The oldest form of psychotherapy involved the questioning of the patient about his dreams. This is currently dramatized by psychology. A more modern type of psychotherapy consists of asking a preclear about his past.
Both of these, and many other activities in Dianetics and Scientology could be included under the heading of Straight Wire.
Effective particularly from 1.1 on the tone scale to 1.8, the processes embraced under the heading “Straight Wire” have all one purpose in common: this is the purpose of making the preclear stretch a “straight wire” between Cause and Effect across the intervening distance, whether this “distance” could be a distance in terms of location or a distance in terms of time.
Any process in Dianetics or Scientology is a Third Dynamic process. Thus, any process in Dianetics or Scientology requires communication. In Straight Wire and any other process, this fact must be observed by the auditor: that a two-way communication must be maintained. Thus, when administering any process which could be called “Straight Wire,” the auditor should be careful at the same time to maintain two-way communication. When he originally started the session the auditor captured some ground. He established two-way communication, whether by mimicry, conversation, or discussion. He must never lose this captured ground. Thus, when running Straight Wire, when running Opening Procedure of 8-C, Opening Procedure by Duplication, Remedy of Havingness, Spotting Spots in Space or any other process, it is necessary that this gained ground be maintained.
The term “straight wire” itself is meant to describe the imaginary straight line between Cause and Effect. The trouble with a preclear is that he is doing too many things VIA. He is doing anything and everything in life VIA. He is obtaining via food. He is looking via glasses. He is feeling and expressing emotion via glands. He is utilizing or experiencing effort via muscles. He is thinking via (he thinks) a brain. He is obtaining sensation, sustenance, and even revenge, via food. He is experiencing sensation and making the future via his genitals, and he is even trying to experience the origin of life, in most cases, via a church.
His dependency upon objects and services is such that his own creativeness becomes suppressed, submerged, for this working law is always present: that upon which one becomes dependent becomes, at length, one’s enslaver. When anyone sets up anything automatically, that thing becomes his randomity at some future date. We can observe this in many ways, but the entire summation of this can be grouped under the heading “VIA.”
Should the auditor bring the preclear to a point where a certain cause and a certain effect can be joined together without the intervention of a VIA, then the auditor has materially gained. Such a process is the Opening Procedure of 8-C, for here the preclear is being asked to connect, at least as a body, directly with a wall. As he reaches out to touch a spot on that wall, he is, in effect, stringing a straight line. It is notable that the Opening Procedure of 8-C was first designed for use upon an exteriorized person, and when one has a preclear exteriorized, running through the steps of the Opening Procedure of 8-C and the remainder of 8-C as given in Issue 24-G of the Journal of Scientology produces very marked effects.
If your preclear cannot have an effect he certainly cannot change. If he cannot cause an effect to occur, he certainly cannot change himself. All time is change— change is time. While, basically, time is simply a consideration, the considerations of time itself are mechanically tracked by the alteration of the position of the particles in space. Your preclear is stuck wherever there was no motion of particles, whether the moment is a pleasure moment, a triumph, a failure, or even death. In the absence of particle motion, as far as he is concerned, if he has lost his power to change his considerations, no time has existed. Thus, those things which you find in the engram bank which are most readily available to the preclear are things which contain no change in them, or things which have a change immediately before them and after them, but have no change between. In the absence of this change, we get a condition of timelessness in an engram or facsimile which permits that incident to “float” on the track and thus rise up to present time.
As the preclear becomes more and more embedded in motionless incidents he becomes harder and harder to change himself. Or, as he dramatizes to a marked degree his own bank, in the most ordinary living, then, he dramatizes the changeless moments, and he, himself, does not change.
The basic confusion of a preclear lies in the fact that an awareness of awareness unit basically has no mass, meaning or mobility. It has qualities and potentials, but it does not have position in space, nor, in its highest form, any movement in space. It can be at will in various positions in space, but it is not, itself, in space. As this is the case you can see that a preclear is dramatizing the truth when he is holding himself and motionless incidents motionless. In other words, if change to him is totally a particle shift in space, then he is apt to consider himself moving as the particles move. If he is moving he is actually to some degree disobeying the most basic quality of theta. Motion, then, to him, becomes antipathetic. On the lowest toned catatonic one finds this dramatization in full progress. A motionless person is then dramatizing the truth. But in all aberration we discover that it is the ingredient of truth which maintains the aberration in force. He is dramatizing motionlessness, and is motionless, but the truth of the matter is that, as a thetan, he should be able to make things move at will and appear in various positions in space. Thus, in clinging to the truth he loses his ability to move particles, and thus loses his ability to have time. This is best manifested as his communication, but as his communication drops, so drop his reality and his affinity. In other words, although he clings to the motionlessness of being a thetan, he loses the basic qualities of being a thetan, which are those of Knowingness and Understanding.
The basic confusion of any preclear, then, is to move or not to move. Shakespeare has said “to be or not to be” is the question. When it comes to getting a preclear upscale, the question is “to move or not to move.”
The basics of Straight Wire are designed to bring the preclear into the realization that he, himself, can be at either the cause or effect point of a communication line, and that he, himself, does not have to be the particle moving on that line. Being the particle and insisting upon the truth that he isn’t moving simply stops his communication entirely. Particles move on the straight line between Cause and Effect. Cause and
Effect themselves are not in motion. The task is to get the individual to assume the responsibility of moving particles. With this comes the realization on his part that he, himself, does not have to move in order to move particles, and thus he will come upscale. Getting him to move his body around the room is an excellent method of accomplishing this, but to many preclears the movement of a body is a near- impossibility. And these can contemplate only the moving of a memory or an idea. Thus, from 1.1 to 1.8 on the tone scale we find the best therapy to be that which directs itself toward the thinkingness below effort — the moving of ideas.
There is no particular reason to concentrate solely upon a preclear’s past. Actually, a preclear is not the product of the past, he is the product of himself. All the past can do for him is to accumulate and hold for him the information that it is bad for him to move, or act, or do. So, let us take a preclear whom we have gotten into communication and work with his more elementary ideas and thus get him to string straight lines between Cause and Effect.
Elementary Straight Wire has two commands. The auditor takes the first of these and uses it as long as is necessary to entirely flatten the preclear’s hesitancy as represented by his communication lag. His communication lag is merely the expression of VIAs on the line, which amounts to the preclear’s unwillingness to string a straight line. The questions are: “Give me something you wouldn’t mind remembering,” “Give me something you wouldn’t mind forgetting.”
A more elementary form of this would be: “Remember something,” “Forget something,” but this is far too direct for our preclear. If you will notice, a very direct and forthright person, if surrounded by people who are more covert, gets a very bad going-over for it. Thus it is in processing when you try to string a very straight line with a preclear he will sometimes resist.
Slightly less elementary than Elementary Straight Wire as above is the next-to- the-last list in Self Analysis: “Can you recall something that is really real to you,” “Can you recall a time when you were in good communication with someone,” “Can you recall a time when someone was in good communication with you,” “Can you recall a time when you felt some affinity for someone,” “Can you recall a time when someone felt some affinity for you.”
The entire text of Self Analysis, in its original edition now available from the Foundation in Phoenix, is devoted to rehashing the preclear’s past to show him that it is not quite as dangerous as it is made out to be, and that it won’t bite him if he remembers some things about it.
From this form of Straight Wire we go into a more complicated form as given in Self Analysis in Scientology, a converted edition of the original Self Analysis. The edition is converted, by the way, simply by substituting everywhere in its text for the word “recall” the word “mock up.” Simply by substituting “mock up” in the directions at the beginning of each list, one has a modern Self Analysis.
Now it is very remarkable that the less specific and sequitur the auditor’s questions are, the better the results with the preclear.
Another form of Straight Wire is quite superior to those above, but is a very vicious and violent process. It is contained in The Creation of Human Ability, which is the printed edition, much expanded, of the earlier Auditor’s Handbook. The basic command of this process is: “Start Lying,” “Keep on Lying.” This can be particularized with: “Tell me some lies about your past,” “Tell me some lies about me present,” “Tell me some lies about the future,” the auditor each time making sure that the preclear is using non-actual places and times.
Remember that while running Straight Wire one must maintain a two-way communication. Many a case has been lost simply because the preclear wanted to say something and the auditor was so intent upon the process that he paid no attention whatsoever to the preclear’s urge to communicate. Remember that one-way communication is a First Dynamic operation; that two-way communication is necessary for a Third Dynamic operation; that under one-way communication a preclear will not get well; that under two-way communication a preclear will get well. Thus, in running Straight Wire do not begrudge the preclear a few moments’ discussion of the incident he has just recalled, or discussion of phenomena he has suddenly noticed. Do not crush him simply because he wishes to express himself.
This is essentially a subjective process, and the auditor should make sure that the preclear speaks aloud the things he is remembering. The preclear’s nod or “yes” to signify that he has recalled something or has invented something is insufficient, and should always be suspect, for preclears who are very bad off pervert or invert every communication line they use and so they will not be doing the process if given any slightest opportunity.
Elementary Straight Wire and other forms of Straight Wire are intensely beneficial from 1.1 to 1.8 on the Tone Scale, but after you have your preclear up to 1.8 or above, remember that there are better processes.
