There are five stages of Release. When one of these is attained the next one up can be run.

A preclear who has attained a stage of Release may not be run further on the processes of that stage or below or he will go back into his Reactive Mind.

All Releases however can have their problems handled, their withholds pulled, their ARC Breaks repaired and any Release at any stage can be audited on the exact processes of Release Rehabilitation.

For some fifteen years I have been studying, amongst other branches of philosophy, the subject of ART.

The states of Release differ in that one is more stable than another.

The reason for this is: Art is the least codified of human endeavors and the most misunderstood. What is Art? is one of the least answered of human questions.

The Reactive Mind (known also as the R6 Bank) can only be audited out by someone who is trained up to Class VI. When the Reactive Mind is fully audited out (erased completely), one has a Clear.

Art abounds with authorities. It was chosen because “that field containing the most authorities contains the least codified knowledge.” The obvious invitation is to answer the question and codify the subject. This has now been done.

When a Clear has been refamiliarized with his capabilities, you have an Operating Thetan (an OT).

The subject was originally brought up in a conversation with Donald H. Rogers at 42 Aberdeen Road, Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1950.

A Release, then, is pulled out of his Reactive Mind.

As this zone of human activity seemed to stand outside the field of Dianetics and Scientology, I thereafter worked with it on a casual basis.

A Clear has fully erased his Reactive Mind.

Having published 15,000,000 words between 1929 and 1941, I was not unacquainted with the arts. Since 1950 I have worked with other arts than that of literature in order to make an advance on the general subject of ART.

An Operating Thetan is one who is Cause over Matter, Energy, Space and Time and is not in a body.

I have made a breakthrough at last in this matter. And I find it is applicable to what we are doing and therefore also has practical value.

The degree and relative permanence of being pulled out of the Reactive Mind determines the state of Release.

To make it a matter of record rather than a filed sheaf of notes, I am publishing these findings as an HCO B. I also feel they will be of some assistance in forwarding Scientology.

There are numerous things that can pull one back into the Reactive Mind.

As in the case of all “pure research” (by which is meant study without thought of possible application) there is a sudden pay-off in these answers including the better dissemination of Scientology and the rehabilitation of the artist.

These are (1) Locks (2) Secondaries (3) Engrams (4) The Whole Time Track.

My incidental studies in the fields of photography and music materially assisted these discoveries.

Approaching the state of Clear has also assisted in comprehending this rather vast subject of ART. It is adventurous to state one has solved such a sweeping subject but here at least are the fundamentals and basics.

By reducing locks as in Levels 0 to IV, we then remove the ability of locks to pull the being back into his R6 Bank.

The following are rough notes but are in fact the basis of that branch of activity we call ART.

Locks are mental image pictures of non-painful, but disturbing, experiences the person has experienced. They depend for their force on secondaries and engrams.

Thus, one who has had his locks reduced is a First Stage Release.

ART is a word which summarizes THE QUALITY OF COMMUNICATION.

When a being has had the secondaries and engrams reduced, he is far less likely to be pulled into the Reactive Mind than if he has just had their locks reduced.

It therefore follows the laws of communication.

Secondaries are mental image pictures containing misemotion (grief, anger, apathy, etc). They contain no pain. They are moments of shock and stress and depend for their force on underlying engrams.

Engrams are mental image pictures of pain and unconsciousness the person has experienced.

Too much originality throws the audience into unfamiliarity and therefore disagreement, as communication contains duplication and “originality” is the foe of duplication.

When these are reduced, one has a Second Stage Release.

TECHNIQUE should not rise above the level of workability for the purpose of communication.

Bits and pieces of the whole track remain after the locks, secondaries and engrams are reduced. These bits inhibit the being from recovering knowledge.

PERFECTION cannot be attained at the expense of communication.

The Whole Track is the moment to moment record of a person’s existence in this universe in picture and impression form.

Seeking perfection is a wrong target in art. One should primarily seek communication with it and then perfect it as far as reasonable. One attempts communication within the framework of applicable skill. If perfection greater than that which can be attained for communication is sought, one will not communicate.

When these bits are cleaned up, a being is a Third Stage Release.

Example: A camera that shoots perfectly but is not mobile enough to get pictures. One must settle for the highest level of technical perfection obtainable below the ability to obtain the picture.

The order of importance in art is:

When the pc has taken the locks off the Reactive Mind itself, using R6EW, he attains Fourth Stage Release.

1. The resultant communication,

2. The technical rendition.

When the entire Reactive Mind has been erased and the person is again wholly himself, one could call it a Fifth Stage Release.

2 is always subordinate to 1. 2 may be as high as possible but never so high as to injure 1.

But that is really Clear.

The communication is the primary target. The technical quality of it is the secondary consideration. A person pushes 2 as high as possible within the reality of 1.

A being can take a lot of trouble with 2 to achieve I but there is a point where attempting 2 prevents 1.

When a being once more has recovered his full abilities and freedom, a state much higher than Man ever before envisioned is attained. This state is called Operating Thetan.

If the ardures of 2 prevent 1, then modify 2, don’t modify 1.

Perfection is defined as the quality obtainable which still permits the delivery of the communication.

Too much time on 2 of course prevents 1.

[This HCO B is replaced by HCO B 9 February 1966, Release Grades, page 141.]

It is usually necessary to lower a standard from absolute perfection to achieve communication. The test of the artist is how little it is lowered not how high it is pushed.

A professional in the arts is one who obtains communication with the art form at the minimum sacrifice of technical quality. There is always some sacrifice of quality to communicate at all.

The reduction of mass or time or impedimenta or facilities toward the ability to render a result is the exact measurement of how much technical perfection can be attempted. The rule is if one is being too perfectionistic to actually achieve a communication, reduce the mass, time, impedimenta or facilities sufficiently low to accomplish the communication but maintain the technique and perfection as high as is reconcilable with the result to be achieved and within one’s power to act.

No communication is no art. To not do the communication for lack of technical perfection is the primary error. It is also an error not to push up the technical aspects of the result as high as possible.

One measures the degree of perfection to be achieved by the degree of communication that will be accomplished.

This is seen even in a workman and tools. The workman who cannot accomplish anything but must have tools is an artistic failure.

”Art for art’s sake” is a complete paradox as a remark. “Art for the sake of communication” and “Attempted perfection without communicating” are the plus and minus of it all.

One can of course communicate to oneself, if one wishes to be both cause and effect.

One studies art only if one wishes to communicate and the search for artistic perfection is the result of past failures to communicate.

Self-improvement is based entirely on earlier lack of communicating.

Living itself can be an art.

The search for freedom is either the retreat from past failures to communicate or the effort to attain new communication. To that degree then the search for freedom is a sick or well impulse.

Searching for and discovering one’s past failures to communicate an art form or idea about it will therefore inevitably rehabilitate the artist.

However, due to the nature of the Reactive Mind, full rehabilitation is achieved only through releasing and clearing.

How much art is enough art? The amount necessary to produce an approximation of the desired effect on its receiver or beholder, within the reality of the possibility of doing so.

A concept of the beholder and some understanding of his or her acceptance level is necessary to the formulation of a successful art form or presentation. This includes an approximation of what is familiar to him and is associated with the desired effect.

All Art depends for its success upon the former experience and associations of the beholder. There is no pure general form since it must assume a sweeping generality of former experiences in the beholder.

Artists all, to a greater or lesser degree, need comprehension of the minds and viewpoints of others in order to have their work accepted; since the acceptability of a communication depends upon the mental composition of the receiver. Scientology then is a must for any artist if he would succeed without heartbreak.

In any art form or activity one must conceive of the beholder (if only himself). To fail to do so is to invite disappointment and eventual dissatisfaction with one’s own creations.

An artist who disagrees thoroughly with the “taste” of his potential audience cannot of course communicate with that audience easily. His disagreement is actually not based on the audience but on former inabilities to communicate with such audiences or rejections by a vaguely similar audience.

The lack of desire to communicate with an art form may stem from an entirely different inability than the one supposed to exist.

Professionals often get into such disputes on how to present the art form that the entirety becomes a technology, not an art, and, lacking progress and newness of acceptance, dies. This is probably the genus of all decline or vanishment of art forms. The idea of contemporary communication is lost. All old forms become beset by technical musts and must nots and so cease to communicate. The art is the form that communicates not the technology of how, the last contributing to the ease of creating the effect and preservation of the steps used in doing it. A form’s reach, blunted, becomes involved with the perfection alone, and ceases to be an art form in its proper definition.

A communication can be blunted by suppressing its art form: Example, bad tape reproduction, scratched film, releasing bits not authorized. This then is the primary suppression.

On the other hand, failing continuously to permit a non-destructive communication on the grounds of its lack of art is also suppressive.

Between these two extremes there is communication and the task is to attain the highest art form possible that can be maintained in the act of communicating. To do otherwise is inartistic and objectionable.

These, therefore, are the fundamentals of ART.

[See also HCO B 29 July 1973, Art, More About, Volume VIII-196, which refers to this HCO B.]