What have you done?

Look! You're trying to get the guy to recover from other-determinism, aren't you? You're trying to get him to recover from other-determinism. And at that point you inject a whole big snoot full of other-determinism! Look, that's what's wrong with the thing - the period, the incident is so other-determined that the individual can't even confront it! It's just a chimera, it's a delusion, it's a hallucination. Lord knows what's going on. But, so help me, it's changing. And that's what you want. Change, not accuracy.

You're not there making sure that history is repeated on this fellow's track the way history should be. You're there to make sure that the individual's ability to confront history changes. Well, don't be surprised if history changes in process.

Now, the common auditor error - the common auditor error is to repress change because of incredulity. And it's just these first two laws that I gave you there.

One: You've got to look at the person's reality, observe it, see it for what it is. That is his reality, you see.

And then, Two: Take enough responsibility for it to change it up to a better confronted reality, You see? Those are the two things you're supposed to do. So anything else that is introduced over on the top of this simply defeats the whole purpose of auditing - as neat as you please.

All right. To assess a case then, it is necessary to find a terminal in the case that the individual has some reality on. But that's his reality. He has some reality - he has on this terminal, and that, if run, will change the other-determinism factor of the case.

"Therefore," you say, "everybody who did anything for the PC is, therefore, somebody who caved the pc in." No, that's an aberration too.

You're looking for somebody who's been bad cause and has overwhumped the PC. You're looking for bad cause. And when you're looking for bad cause you're looking for physical duress. You're looking for something that's pretty tense.

Now, when you assess a case you're looking for the other-determinisms which, if relieved, will permit self-determinism to occur. Definition, technical. When you're assessing a case you're looking for other-determinism which, if relieved, will permit self-determinism. Do you see this?

All right. Mistake number one - first mistake: Pick up all the pro-survival valences of the pc and run them out, leaving the pc sitting with nothing but bad valences. Why do you think he picked up a pro-survival valence? It's to counterbalance some valence which is caving him in. A funny part of it is, removing any valence or removing any other-determinism could be expected to bring about some gain. Could be expected to, but not when it's the last pair of crutches!

Now, you and I know that crutches are not going to do anything but make a person more dependent in walking. The individual should seek to walk without crutches, right? So therefore let's walk up to every lame man or every person who's had his legs amputated or something like that and violently grab the crutches and yank them away from him and burn them up. Now, what's going to happen? Somebody's going to fall down! And that's just what happens when you pick up the pro-survival crutches off the case. He falls down.

There's some very amusing anecdotes that can be told along this line. I won't occupy your time. But one of them I well remember, was a girl that absolutely was certain that it was Mother. This was an old research case - absolutely certain that it was Mother that had done this girl in. So they ran Mother out totally on old valence processes. Got rid of the old girl utterly. And the pc curled up in a ball. Prenatal position, but they just got through running out Mother and Mother no longer dropped on an E-Meter. But here was the pc in a ball in a prenatal position, all curled up in a ball of other-determinism.

Hah! Father up to this time had been described by the pc as all sweetness and light

and the person who really gave the pc a hand. And Mother had been described as the arch-vicious villain. And just on the surface of it, obviously it was Mother. But when Mother was audited out the pc got worse.

What were the facts of the case? The facts of the case were that while curled up in the back end of a car driven by Father who got dead drunk, there was a great big automobile accident. A smasher. A beauty. And Mother was quite peeved, and that was where the pc was stuck. She was stuck in an incident. You get the idea? Here was an incident and the incident was just totally misread clear across the boards. Ran out vehicles and automobiles and a few things like that and the incident straightened right on up and looked good. You get the idea?

But here the pc was busy giving evaluation and the auditor really didn't take any responsibility for the evaluation at all. Merely took the pc's evaluation! What kind of a reality was this? No, there's nothing rational about a person who is irrational, including his evaluation of his own case. Every time you buy one of those things, stand by for trouble.

Now, it's slightly different with a Scientologist who knows his business and been auditing a lot of people and has maybe been audited a bit on something or other and has seen what it is that hasn't been finished off. He says, "This is what's wrong."

Well, if we never look at cases we say, "Well, this Scientologist who's in pretty good shape is thinking the same way as a non-Scientologist who is crazy as a mouse," you see, "and therefore we can't accept this Scientologist's assessment of case or what he knows happened on the track. We've got to treat it the same as we would treat a psycho's assessment of the case." You get the idea?

So we've violated one of these basic rules that I've given you, we haven't looked at the reality of the situation. The individual has been audited on this somewhat, he has looked at his track, he does recognize what the factors are. Well, that's no reason to slam him in the teeth every time he says, "I think it's Pop." He's had enough of a look at it. But that is also no reason to run Pop. You See? You are the auditor, you've got to take enough responsibility for the case to resolve it.

Well, what about this. Assessment. We're looking, basically, for bad cause, which means cause calculated to undermine the self-determinism, independence, good health and continued survival of the pc. That's what we're looking for. We're looking for bad cause.

And we'll find at that time, as we assess this thing, that as we pick up the individual necessary to resolve the case in this lifetime, to enter the case with Overt-Withhold Straightwire or some such process calculated to get somebody's reality up and get them at cause-point and so forth. When we go into the case, this is going to show up variously on an E-Meter, but it's certainly going to show up differently.

Now, I had an auditor the other day tell me something very amusing. It was amusing to me, it wasn't amusing to him. He had observed this mechanism directly, had looked it square in the teeth and had turned around and walked off.

He said, "It's the most remarkable thing. We keep processing this fellow and keep processing this fellow and keep processing this fellow on this person and that person he's known and so forth, and we still don't get rid of a funny manifestation."

"What manifestation is that?" says I.

"Well, all I do is say the word 'priestess' and he goes instantly to female Clear. E- Meter reads instantly at female Clear every time we say 'priestess.' And we audit his father and we audit teachers and we audit anybody and everybody that we can find on the whole case and everything's going along fine. He's just getting lots better, you know, but all we have to do is say, 'priestess,' and he goes to female Clear. And I thought that was very amusing and I thought you would be interested in it. The person's finishing up his intensive very shortly and. . ." Oh!

Look, look! What makes the E-Meter read somebody else? Very obvious to you, isn't it? Priestess. Holy cats! Priestess read. Look, it turned so other-determined that the E-Meter reads priestess - doesn't read preclear. And man, when you can find one that reads Pop or when you can find one that reads Rover the dog, and doesn't read the pc, you've got it.

Now you're going to ask me, "Well now, what question do you ask the person to get him to get the exact answer which gives you the total thing?" And so forth. Well, I'll tell you what question I ask you. How much responsibility are you willing to assume for the case and how much lookingness are you going to do? There is no trick question, because any trick question that you ask is simply a patch-up for an understanding. It's just a substitute for an understanding.

Now, naturally, you could have - we were just discussing this a short time ago. There's - as we come up scale from a long way down on the Emotional Scale we get shame, then we get blame, then we get regret and then we get failure. Right? Well, possibly, down below failure is pity, but how far below? I don't know. I don't know what point it is because I haven't studied it at this instant.

But certainly somewhere below that is 'forget'. Forget is along there. But forget on what dynamic? Now, you've got your dwindling scale of inverting dynamics, that's forget on dynamics - individuation from the various dynamics. Forgettingness is cutting into the case. He's more and more blocking out, obliterating, excluding from his view and occluding this individuality and so forth, until he finally gets to himself. And he obliterates himself and substitutes somebody else.

Man, that's the one we want! That's the one we want! We're going to look right down our air gun sights or our sixteen-inch atomic warhead shell sights and we're going to let him have it right in the eye. That's the one we want.

Why? It's other-determinism, isn't it? And we's gonna have to establish some self- determinism on the points of other-determinism before we're going to get this pc anyplace. Right?

So don't come around and ask me for a trick question. There are many trick questions and all of them land you top scale. They land you above the person you want but they are very workable.

You say, "Is there anybody in your life you could be ashamed of?"

"Oh, yes," the individual says, "I was very ashamed of my - uh - well, I was very ashamed - I was very ashamed of my Sunday school teacher."

Good. Run it. You'll get someplace. You're already entered on the Emotional Scale so you'll increase it, of course, won't you?

Now, "Who do you blame - who do you blame most for your difficulties in life?" Look where that is on the Tone Scale. See? A person will give you somebody. Run it! You'll get some gain. It's all perfectly all right.

Now we could ask another trick question. "Is there anybody you regret having known?" Oh, the individual will come up with somebody. Run him! You'll get someplace. Perfectly all right to run.

"Whom do you consider most caused you to fail?"

"Oh," he says, "Uh-zuh caused me to fail." Run him. You'll get someplace.

But I'll let you in on something, these are high-scale characters for the people you really want, to knock the stuffings out of every case. If you take those, you will miss on at least four out of twenty cases, because one of those four, two of those four, three of those four and four of those four will all lie below shame. They will all lie below that, well below that.

Most of these cases, when dug for, lie below pity and lie below forget. You are sitting right there in the auditing room asking the person you are trying to run out, what to run out of the Pc, in every roughed-up case.

It isn't something back on the track. The engram you are looking for to resolve the case is not back on the track. It is sitting right in the pc chair. There it is! That is the engram necessary to resolve the case right before your eyes! And the person that you must run out of the case on Overt-Withhold Straightwire is sitting in the auditing chair informing on the pc in about 80, 90 percent of the cases you will audit. Spooky, huh? Fascinating, isn't it?

Now, this is not a universal panacea because it is above - it's a cut above many of these cases. There are faster ways to go about it. But this is always a slow grind one and will get some of these low percentiles. It'll better your percentage.

There is one valence description that you can use for all cases - "yourself." But because it's a lie it doesn't quite work all the time and it isn't totally smooth.

In Overt-Withhold Straightwire if you simply used instead of a person, "yourself," you would start hitting pretty well, you would get quite a ways. And it's something that you, every once in a while, will have to use and won't be able to use anything else than.

The hidden person is so abstruse, which is to say, self is so buried that you just use, "yourself," and the individual eventually does a flip. But you're depending on an accidental flip, see. It's - this is not a perfect answer, you understand? It's - but it is an answer of sorts. It's a better answer than most.

Why is it not a perfect answer? Well, let's ask - let's ask Judas what he really thought about Jesus - to go into Christianity parlance of that character. Get the idea? The person you're trying to run out is Judas and you're trying to salvage Jesus. See?

But what you've really got in the auditing chair is Judas - So we ask, you see - that's as far as the valence is concerned. The artificial valence, let us say, is Judas. The one you're trying to rescue is Jesus, see.

Here is Judas, sitting right in front of the auditor. And the auditor says, "Now, who would you have to get rid of to resolve the case?" But the pc, the thetan, you see, is Christ, see? So naturally, Judas is going to run out Christ. Get how backwards this thing is? See, you're going to get a circuit making nothing out of the thetan instead of the thetan making nothing out of the circuit.

Well, this thing can backfire, can't it? Then if you said, "Yourself, yourself, yourself," you're depending on the accidentalness of the thetan finally coming into view and so forth and it all happens because it's all written in the ancient Koran or something of the sort. Get the idea? Just - you're depending on an accidental.

No, it'd be much smarter - it'd be much smarter to locate the bad cause to the pc much more succinctly and directly. And that is located on an E-Meter by carefully watching the behavior of an E-Meter. And this is the best way I can tell you to do it. That valence which causes the E-Meter to behave differently than all other valences is the valence you want. That doesn't mean drop, it doesn't mean stick or it doesn't mean theta bop, you get the idea? It'd just behave differently and you won't miss.

There is a case known as the stage four case on an E-Meter whereby the needle just goes up and sticks and then falls and goes up and sticks and then falls.

And you say, "Did you murder your grandmother?"

And he says, "Yes." and the needle goes up and sticks and falls.

And you say, "Well, what is your explanation for your inability to explain this situation?"

And he says, "Well, actually, it's because I fell off a stepladder last year and I lost my memory. And the E-Meter goes up and sticks and falls.

And you kick him in the shins and the E-Meter goes up and sticks and falls. No matter what you do. That's a stage four needle. It's a technical term. And you can just bat your brains out, if you're using your brains, which you shouldn't be, trying to trying to get something on this meter.

Well, the one thing that'll register on the meter and break up the process of stage four - if you can find the other-determined valence which is sitting right in the chair in front of you, the E-Meter will register differently. It's too much on the button. The actual existence of that artificial valence of bad cause is too tenuous, it's too easily broken up. It actually is the easiest thing on the whole case to attack, if you could just find out what it was. Get the idea?

I don't know how anybody stays insane. But that's of an experience, many experiences of being able to punch the button that caused them to be insane. And the exact button punched, see - exact mechanism tripped on the case and they say, "Ha-da-da-da." They couldn't make it and put it back together again before it was gone. You see?

This individual's wheezing with asthma and wheezing with asthma and wheezing with asthma - you hit the exact reason he's wheezing with asthma and, bang! He says, 'Ahuh! Huh. That's much better." Hunh! Hunh-hunh hunh. Hunh! Hunh-hunh. I don't see - you'll notice them all trying to do this when you cost them something suddenly they try to get it back. You know? Hunh! Hunh-hunh. Hah-hah. They have no choice but to go on breathing normally. Very disappointing.

Now, you can understand a lot about cases, understand a tremendous amount about cases, if you understand that the mechanism of self-invalidation is mixed up with every computation. Because the bad cause valence which is dominant on the case is seeking to make nothing out of the individual - the thetan, you see. But the thetan is actually fighting for some type of determinism or control over a bad cause factor.

And you've got a fight consisting of at least two terminals, one synthetic and one live the thetan's alive, the other's synthetic. It's being created by the thetan, yet he doesn't know why he's creating it.

The reason he's - the reason he's busy creating it is very simple. That's because he doesn't know he's creating it. Because - why? Because he's not taking any responsibility for what he's doing with regard to this. So, of course, he started creating and now he takes no responsibility for creating it so, therefore, he still keeps on creating it.

Any way you want to go into this mad rat race, as to just why a thetan victimizes himself, is one of the most disheartening, amusing, tragic, sorrowful studies that you ever engaged in. When you start looking at this exact mechanism and you realize how idiotic the mechanism is and how difficult it must be to hold in suspension the exact character that'll kick his head off. You say, "Boy, that takes some doing!"

But there is a war and there's no such thing as self-invalidation. We use it, but use it carelessly. It's invalidation by a bad cause valence, who is apparently self.

So the pc starts to get well and suddenly a little circuit cuts in and says, "You're a dog and you're very sick."

And he says, "That's right. I'm a dog. I'm very sick."

See? In other words, he starts to get better and something makes him worse. Well, you remember something that makes him worse, but what might have started to get better? The bad cause valence might have started to get better. Did you ever stop to think of that? That you might improve the living daylights out of a bad cause valence? Well, the only way you can actually do it is to be yourself in the auditing chair very bad cause, and then you reinforce the valence.

All of these breaks - every Auditor Code break simply reinforces the bad valence. You understand? So it gives the PC the idea of being overwhumped.

What is, basically, the reactive bank? The reactive bank is the other-determinism which has overwhelmed the preclear. That's all the reactive bank is. That's a very fast statement but a very accurate one.

Now, you have to get the PC back to cause over this valence. And in order to do that you have to find the valence and then take enough responsibility yourself to persevere and continue on until you remedy it. Hence, the difficulties of assessment.

You're trying to find out what to look at so that you will know what's real to the pc. He doesn't know what's real. He's lost in some kind of a fog. So therefore, he has a foggy notion of something unreal and he says this is reality to him. And he's in an awful tangle about the situation.

But let's look back at this. It's the change of reading of a meter or change of demeanor or communication of the preclear or both that finds the exact valence necessary to resolve the case.

Now, if you remember, that prosurvival valences seldom overwhelm but are accepted madly, hungrily by the pc in order to overwhelm the contra-survival valence that he is stuck with.

Thus you find a fellow's been a soldier - he was a very bad actor on the battlefield. Usually after a battle, why, he went across the battlefield and carefully disemboweled all of the wounded or something like that, you know. And, well, why does a man do that? Well, he's himself been overwhelmed by such a valence so often, now he dramatizes this valence.

He can't talk to a woman, he's got to kill her. You see? He's just a thief and a murderer. Get the idea? This is the valence. This individual's packing this around and he doesn't know what he's doing and he's all - going wog wog. No reason to feel sorry for him, but certainly that is his state.

He is overwhelmed by a bad valence and he's dramatizing it to such a degree he can't do anything else because everything is overdetermined. You see? This bad cause just overdetermines any decent action he has. It's just immediately overwhelmed and the wounded are killed and the women are shot and, you know, that sort of thing is going on all the time.

All right. This individual goes staggering along with this mocked-up valence that is determining all of his ways and means. And he finally runs into a holy man.

And the holy man says, "Well, now what you should do is diet and live in a cave and so forth." You get the idea?

And the fellow says, "Boy, I'm so far off the groove that I'd better get hep." And he suddenly becomes a holy man.

It's never - you never fail to find some kind of a cycle of this character. If you just read one life at a time of man you don't find these complete cycles except in rare cases.

There's the case of the great writer, Dostoyevski. And he damned Christianity and he damned Christianity and he damned the church, and, you know, he was having a wild old time in his youth. And he was cutting everything to ribbons and chopping it all up. And finally we find him dying amidst recently written novels which praise Christianity. And we find him seeking for some kind of benediction from the church and all of this kind of thing. You know, he's totally mishmashed on it. He fought it and so forth and he eventually adopted some sort of a valence which overcame a valence.

Now, he was already dealing on other-determinism, you see. The only way this happens is the individual is already dealing with other-determinism and then he picks up another other-determinism of a better sort, almost on his own volition, to overwhelm the determinism which is victimizing him.

Now, you come along and you pick up the prosurvival determinism. It doesn't register very much, by the way. It isn't - doesn't register well like bad cause will, but you pick this one off and you leave the bad cause sitting there and the fellow gets sick. Get the idea? What you want to do is take the bad cause out and that'll blow all these other pro-survivals and the need for. See? That'll blow the works.

You can conduct numerous tests on this, if you want to, and you'll come to the same conclusion: that a prosurvival valence, some valence that the individual has adopted to help himself survive, if audited out, brings about a deterioration of the case or an unhappiness on the part of the person.

But a contra-survival valence, one which has inhibited the survival of the individual, if audited out, boosts him up into a condition where he doesn't any longer have to have a pro-survival crutch. You got the idea? In other words, you got to use some judgment along this line. You will find that there's no substitute for judgment in any of these actions.

Now, the comedy is that in assessment you are trying to find the most obvious characteristics which are underlying the social characteristics of the PC. And that's right in front of you and it's sitting right in the chair in front of you and it's the easiest thing you could possibly look at if you know what to look at. The engram necessary to solve the case is not back on the track. The engram - this is a different thing than a valence, you see - but the engram necessary to resolve the case is always sitting right in the chair in front of you. That's the engram necessary to resolve the case. You see?

Now, whether we can tackle that head-on, that's another question. Because can we find it directly or are there underlying things or are there several layers of these things? Yes, things keep showing up, but you always tackle that which is necessary to resolve the case. And that will change the characteristic of an E-Meter or change the manifestation of the pc.

E-Meter goes up a quarter of a dial and goes "pi-did-di-loo" and then drops, and then goes up a quarter of a dial and goes "pi-did-di-loo" and drops. And it's been doing this no matter what you ask him, this is what it did.

And you're going down the line and you say, "Now - now how about, how about your Aunt Grace. You mentioned your Aunt Grace a short time ago."

And the engram goes "zuuuuhh-ruuuuuhh," half a dial, rise and another rise and another rise and then all of a sudden shthooh! shthooh! shthooh! shthooh! shthooh!

And you say, "Well, how about your Uncle Oscar?"

And it does a kind of a rise and it's faltering and, "Well, how about your Uncle Oscar, do you reme - recall your Uncle Oscar?" And so on.

"Yes, I do." And once more this thing is going up and it's going pi-di-de-dum and fall, you know. And up and pi-di-de-dum and fall as before.

When we change the manifestation of the thing, when we went on to Aunt Grace, we have something that's peculiar. Now, it doesn't matter if we say, "Uncle Oscar, your grandpa, your grandma, your dog, priest, priestesses, kings, cats, coal heavers," anything else, it goes up and goes wa-da-di-da and falls. Or maybe it falls a little bit more on the others. You get the idea?

But every time we say, "Aunt Grace," it says, "Rhurrah rurr! rurr! nur! rhur, rhur, rhur, rhur." See? We got a different reaction. You got it! Audit it! Simple as that.

Why did it do this? Well, the thing which is sitting right there is the easiest thing to trigger. It's actually the thing which is obsessively unchangingly forever wrong with the pc, is the easiest thing to change. Oddly enough, it's the most tenuous.

Oh, you won't think so. The pc will cough and spit and writhe and die and cry and moan and turn on emotions and turn them off again and have a dreadful time trying to run Aunt Grace and, "Well, I never did a thing to her, that was the whole thing, you know, I never did anything to her. I mean I never did anything. At any time did I ever - you're asking me to think of something I did, I never did anything to her. I know I was good, I was sweet, I was kind, I was decent, I was just-just-you know, used to just give her all my pennies and all my money and every night I'd-d-and so on. And I'd just-just-lovely to her, just lovely to her and all she did to me. . ."

"Now, just think of one thing you did to Aunt Grace."