[Start of Lecture]

Want to talk to you about the degeneration of a static.

Once upon a time there was a little thetan. And he was a happy little thetan and the world was a simple thing. It was all very, very simple. And then one day somebody told him he was simple. And ever since that time he's been trying to prove that he is not. And that is the history of the universe, the human race, the Fifth Invaders, the Fourth Invaders, the Three-and-a-half Invaders, the people on Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Arcturus, the Marcab System, the Psi Galaxy, Galaxy 82. I don't care where you look, that's the story. Only it's too simple a story, much too simple a story, because this thetan would have to admit that he was simple if he understood it.

Now, this being the sad story, let's just trace some of these levels of complexity to which he has resorted. We have to examine emotional response to some degree to understand that emotional response is also a complexity. It's just another complexity. If one did the same thing all the time, everybody knows — everybody knows — one would eventually get bored. But now, just a minute. Boredom is only one of a complex series of emotions. There's no such thing. You have to invent boredom to get bored. You see that?

There's no reason why he has to be this complex, so let's look it over very care fully and realize that he has to have a reason why in order to be complex. You get that? He has to have a reason why in order to be complex. He has to be complex because he invented a series of emotional responses which he now has to avoid. Do you see this? And every way you look at this thing it gets to be sillier and sillier. The funny part of it is, it's dead serious. Because that was invented too.

Now, one fine day, I was busy getting audited and I was absolutely flabbergasted to discover something: that I could knit. Now, you speak of abilities, that's quite an ability. I could knit. This became very obvious to me. But as far as abilities go, it would absolutely flabbergast you how I could knit. No body! Look Ma, no body. Weave baskets. You know, get over a pile of reeds, and just start weaving them all together, nice as you please. Neat.

But somebody came along one day and almost died of heart failure because they said this was startling. Here were baskets going together with no human agency. Here were woofed and warped little rugs and... Here was all kinds of stuff. And here was something vaguely resembling a sweater, you know, just going together as nice as you please. Knitting needles going clickity-clack. Well, this was upsetting to people, they told me.

Why was it upsetting? Not because it's too startling, but because it's too simple.

But I want to know what I was getting so complex for. Why was I getting so extremely complex as to knit? Why didn't I just mock it up? Look that over.

So we look upstairs from the level of complexity that we have already reached when one is busy standing over a pile of reeds and knitting some baskets and weaving some stuff. That's complex, see? That's what I found out during the session — suddenly struck me that this was not very startling. What was startling was that I was knitting them!

Well, anyway, this is the way it goes. This is levels of complexity being assumed. Every time you find an action, you already have assumed a step in the direction of complexity. Any action goes in the direction of complexity.

To maintain any strata of life, it is necessary to perform a certain series of complex actions — to maintain any series, any strata. Whether to stand up above a bunch of tangled reeds and weave them together into baskets or — without human agency — or whether it's simply to sit still. There's an action involved in sitting still — with a body. There isn't any action involved with a thetan sitting still. It becomes very difficult. It's a very difficult thing for a thetan not to sit still. It's a very difficult thing for him to sit still. It's a very difficult thing. Because he is still.

Now, the hardest thing that a thetan does is to do what he is. That's the hardest thing for him to do, is to do what he is. Quite remarkable. It's quite remarkable — to do what he is.

Now, he can always do a complexity, because he's not. But to do what he is, that's something else. Something totally still, that's difficult for him. He runs it out at once into a complexity.

Now, any definition you have for a static has lower harmonics. And here's the definition — Axiom 1, and Axiom 2 for the actionness and description in general — and these all have lower harmonics. Now, as we look down the line, we find lower and lower harmonics on these things, and we discover such things as „dead.“ Well now, dead is a lower harmonic on being a thetan. That's pretty wild; look that over carefully. Because a thetan is alive, and a dead body hasn't got a thetan in it. Therefore, a thetan takes very kindly to dead people. He takes very kindly to that. And it often makes him believe that he wants to kill people. But he makes this very difficult because it is what he is, you see: It's still.

Each one of these lower harmonics on what a thetan is, contains an additive. There's an additive characteristic to the basic definition of the static and the next few capabilities of a static. Now we keep adding things and we get these lower harmonics. They're very interesting. These are truth. That is what they have been seeking for tens of thousands of years. This is the truth for which they seek in yoga, mysticism, spiritualism, magic, and so on. All those categories which are just further developments of static, just as such. There's a whole list of them in Fundamentals of Thought. And there's a more complete list elsewhere. These are truth.

And if you go searching too widely and wildly for truth without finding the upper-scale truth — in other words, if you go searching for truth without really finding truth — you have adventured upon a course which is fatal, to say the least. It is a fatal course. Because it winds one up in that complexity known as „searching and investigating,“ and this can become quite obsessive. Now, man has been at this for quite a while. He's...

Now, a thetan can become involved in investigating himself, and he can become involved in investigating other thetans which he mistakes for himself. And he can become involved. But the easiest way for him to become involved is to seek truth. And therefore, every great school, whether Manichaean, Egyptian, no matter what great school of religious search there has ever been, has wound up in this truth list, which happens to be no-game condition.

The no-game condition list, in other words, is a list of lower harmonics of truth. And that is a no-game condition list. A no- game condition is differentiated from a game condition very sharply then, and very high, very positively.

Over here on the other side, we have what we call game conditions, and those are the parts of a game as viewed from a thetan playing the game. This is what he thinks it ought to consist of That is simply a complexity, and it is totally a pack of lies. There isn't anywhere under game conditions, anything resembling truth.

So you have a list of truths and you have a list of lies. And people who sought to go straight into truth very often hit one of the lower harmonics and „went up the pole“ an old Dianetic phrase. They get very ecstatic. Wears off in eight or ten days. That's the end of them. They get into some lower harmonic and get stuck. But you can evidently lie forever — evidently — as long as you try to keep lying. But when you stop trying to lie or play a game, you become truth, which is nothing. You understand that? The ultimate consequence, you see, the ultimate consequence of playing a game is to not play a game. That is the total ultimate consequence. You don't even say „not be able to play a game,“ or anything else. This could get too involved, and we're just getting more complex. The total consequence of not playing a game is not playing a game.

Any game there is, is basically a lie. Basically, games are a lie, because they take a bunch of things which a thetan is not, and he carries forward with these things. In other words, there are a great many things which a thetan is not. In other words, he invented them. They're totally invented. And being totally invented, they avoid, as much as possible, truth.

Somebody comes along and says, „Life has no purpose in it.“ Shake him by the hand; he's uttered a great truth. Get the idea? That's a great truth. But its an undesirable truth, because its a lower harmonic on truth: it assumes the existence of a complexity — bodies, planet, income tax — which amounts to life. So life has no purpose in it. Well, that’s perfectly true, perfectly true. And there's nothing wrong with it at all — except he doesn't like it, because he's already entered into a great many complexities called life. He calls this life. He thinks this is all the life there is.

Now, he is trying to back out of some difficult situation. And in trying to do so, he conceives himself the effect of the situation, so he goes into a no-game condition and he starts uttering great truths — in a sad tone of voice. „Life is without purpose. Everybody eventually dies. There is no end to it at all; it just goes on and on.“ You see, these are laments (uttered in the right tone of voice), but they are lower harmonics of truth. This is all perfectly true. There's no argument there of any kind.

But when you start backing out into truths, you start backing out into truths at a low level, which already have complexities. Already, there are complexities existing.

Give you some sort of an idea. Any of you with the greatest of ease could sit down alongside of a lake, and just sit there without thinking a thought, without doing a thing, so forth, just for ages and ages and ages. You could do this, you see? But we take somebody, and we put him alongside of a lake... They do all sorts of things. They build summer camps (one of the more nonsensical activities) — summer camps that leak all winter, you know? — and they do this and they do that. And they can't sit quietly alongside the lake because of the speedboat. What about the speedboat? It was bought. Well, having been bought, it is owed for. One has to have income. One has already contracted the care and feeding of a body. Food has to be paid for. Complexities, complexities, complexities.

But if we removed all these complexities, and if one did not have an urge to go into a game condition with regard to the lake, one could sit there forever in perfect equanimity, providing — providing — he did not have an urge toward a game condition. In other words, all thetans are liars. They're habitual liars. Probably we ought to have an Axiom on it, about Axiom 4 3/4. It's probably really Axiom 1.2. You see this?

And the only thing that goes wrong with a liar is that he eventually believes his own lies. These are hard words. One shouldn't use these things. I have a book written by a very famous artist up in Montana, Charlie Russell. He's long since dead, and his publications, I don't think, ever wandered east. But his paintings certainly have. And they are becoming more and more popular. But, oddly enough, they are almost out of sight now. In his own lifetime, why, he would have been glad to have gotten rid of a painting for a couple of bottles of rather second-rate rye. But his paintings are way out of sight. But he wrote a little book. Collected all the stories he knew and heard and had invented in the Montana area.

And one of these had to do with a fellow that shot a moose in a land where there are no moose. And the moose had antlers with a twelve-foot spread. And every time he'd have a few drinks, he'd start telling people about his battle with this moose. And he up and shot this moose, and he lugged this moose home. And he finally would always wind up the story with the difficulties of getting the moose's horns into the attic of his cabin. He managed it though; had to knock out one whole side of the cabin. He'd wind this up.

Well, it was a very entertaining story, and he told it very well — much better than I've told it to you. It goes on for ages. But one day, why, Charlie Russell the painter met him in a bar, and he said, „Hey, Benson,“ he says, „How about that moose?“ He wanted to hear about the moose again. Everybody always wanted to hear about the moose again.

Benson said, „Charlie, I've stopped telling that story.“ „What's the matter?“

He says, „Well, I told it so often that last winter, along about Christmas time, I got curious and I went up in the attic and damned if it was there!“

Now, of course, that's a very low harmonic on what a thetan does. A thetan actually does put antlers up there. And he does believe they're there, and he sees them. The conviction with which he is always operating and of which he is capable, therefore, tends to confirm his delusory statements.

Well, in auditing somebody, you'll discover at once that he believes many things, but above all he believes in a complexity. This he believes in. A fellow walked up to me just last night, and he said to me, „I understand you can help people out.“

I said, „Yes.“

He said, „Well, I've been drinking ever since my wife left me, and I can't stop it.” And he said, „I can't pay my bills,“ he says, „but every time I get ten dollars, I can always go to the liquor store and pay that son of a blank down there ten dollars to give me some poison to ruin my life a little bit further.“ And he says, „I can't stop it.“ And he says, „I understand, why, you can help people out.“ He just walked up to me on the street.

Yeah, well, I listened to this for a while. It's quite true, quite true: he couldn't stop it. He has a level of complexity going which he cannot halt. In other words, he's lost control of it, so he's in a no-game condition.

What'll he do? Well, we'll get somebody to run him on 8-C for a while and he'll be all right.

But the truth of the matter is he's incapable of abandoning a necessity for alcohol, which kills him. Got the idea? There you are. He's convinced. But the funny part of it is, is he isn't convinced. He feels, still, that he ought to do something else than, every time he gets ten dollars, buy some liquor and ruin himself. See, he feels he ought to do something else, but something else, he feels, has to do this and has control of him. Well, that's probably the case. He has collected, arduously, a very complex series of pictures. He collected them innocently at the time, and then one day they bit. And one of them contains dipsomania. And the picture wants to drink.

Now, you've heard of the genie and the lamp. Old story. The genie in the bottle. Well, I wonder that this genie ever could get into the bottle in the first place — just like the fisherman wondered. How'd he get in the bottle in the first place? Probably to find out if he could. Then he couldn't get out of the bottle. So when somebody asked him, at once, to prove that he was in the bottle, he promptly went back in again. He just dramatized his demonstration in the first place: „I can get in this bottle.“ Somebody tapped the cork in, and left him on the seashore somewhere. He decided that wasn't a good thing. And so he promised all sorts of things, and the fellow — fisherman let him out. All right.

That's, by the way, a lesson not to exteriorize somebody. It's back there in the Arabian Nights. Clearly an anti-Scientology propaganda campaign.

But what about these levels of complexity? An individual enters a level of complexity, and then discovers that he cannot abandon some part of the complexity. And not being able to abandon it, he is convinced that it is, and he is stuck with it. So, therefore, he can't abandon the complexity. He loses his selectivity over complexities. That's what really happens to him. There are many things in the complex scene which he would happily abandon, but there are some of them that he won't.

The funny part of it is, the one thing which probably keeps this dipsomaniac living is not his desire to live — he undoubtedly does not desire to live, since he would live anyway — what keeps him going is his craving for liquor; that's the one thing he keeps around that he can't abandon. Therefore, he can't abandon life as long as he craves liquor.

You come along as an auditor and try to get him to abandon craving liquor. You'd have to have some complexity to offer in lieu of this horrible rat race in which he is. This is done, of course, by the old process, Problems of Comparable Magnitude. You'll find out that'll gradually ease off. But there are some newer processes on this which are quite interesting. Very fascinating.

Now, we look over these conditions called game conditions, we see at once that we aren't just talking about somebody playing tiddlywinks. This is a technical term in Scientology. It means a precise thing. There are certain conditions which follow game conditions. Now, game conditions are all right, as long as they are knowing game conditions. When they become unknowing game conditions, they are all wrong. Unknowing game conditions are all wrong.

Now, we used to use the word dramatization as the alternate word to... what we now say a high, unknowing games condition. We just said dramatization. Fellow was dramatizing an engram. Well, he didn't know it was there. He was still obsessively playing the game he was playing at the moment the engram was not an engram, but was life. And this engram stayed around and makes him redramatize this moment again. Well, that is an unknowing games condition. And that's what that's all about. There isn't anything else to it. It's not complicated.

But this list gives us what game conditions are. Of course, they are all aberrative. Somebody looks this over, and he says, „Well, what do you mean that's a game condition? You realize that if you had to have no effect on self and total effect on somebody else, you'd have an awful time after a short while. You'd pay no attention to anybody else in the world; you'd override everybody's rights; you'd trample on everything; you'd just be operating to smash everything down, and so forth. Ah, why, that's a terrible thing,“ he'd say.

You'd say, „That's right, that's a terrible thing.“

„Well, all right,“ he'd say, „Then what have you got it there for?“

„Well, that's because that's the way a thetan looks at it; that's why it's there.“ No effect on self, total effect on something else. And eventually we get into overt act-motivator sequences, and we get into all kinds of interesting complexities, and so forth. Well, the next thing you know he's a general.

This is all very well to look at as a theoretical basis. However, it's very practical. It's extremely practical.

You remember the first communication formula. It was cause- distance-effect, with cause where the preclear was. Now, two-way communication makes an habitable world. Of course, just cause- distance-effect only, with the preclear always at cause, makes an uninhabitable world. But it's a game condition. And he does it.

Now, when you start auditing him, you will discover, very oddly, that he runs avidly in a no-game condition category: effect on self. Terrific, you see; a terrific effect on self. He'd just love to have effects on self. We used to call it motivator hunger. And it's very factual, it is motivator hunger. He... Wow! But you audit him very long, and appease this motivator hunger, and enough tests have now been accumulated, so that I can pretty well guarantee that you would audit him into the ground.

„Mock up yourself dead. Mock up yourself dead. Mock up yourself dead. Mock up yourself de--.“ No good. It's not a good technique.

„Mock up somebody else dead. Mock up somebody else dead. Mock up somebody else dead.“ Good technique.

So we have a tool here which differentiates between good and bad techniques. Now, I can guarantee that you will undoubtedly, here and there, flub this one. This one you will flub, because your preclear is so anxious to convince you that he is a victim. Yeah, he's a victim. A victim of what? A victim of his playing games. Yeah, he's a victim of that. But he doesn't know he's a victim of that, he thinks he's a victim in some other way. He thinks things have been done to him. No, he's done things to things. Now, this is a very hard thing to sell the public or any individual: That he is sick because he's done things.

But if you could get a person who came to you, and on whom you could run with the greatest difficulty, „Look at me, who am I?“ and if you were to ask him and receive an answer to „tell me one thing you've done to somebody else,“ his health would take an upward surge, his mental stability would take an upward surge. It's one of these very low order, challenging questions. And it's right next door to „Look at me, who am I?“ It's one of these things that runs the whole band, but it is usable in the lowest ranges of auditing. You say, „Look at me, who am I?“ you get him into communication one way or the other. There's an adjacent process which is a direct-communication process: „Tell me one thing you've done to somebody.“ And if you can get that question answered, you'll have a change — if you can get it answered.

But on a case that would be very difficult to run „Look at me, who am I?“ — very difficult to run on that one — to get him to do this other one is almost impossible, but terrifically productive of results. That's something for you to remember. You're asking him to run a formula called cause-distance-effect. You could also ask him, „Tell me something that you could have an effect upon.“

Now, let me give you a very interesting, neat little package of a process. Somebody has just gotten off an airplane that was a rough trip, and they don't feel well — they do not feel well at all. Went over the Appalachians flying low and slow or something. If you wanted to snap them out of that with an assist in about fifteen minutes, you could do so by simply asking them to look around, right where they are, and find something they could do. You see, that’s still cause-distance-effect. See, that's still overt act. That is still „do something to somebody else,“ or „do something to something else.“ „Look around and tell me something you could do.“

It's quite amusing that the person would at once have a tendency to hold on to the seat. He just finished a rough trip, see? You've just turned on all of the plane motion. And you ask him something else he can do, and he feels the plane go jolt-jolt. He says, „That’s funny.“ He looks around; he's very apathetic. „Something I could do. I guess I could step on that cigarette butt four feet away... it's already been stepped — Yes, I could do that.“ Yep-rup-rup! You moved him on the track.

Because he had to sit still in the airplane — it was a rough trip — with the belt buckled, which told him he could do nothing, he must not be anything but an effect, it said there. It said, „Fasten Seat Belts.“ Got the idea? So it made him an effect. During the entire trip, he conceived that the plane was moving him, he was not moving the plane.

Actually, on a little further analysis, he was moving the plane, even if only economically. He did pay his fare. If people didn't pay their fare there wouldn't be any airplanes. And that's true, by the way; that's true even in Russia. That's true in Russia where they don't pay for anything: They don't have any airplanes either. Now — oh yes, they have military airplanes, but there are no passenger lines to amount to anything.

All right. Now what, then, is all of this hogwash about running out everything that's been done to the preclear? Leave it alone! You'll make him, the victim, scarce on incident.

Perhaps you could get somewhere by saying — I said perhaps, remember — you could get somewhere by saying, „Invent something that has been done to you.“ See? You'd possibly get somewhere. It's a questionable technique, though. Very questionable. You really will get somewhere if you ask him to invent something he could do to somebody else. Now you'll get somewhere; now you start moving his case. And the formula is cause-distance-effect, with the preclear at cause. Because every time a thetan involved himself with doingness and beingness, with identities and possession and so forth, he was involving himself in a game condition. And the only thing that is wrong with an individual is he has played a game, and forgotten.

I'll go over that again. This is not wrong with him: that he played a game. But that he played a game and forgot that he played a game: that's wrong with him. That could be interpreted in a dozen different ways. You could say, „Well, you mean he's taken life seriously, he's forgotten it's a game?“ Yes, that’s what's wrong with him. There's one — there's one interpretation of the same thing.

Another interpretation of it: He was playing football. He played football when he was fourteen, in high school, and he got a busted leg, and now he doesn't remember that his leg has ever been broken. See, he played a game. He's forgotten he ever played football; he has no memory of ever playing football when he was fourteen.

It takes unknowingness, joined to a game condition, to bring about aberration. And it takes both! It takes a game condition and it takes unknowingness about it to bring on aberration.

Then what about the fellow — if you please — what about the fellow who doesn't remember that he lived before this life? That is a case — strictly a case of Wow! Why, he's forgotten a whole section of life. Its amazing, though, how little of it is now still aberrative to him. Do you know what's the most aberrative to him in this whole forgotten section? The part that he had already forgotten while he was alive. The forgetter inside the forgetter. You get the idea? That's most aberrative to him.

He was a steeplechase jockey in his last life. And as he got on toward middle age, he of course knocked off steeplechase jockeying and forgot entirely — forgot entirely — that he had ever had a fall. And he used to sit around the pub and tell people, you know, he'd say, „You know, I... huh! I was always a lucky jockey. Never fell off a horse in my whole life.“ Of course his cronies knew he was nuts. But he didn't. After the last fall, which fractured his skull for the fifth time, he started telling people this. He believed it himself.

I had a preclear of considerable interest to the organization all of a sudden utter a ruinous statement, as far as this preclear's repute was concerned. Everybody had always thought this preclear was a pretty sane preclear, you see? Only they never got anyplace on the case. Only they never got anywhere on the case. Audit the person, you know, audit her and audit her and audit her and audit her, and nothing ever happened. They thought she was perfectly sane and okay. And one day she confided, in the most confidential tone of voice, that such and such an auditor was crazy. Why? They had this preclear on an E-Meter — this auditor that was crazy had the preclear on an E-Meter — asking the preclear, of all things, for a moment of pain. And she knew she'd never had any pain in her whole life! The preclear knew she had never had a moment of pain in her whole life!

Now, let's look that over, since it was a part of medical history that this person had had some very severe operations. And the weird part of it was that these operations had to be buried because they were kind of antisocial, you know? And the preclear buried them very thoroughly from everybody, and herself. And she had never had any pain in her whole life. And then she went on to confide to people that she had never hurt anybody; never at anytime, anyplace, had ever hurt anybody.

And, of course, immediately the staff auditors took a look at this person, and dong-dong-dong, here goes the wagon, as far as they were concerned. When they audited her next time, when she was next audited, they entirely changed their tactics. They sat there and tried to find the preclear, tried to get her into a little bit of communication of one kind or another. And cognited that she had never answered a question, really — always was offbeat. Managed to get the preclear upscale, out of psychosis. But the person actually was a psychotic, and walking around, and apparently was perfectly sane. And until something like that came up, nobody knew it.

But what was the exact anatomy of this? It's the same anatomy of any insanity: Insanity is an unknowing games condition. That's all it is. With this little fillip thrown in: Part of the game was insane. Part of the game was the exact postulate of insanity. Person didn't know; played this game.

Now, we try to get somebody over a circumstance in this lifetime that seems to be very arduous. We try to get them over this circumstance. We don't get them over this circumstance. We run them according to all the rules and so forth. And after we've run them long enough, we get back to an old Dianetic rule: Basic- basic shows up.

Fellow has got a peg leg. And we try to get him over his worry about the peg leg. He just can't operate with a peg leg. And we try to straighten him out so he can really walk with a peg leg, and we just don't manage it. And we run out all the incident, and we run out him making people peg-legged, and we do all kinds of interesting things. And then one fine day, what happens? We find out that he's been peglegged for three lives. The unknowing games condition is „to have no leg“ — not being peg-legged. That's a win. You got it? The game was how to get rid of a leg. In three consecutive lives he'd managed it. And then the auditor sat there and tried to audit him out of a win, which is a no-game condition, of course. A peg leg was a no-game condition; it was a win. What was the incident? Getting rid of a leg, that was the game.

And if you ever wanted to see buckets of tears come off of a preclear, they came off of this one when he was run back through something very interesting: He had cut off somebody's leg! And he was so upset about it, and it was so deeply buried and so much in present time, and so on, that it had ridden with him for three lives. He felt so bad about it, he never could face it. And when the auditor finally made him brace up to it, on „getting rid of legs“ and „keeping legs from going away“...

That was the technique, by the way, that did it. And the same technique is working right now at the HGC on a preclear — or did last week — who has a bad leg: keeping the leg from going away; keeping the other leg from going away. You have to run both sides of the body, by the way. You can't just run one side of the body on anything, because the body sympathizes with the other side of the body.

Here we had an unknowing games condition. The unknowing games condition, including depriving another human being of a leg. Well yes, we know all about the overt act-motivator sequence: The fellow accumulates too many overt acts, he gets some motivators. So he'd handed himself the motivator, and he'd done it for three lives. That it never gave the other person back a leg, seemed to have missed his view. Now there, you see, was a peg leg, life and history of. The peg leg was not the incident. It was somebody else's leg, and it was cause-distance-effect, as far as the preclear was concerned.

Now, if you know that and you know that well, and you look that over thoroughly, you will see, then, the anatomy of any case that presents itself with some peculiarity — there's some peculiar manifestation that does not at once surrender. It's this cause- distance-effect. Preclear did it to somebody, that's what's wrong with the preclear. You got the idea? Did it to somebody, now he can't remedy it, he can't straighten it out, he feels he should, and so on.

We know that it is sane to have two-way communication, to have a two-way game. This is sane. You can go on forever doing that, no difficulties. But to have a game which is only cause-distance- effect is so one-sided that we call it a game condition. It is so far from truth, so far from usability, and it is such a lie. It's always going to be cause-distance-effect the other way. Get the idea?

But a thetan says, „No, no, that’s not true. I can do anything I want to anything, and nothing I ever have will suffer, and therefore I will never suffer because nothing can be done to me.“

The hell it can't be done to him. I have said a few times that nothing can really be done to a thetan directly. Now, get the difference between something can be done to a thetan's possessions. It's only his possessions that can be affected. But, yet, this will do something to him, because he's postulated that it will.

The reason people are afraid to lose things is because it is very painful. They don't like to lose things. They postulated that they had this thing and they weren't going to lose it. And then they lost it. Well, the reason people don't want to have things is because they lose them, and when they lose things it's very painful. They eventually will get to that. In anything anybody is having any trouble with, he's run that cycle, you see? He can't have it because he'll lose it. And he doesn't dare lose it because it'd be painful. Got the idea? So something can be done to the thetan via his possessions, but only to his possessions. Nothing can ever be done directly to a thetan. So the trick is, one has to attach him to a possession, and then hurt the possession.

All right. Now, it is very true that cause-distance-effect and game condition no-game condition all apply. If any one of you ever start out auditing out of somebody, in an effort to remedy his circumstance, a bad shoulder, and expect it to stay out, then you have not heard me today. Sure enough, you can patch up a bad shoulder; you can patch it up. But to inquire why it is a bad shoulder, and remedy the condition known as bad shoulder, is to remedy an unknowing games condition whereby he had an effect on a shoulder he did not possess. Now, of course, a thetan can have an effect on his own body. But this is short-circuited as far as he's concerned. That's a short circuit.

Now we take up this thing called complexity again. I have to tell you about game conditions and unknowing game conditions because of two other things. We have this thing called complexity, and I started talking to you about these complexities. He wants to make life more complicated, evidently. Well, he doesn't even have to want to. It so happens that everybody he is in agreement with will do this very fascinating thing — he'll do this very fascinating thing: Everybody he's connected with, in this age, is apparently motivator hungry. And they start convincing him he's doing things to them that he is not doing to them. Got that? So a fellow becomes convinced that he can easily hurt people.

It's actually pretty hard to do. People go around minding their manners, trying not to give offense to people, and so forth. That isn't what hurts people. Taking a thetan's possessions and tearing them up, taking his body and tearing its head off or rendering it a cripple for the next forty years, something like that, that is doing something to somebody, you understand? That's order of magnitude.

Now, because that has occurred, he now has the idea that things can be done to his possessions. And so he gets the other idea, you see, that — two other ideas: One, that he can't have, and he better not have possessions is one of them. And the other one is that he can be hurt or has been hurt. And then he will tell people this. But he doesn't tell them the actual circumstance. He tells them another circumstance. He says, „When you sneeze in my face, it causes terrible pain in the back of my head. 1 wish you wouldn't do that.“ It does?

I asked somebody this last night. I refused to audit somebody last night. Somebody was sitting there just begging to be audited, see? They didn't quite realize it, but they were really begging to be audited. And I kept asking him what was so important about it. And I kept asking him this and that. The person was begging to be audited because the person kept trying to persuade me that I had been guilty of an overt act toward the person. Never laid hands on the person in my life — never shot him, never did anything to him. You know? Didn't ever hit him, kick him, nothing. And that's all I told him. I said, „Now, let's look this situation over very carefully. Have I ever beaten you?“

And the person said, „Huh! No.“

I said, „Have I ever gouged an eye out?“

„No.“

„Have I ever torn an ear off?“

„No.“

„Did I ever kick you in the stomach?“

„No.“

„Did I ever feed you poison?“

„No.“

„Did I ever cost you your home and mother?“

„No.“

„Well, why is it, then, every time I ask you something or say something to you here, you flinch?“ This was a hell of a problem. The person sat there and chewed the corner of the napkin, and was very fussed up about the whole problem. And finally extricated himself from the fact that I'd never done this to him. It was a horrible thing for him to realize, because it was a much less complex situation. And I refused to let him have a complex situation. Now, that was just mean of me. That was all there was to it. It was merely mean of me. I wasn't auditing him. Actually, probably dropped his tone, but increased his ARC with me. He had to go find somebody else to beat him up. Get the idea? I just refused to let him put me in the role of executioner, and we had an entirely different kind of an activity going on than he expected.

In view of the fact that this person never had any processing, it was quite remarkable that he was almost all the time in session. And in view of the fact he was associating with people who aren't auditors, I pity him. That'd be pretty grim, wouldn't it? Always in session. „Look what you have done to me. Do something about it“ — standard dramatization, see?

Well, all right. Now, that was a mean thing to do to this person, but I had peace. That was the only thing I was asking for. Undoubtedly dropped this person's general tone here, for a little while. But what would I have done if I'd really wanted to have improved the person's health? What would I have had to have said? Had to have said something else.

I would have done an entirely different approach. It would have been ten times as effective. Except, I couldn't count on the person's unhypnotic state. I couldn't count on this, so I didn't do it. If it'd been a Scientologist talking to me, why, I just would have cut loose. Person starts begging for a motivator, see? Just begging for the motivator. He kind of „You know what you've done. And that certainly disturbed things. And your demand that this file series get... I don't know, I've already worked day and night for a week.“ You know, that kind of thing — somebody who would just stand there, begging for a motivator, and so on. I don't do this, but I could do this; it'd be quite effective: I'd simply say, „Well, that's nothing compared to what I did to you last week!“

The person says, „Did to me last week? What do you mean?“

„Oh, you remember what I did to you last week. Do you remember my kicking you down the stairs, and then leaping the whole flight, and landing exactly on the middle of your spine and breaking it? Why, you just got out of the hospital yesterday. How could you forget?“

The person would have to get rid of that one, see? They'd say, „Ah, come on!“

So we have this mechanism of more game, more complexity, more problem. And that is the direction you audit in. If you audit in the direction of more game, more complexity, more problem, why, you bring people upscale. If you just insist that there wasn't a game, I'm afraid that you may disconnect from this particular dramatization, but you don't handle them as people. Get the difference?

I didn't want to handle this person last night. I don't see any reason I have to handle everybody I meet. I knew a fellow driving a truck down the road the other day. I wasn't handling him; I wasn't driving his truck for him. Honest. I... I — driving along behind him. He was driving his own truck. He run hisself into the ditch. I didn't do it. Honest! I really didn't. I mean, I didn't drive him into the ditch. In fact, his steering wheel actually was too greasy to get a good grip on; it was impossible to have turned him over on that side road. And that he was going five miles an hour had nothing whatsoever to do with it. I wasn't even mad at him. I was containing my anger very, very nicely. I didn't have a thing to do with it. And besides, he just ran over in the ditch a little bit. You know?

Now, that’s the kind of conversation you want to suspect from a preclear. „Say, I never did anything to my mother, and she was always very mean to me. I never did anything to her at all. I was always good to her.“ Daaah! Funny part of it is, is the person really believes this. There's something wrong with this. It'd be impossible to be a child to a mother without raising hell with them. See, it's just not possible to be good to a mother.

Birth. Take birth, for instance, so on. Well now, a thetan tells you he didn't do that. He appropriated the product! The thetan appropriated the product of birth — had something to do with it. It's connected.

There's always the protesting preclear. Now, you get a preclear who has systems of protest. What do you do about these things? More game, more problem, more complexity, and always in the direction of a games condition. Always audit them with the preclear at cause and something else at effect. „You make your body stop. When I say stop, then you make your body stop.“ See? Never this: „When I say stop, why, the body you're running will stop.“ You always put it on a games condition basis: „You make your body stop.“ That doesn't just put them on self-determinism, that puts them on a game condition.

Self-determinism, by the way, is a game condition. Narrowing down and individuating one's ability to control his environment, of course, renders things terribly complex, because it leaves all of these things out of control. See? It's very simple to control everything in the environment: Just stop it and leave it that way. The streets are all crowded and so on, and you can't stand the confusion (you decide you can't stand it; you postulate that for the next five minutes you can't stand it), just stop everybody. Just stop them there.

Then you'd be a good thetan if you also stopped and preserved them — and we've added in complexity. Next thing you know, you wouldn't be able to stop a whole street full of people at one postulate. You'd have slipped. You see why? You got too many other things to keep your eye on at the same time. You would be thinking of the sanitation department — its protest at the bodies when they started to rot, so on. You'd avoid this and avoid that and so on. You got a complex game going.

Now I'll give you a process — give you a specific process that takes care of this, completely aside from the rationale of communication. I gave you one. It's „How many vias could you communicate to that thing on?“ Just any semblance of that problem. „In order to tell that person standing over on the counter the time of day, how many people could you tell to tell other people before the message would have arrived at that person standing on the counter?“ See, that'd be vias by terminals. You get the idea?

Because the actual complexity is a Gordian knot called communication, and it's communication that you're cutting apart. If it was just complexity that you were worried about, we would have all the complexities of the universe to worry about. We have complexity in only one part, and that's communication — complexity of communication. And you cut the Gordian knot of complexity of communication, and you've done it. Now, that's one technique. It's a very, very good technique.

Another technique — a whole series of techniques — is „Mock up a confusion.“ Now, that run, without any understanding on your part at all, or the preclear's, and so on, will still work, oddly enough, because it handles rest points and stable data, which are comparable to rest points and confusions and random data. You see? It handles this. But there's another way to run it, and that's simply: „Mock up a worse confusion. Well, that's fine, but can't you make a confusion that's worse than that? Well, that's good. Good. You did do that. All right, that's fine. Now mock up a worse confusion than that. All right. Now mock up a worse confusion.“ See?

And he'll tell you eventually that he can't think of anything worse. And he'll do all sorts of things. But he will do it. And eventually, what do you know? He will do this technique of „Mock up a worse confusion“ by mocking up somebody mocking up a worse confusion, or something like this. He'll suddenly come back to fundamentals.

And now I'm going to give you a key process, which is one of the heftiest assist processes that I've ever discovered. And this is a killer. Do you notice games conditions contains enemies and individualities? Well, enemies and individualities — you invent an enemy on a preclear for a while. Have him invent enemies and he does real well. „Invent worse enemies,“ he does better. But „Invent an individuality that could cope with it“ and „Invent a comparable circumstance,“ now that would be quite interesting. That will blow engrams — that technique, just as it is. See?

The fellow is stuck in birth. All right. „Invent an individuality to cope with it. Invent a comparable circumstance. Invent another individuality to cope with it. Good. Invent another comparable circumstance. Invent another individuality to cope with it. Invent another comparable circumstance.“ Do you get that idea?

All right. Now we run this complexity into it. You invent an individuality that couldn't cope with it at all, and invent a worse circumstance. Now, that is running it on a complexity. Do you have that? „Invent an individuality that couldn't cope with it at all,“ and „Invent a worse circumstance.“ You just exaggerate it in the direction of complexity. See?

So, you can take any good process and you can complicate it toward complication, with greater results on the preclear.

Thank you.

[End of Lecture]