There are three known grades of Clear.

The fourth thing an auditor has to do (in that order) is to handle an origin from the preclear. It is actually true that when you are handling Tone 40 processes, you do not handle the preclear’s originations. But if you will look on the HCA/HPA chart you will find that these Tone 40 processes are in the minority amongst processes, and in all processes not Tone 40 a preclear’s originations are handled — remember that. Don’t let anybody talk you out of it. If you are handling Tone 40, which is just pure, positive postulating, you, of course, are not worried about anybody’s opinion, origin, condition, or anything else — you simply want him to do certain things, and he finds out that his beingness can be controlled and therefore that he can control it.

The first is the Book One Clear. This is called Mest Clear. An adequate description of this is to be found in Book One.

What do we mean by an origin of the preclear? He volunteers something all on his own; and do you know that is a very good index of case — whether the person volunteers anything on his own? An old-time auditor used this as a case index. He said, “This fellow isn’t getting any better. He hasn’t offered up anything yet.” You see, he didn’t originate — he didn’t originate a communication. Do you know that that is the hardest thing to get an organization to do: to originate a communication?

The second is a Theta Clear. This has been known for years but has only recently been obtained through engram running as taught in the 5th London and 21st American ACCs and is done in the Processing Department of the Central Organization.

You actually could- work in the direction of getting a preclear to originate a communication, in spite of the fact that you just previously were running him on Tone 40 processes. He originated the communication that his arms and legs felt like they were just going to fall off, and you said, “Give me your hand — thank you.” Preclear says, “My head’s coming off now! I know it’s going to fall on the floor!” Auditor: “Give me your hand — thank you.” Good Tone 40. But on control of person, the first two processes are Tone 40, but Book Mimicry and the next process up the line from it, Hand Space Mimicry, are not Tone 40, and originations by the preclear are not only handled but encouraged.

The third is called OT or Operating Thetan and is a rather esoteric level, hard to reach, hard to describe in full.

So remember that we have not lost out of the galaxy of processes the fact that the preclear is as well as he can originate a communication. That means he can stand at Cause on the communication formula. And that is a desirable point for him to reach. You see, in controlling people we are really only showing them that they can be controlled, that it is possible for their possessions to be controlled. And then they eventually decide that these are controllable and that people are controllable and that things are controllable and their bodies are controllable, and they say, “Wonderful! Look, I’ll try!” And before that they didn’t even try.

Any confusion about the state of clear is a confusion of these three terms: Mest Clear, Theta Clear and OT.

So we are controlling a person’s possessions or body only until this person then himself decides to take a hand in it, too. And then he finds out that control is possible. But most people don’t originate. Circuits originate, computers originate, compulsive outflows originate. And when you first start to use Tone 40 on a person you will apparently see originations — but they are not originations, they are restimulations being dramatized. There is a big difference between a restimulation being dramatized and an origination. It’s whether or not the thetan said it. Did he say it, or was it just a circuit starting up? Well, you can start up circuits and actually throw them into being and you will see that these are not originations.

An uninformed public thinks a Mest Clear should act like an OT with magical attributes. It is not enough that the general auditor can now approximate a Book One Clear. The public, striving for unattainable attributes, wants an OT who eats buildings. The two states if on the same scale are not the same states.

But when an origination appears in anything but a Tone 40 process, you handle it. And you must handle it well and conclusively. There are preclears who have had astonishing things happen to them, who have tried to communicate them to the auditor, who have failed to do so and have then sunk into apathy and just gone right on out of session because their communication origination was not handled properly by the auditor. There are instances of this, and many of them. Tone 40 processes do not particularly violate this. An understanding of what they are takes place rather rapidly with the preclear and he doesn’t expect you to. But if he has graduated into being a human being and he’s getting up there and he originates something and you answer it, now he’s liable to say the most astonishing things to you. And if you don’t handle them he’s liable to drop into apathy about the whole thing.

A Mest Clear knows he has reached the bottom rung of the ladder on his way up. He also knows the rest of humanity uncleared is below this state but that they don’t know that they are.

So you must handle them well because they’re always unexpected. I would say that unexpectedness actually should be part of the definition of an origination, because they are quite often completely off the subject, they take you completely by surprise, they are apparently not at all what you expected him to say. The fellow says, “Huh! I’m eight feet back of my head!” Well, what do you do? In the old days, we might have gone right onto Route One, but we don’t today — we handle the origination. (By the way, this used to be an old technical phrase, “He Q-and-A’d.” In other words, he did what the preclear did. Any time the preclear changed, the auditor changed. That is the deadliest crime in auditing. The preclear changes because he is being processed and the auditor changes the process. Q-and-A — the preclear changed, the auditor changed. Well, that isn’t what you do.) He says, “You know, the whole back of my head feels like it’s on fire.” Once upon a time we might have handled this. We might have gone right in there and said, “Oh, that’s very good.” We had finally gotten a somatic on this fellow and we would have handled it in some fashion or other and questioned him about it and audited it, and so on. But we found out that this stuck people on the time track. Therefore, we do not do that any more. So what do we do when he says, “The back of my head is on fire!” — do we ignore it? Well, if we are running Tone 40 processes, we ignore it. But if we are auditing any other process, of which there are many in CCH, we handle the origin. And an auditor who has not been trained to do this will often find himself very embarrassed.

A Mest Clear still thinks of himself more or less as a body and is more or less subject to one. All engrams are effectually keyed out without being examined. For practical purposes they are erased. He has excellent recalls. They may or may not be eidetic. Book One Clears are a bit below the Mest Clear standard of today.

But how about in the walk-away world — the world that is ambulant and moving around and spinning quietly, or noisily, as the case may be? Do you ever have to handle an origin in it? Well, I dare say that every argument you have ever got into was because you did not handle an origin. Every time you have ever got into trouble with anybody, you can trace it back along the line you didn’t handle. If a person walks in and says, “Whee! I’ve just passed with the highest mark in the whole school,” and you say, “I’m awfully hungry, shouldn’t we go out and eat?” — you’ll find yourself in a fight. He feels ignored. He originated a communication to have you prove to him that he was there and he was solid. Most little kiddies get frantic about their parents when their parents don’t handle their originations properly. Handling an origination merely tells the person, “All right, I heard it, you’re there.” You might say it is a form of acknowledgment, but it’s not; it is the communication formula in reverse. But the auditor is still in control if he handles the origin — otherwise, the communication formula goes out of his control and he is at effect point, no longer at cause point. An auditor continues at cause point.

If the person making the picture required in eidetic recall makes the picture, he has to know first what is in it. So why make a picture. A picture is memory on a via. So the argument about eidetic recall is a rather dull one at best.

So let’s look this over. The handling of an origin has a great deal of use and, until recently, it was the least pat step in Scientology. How did you handle an origin? And we finally found out. I finally had a cognition myself. I tried for a long time to communicate this to people and they still blundered on it occasionally. And I finally found out something that did seem to communicate.

It is not my purpose, thank God, to prove I was right. It is my purpose to blaze a trail into zones and heights Man has not known before. I can tell you only what is as I know it now. And I know that eidetic tests of recall do not prove a Mest Clear. Only freedom from keyed-in engrams proves a Mest Clear.

There are three steps in handling an origin. Here is the setup: The preclear is sitting in the chair and the auditor is sitting across from the preclear, and the auditor is saying, “Do fishes swim?” or “Do birds fly?” and the preclear says, “Yes.” Here is the factor, now, entering: “Do fishes swim?” The preclear doesn’t answer Do fishes swim, the preclear says, “You know — your dress is on fire,” or “I’m eight feet back of my head,” or “Is it true that all cats weigh 1.8 kilograms?” You see, wog, wog — where did this come from? Well, although it is usually circuitry or something like that at work when it’s that far off beam, it is, nevertheless, an origin. How do you handle it? Well, you don’t want the preclear to go out of session, and he would if you handled it wrongly, so (I) you answer it; (2) you maintain ARC (you don’t spend any time at it, but you just maintain ARC); and (3) you get the preclear back on the process. One, two, three. And if you spend too much time in (2), you’ll be doing wrong.

Theta Clear is another thing — much higher than a Book One or Mest Clear. This is a real triumph and I’m proud of it. The fact of a real Theta Clear is only a few months old.

What is an origin? All right, he says, “I’m eight feet back of my head.” It’s an origin; what are you supposed to do with it? Well, you’re supposed to answer it. In this particular case, you would say to him something in the order of, “You are?” (You mean something like, “I’ve heard the communication — it’s made an effect on me.”) Now, in maintaining ARC you can skimp that second one if you handle the third one expertly enough. The least important one is the second one, but the most deadly thing you can do is utterly to neglect the second one of maintaining ARC. That’s deadly. But you can skip it if you really punch it into the third one, which is to say, get him back into session. So he says, “I’m eight feet back of my head,” and you say, “YOU ARE???” (What he said really hit, you know.) He’s kind of wog-wog about this — he’s not sure what this is all about. You say, “You are?” and the fellow says, “Yes.”

A Theta Clear has no obsessive engrams whatever. They aren’t. But he can put back at will his reactive bank or any engram in it and blow it off again at a glance. Now that is news. A Theta Clear does not have to depend on the body line for his “survival.” He does not have engrams of any kind unless he creates them. He does not have to be in a head. And the state can be obtained in at least 80% of all cases in about 350 hours of auditing or more depending on the auditor’s skill. Only the Processing Department of the Central Organization or the graduates of the 5th London ACC or the 21st American ACC are doing this one.

“Well!” you say. “What did I say that made that happen?”

Mest Clear, however, is a way station on the road to Theta Clear or OT so it doesn’t much matter what auditor starts you on the way — your HAS co-auditor, a professional HCA, an HCS or BScn or a new ACC graduate. You’ll win with them all toward the same goal. Lately I even developed a co-auditing formula that reaches near Mest Clear.

“Oh, you said ‘Do birds fly,’ and I thought of myself as a bird and I guess that’s the way it is, but I am eight feet back of my head.”

OT, of course, remains theoretical and is reached through lower clear states.

“Well, that’s pretty routine,” you say — reassure him, maintain the ARC. “Now, what was that auditing question?”

So here we go. We built a bridge. And built it better than we hoped. It’s time to start if you’ve been hanging back. The best way to see this elephant*“‘Seeing the elephant’ — an old U.S. Army saying to new recruits going into action for the first time. In Scientology, we have this analogy: when the student auditor has seen the WHY of aberration, objectively and subjectively, we say ‘he’s seen the elephant’ — he’ll never again doubt the fact of an engram or the awesome implications of what he, the auditor, is able to confront and do with a preclear. He is now, in short, operational.” — Ability 103 is from inside!

“Oh, you asked me ‘Do birds fly?’ “

Clearing is wonderful conversational material. It is a better experience.

And you say, “That’s right. Do birds fly?” Back in session, you see.

You can’t do this: You can’t put it into a can and put a label on it and say This is how you do it always, because it’s always something peculiar; but you can say these three steps are followed.

I will give you another example. You say, “Do birds fly?” and he says, “I have a blinding headache.”

“You do?” you say. “Is it bothering you (that’s the ARC) too much to carry on with the session (and you’ve reached number three at once)?”

“Oh no — it’s pretty bad though.”

“Well, let’s go on with this, shall we?” you say. “Maybe it’ll do something with it (maintaining ARC).”

He says, “Well, all right,” and you’re right back onto it again: “Do birds fly?”

One of the trickiest of these is “What in my question reminded you of that?” The fellow says, “Well, so and so,” and he explains it to you and you say, “Well, good. Do birds fly?” and you’re right back in session again.

Three parts, and — that is the important thing — you have to learn how to handle these things.

At the same time that we are doing this, we can get much more complicated, particularly toward the end of the session, by just trying out a communication bridge. A communication bridge from “Do birds fly” to “Do fishes swim” and from “Do fishes swim” back to “Do birds fly.” A communication bridge is a very easy thing. It simply closes off the process you were running, maintains ARC, and opens up the new process on which you are about to embark. If you could look at it as two V’s, the points facing each other, with a line between the bottoms of the two V’s, you would see that one process, which you have been running, is closed on down to nothing, easily, by gradients. You say, “How about running this just three or four more times, and then we’ll quit — okay?” We give him warning, you see, that we’re closing the process off, and we do run it three or four more times. Then we say, “How are you doing?” (We never ask people, by the way, “How do you feel?” — this as-ises havingness.) We say, “How are you doing?” and he says, “Oh, not too badly,” and so on. “Well, did anything happen there while we were running ‘Do fishes swim?’ “ And he says, “I don’t know. I got a little bit of reality — I felt like a fish for a couple of moments there.” Auditor says, “How do you feel about that?” and so on. “Is it okay? Are you doing all right now?” The preclear says, “Not too badly.” You say, “Well, let’s go over onto ‘Do birds fly?’ It’s an interesting process and it just goes like this — I ask you, ‘Do birds fly’ and you answer me. How about running that?” and he says, “Well all right, okay.” You establish agreement again and away we go. Actually, it is three contracts in a row. The first contract is: to stop the process we are running; the next contract is: we are in an auditing session, binding this as a continuing auditing session; and the third contract is simply: we have a new process we would like to run, and I want your signature on this dotted line that you will run it. That actually is a communication bridge. The reason we do this is so a preclear will not be startled by change, for if we change too rapidly in a session we stick the preclear in the session every time. We give him some warning; and that is what a communication bridge is for.

The handling of origins, however, is most important. Learn how to handle origins, and you’ll never be taken by surprise by a preclear. You’ll be right in there pitching, and the session will keep on. I have seen an auditor sit with his mouth open for twenty or thirty seconds after some preclear said something fantastic. He just didn’t know what to make of it. Well, you answer it, you maintain ARC, and you get him back in session.