldn’t get through to the guy. I couldn’t do anything for him, you know, and so forth, and there it was, and his whole life all busted up, and that sort of thing. I almost fell off the top of the HASI steps at Notting Hill Gate – and that was a long flight of steps, if you remember. There was this guy, hale and hearty, just having finished another intensive. He’d been alive and well for two years, and he all dated it from that moment of being processed by me.

You’ll many times think you fail when you haven’t. The only mistake you can make is to try to go backwards on this road to truth. It’s not possible without completely caving in. A very, very dangerous thing to do.

So this fellow stands up in the PE class, and he says, „How can you people know anything about truth? I understand Ron doesn’t believe in God.“ What are you going to say? What are you going to say? What are you going to say at that moment? Took you by surprise. You didn’t even think he was going to talk! Well, at least be inventive enough to say, „Well, you know, I think you ought to write him about that. Post box out there in the hall. Next question.“

Well, at least you’ve made a start. At least you’ve done something. The wrong thing to do is to back up and construct an organization which handles masses and never handles an individual. Because it is very certain that if you fail to handle this guy who stands up in the PE Course, if you fail to push home your confront on your friend who says he hates you because you might have missed a withhold on him, if you don’t say to him, „Well now, just count off the number of times I’ve nearly found out something about you, Joe. Count them off“ – you’re not even asking him what you nearly found out, see? – and press it home. The guy finally says, „Well, aziziz-da-da-da-umm,“ you know? Shatters him! You say, „Well, I failed!“ and you probably didn’t. You only fail if you didn’t try.

So don’t worry about the fact that you know more about them than they know themselves. They only stand up to be handled. The only way you’re going to build up some kind of a clumsy, stupid mess of a nonfunctional Scientology administrative system will be totally and completely based on the one guy you didn’t handle; the one case you didn’t solve. Your retreats are all based on that.

Now, I can only tell you from this point of view that every once in a while somebody kicks the bucket and goes totally beyond reach. That doesn’t make me feel good but I know very well we’ll pick him up later. That’s all part of the road to truth.

Various things happen, various catastrophes occur, people get mad at ... You would be utterly amazed how many people write me today who were furious about me four years ago! Utterly incredible.

Now, there is no truth in the mass of things; there is no truth in moral codes. Truth isn’t to be found there; only agreements. But in the final analysis, there is truth to be found and there is a road to truth. You have that within you and every time you look at a human being you see it in him. And as you know what it is about, the more you know about it, the more you understand it, the less these factors will trouble you.

But even the little fellow in the bakery shop who’s doing nothing but wrap up bread has already started on the road to truth. And his only stupidity is he hasn’t got enough sense to keep going.

So don’t worry about you being on the road to truth and that it’s a very adventurous line or me being on the road to truth; shucks, we’re almost there.

Behind us lies the most thorny, messed-up track you ever saw in your life. Wouldn’t navigate it again for a – for a box of biscuits. But the truth of the matter is, well, we’re there; that road’s behind us. Possibly take us quite a while to sit down and find out where we are, now that we’re there. But that’s allowable, too.

But we’ll only retreat from our position to the degree that we don’t realize this fact: that you cant start a case, you can’t embark upon clearing a planet or an individual diffidently without to some degree seeing it through to a final conclusion. And your only disasters will simply stem from your failure to follow that road all the way through.

Think them over and mark them up sometime along the line and you’ll see how true those words are.

Thank you very much. Good night.