The role which an explosion plays in Scientology processing is as spectacular as the explosion itself.

To experience the impact of an atomic bomb, it is not necessary to know the mechanics of nuclear fission. Just so, a preclear need not know the Scientology mechanics of the explosion and its role in experience to benefit from the process. An auditor, however, should understand the mechanics underlying explosions in order to use the process to its fullest extent.

As we have gone forward in Dianetics and Scientology, we have come into possession of more and more significant evaluations of the interrelated factors of life. One of the simplest and yet one of the most significant emergences has been the factor of communications as the most important single factor in the triangle of Affinity Reality-Communication.

That thing which most closely approximates life itself in the material universe is the explosion. It changes things in space; it disorganizes MEST; it puts out particles from an apparent viewpoint; it alters compounds; and it has closely following its beginning a mirror effect, which is to say, that if one could stop an explosion in its flight, he would find that its center was sufficiently smooth to act as a mirror. It is, then, extremely simple for theta to identify itself with an explosion; and theta has done this to such an extent that science itself, at least at this writing, subscribes widely to the theory that life originates solely from the interactivity of chemical compounds. It could be said that the explosion itself is the basis for this mis-identification.

This ARC triangle, when I formulated it in Elizabeth in the early summer of 1950, resolved a great many things for auditors, but for the following three years much discussion ensued on the nature of the triangle itself. Generally, though, acceptance of it was swift and glad, for with its use came an understanding of human behavior, and with that triangle the tone scale itself, as it appeared in Science of Survival, was born. The earliest tone scale is in Book One, and is the first chart in that book.

The cycle of action of life in the MEST universe is the cycle of action of an explosion. In the first book on Dianetics you will find repeated the ancient Vedic formula that things are born, grow, decay and die. I have expanded this to include the end action. First there is nothing; then there is a something; the something increases, then decreases; and again there is nothing. Thus you have a complete basic cycle of action.

Communication did not certainly emerge as a more important factor than either Affinity or Reality until the inclusion in the science of new data concerning the physical universe. It then became apparent that communication was, in essence, the shift of a particle from one part of space to another part of space. In its crudest definition, this is communication. It does not matter whether the communication particle is a bullet, a word, a thought or a light particle. It is still communication if it travels from one part of space to another. Not even terminals are necessary in order to establish the existence of a communication, but in the accepted sense of the word, communication is something which emanates from one terminal and travels through space to arrive at another terminal.

There is a process known as Cycle of Action Processing wherein the preclear with creative mock-ups completes the cycles which he has begun and which he has not ended. It will be found that the preclear is trying to complete cycles of action begun often at some long forgotten time, and this accounts for some of the goals which he is rationally or irrationally attempting.

To achieve a full understanding of how communication is important, one need only do a very simple exercise to discover that almost any process involving itself with communication is powerfully effective on the mind.

The basic cycle of action of life itself in this universe is the cycle of action of an explosion. While this is not true of all universes, it applies very firmly to the MEST universe. Life has attempted since its inception to approximate things in this universe so as to effect a conquest of the MEST universe. That thing in the universe most like life is the explosion, and life, therefore, in this universe follows the cycle of the explosion. This will become adequately apparent in processing and upon further examination.

If one seats himself in one of two chairs which are set facing each other, and looks at the other empty chair, and then gets up and sits down in the other empty chair, then rises and sits in the first empty chair, then goes and sits in the second empty chair, he will realize that something can happen with this technique, even though no words are spoken and no thoughts thought.

An explosion begins with nothing, grows, recedes and at its end there is again nothing. Here we have the desire-enforcement-inhibition cycle and here, indeed, we have the pattern of all the cycles mentioned in the doctorate lectures and the book Scientology 8-8008.

In the most accepted sense of the word, communication expects a return. In other words, a particle going from Point A in space to Point B in space is expected, if Life has anything to do with it, to then of itself, or with an approximation of it, go from Point B back to A again. A complete communication cycle is from Point A in space to Point B, and Point B back to Point A. In order to demonstrate the degree to which this affects human behavior, one need only perform another simple technique.

It should be remarked that an explosion here is meant to include all varieties of impact including implosions and impacts themselves.

One takes two chairs, sitting some few feet apart, facing each other. He sits down in one of the chairs and looks at the empty chair and says, “Why don’t you answer?” He says this aloud to the empty chair. He then gets up and sits down in the empty chair and faces the chair he just vacated and refuses to answer. He gets up again and returns to the first chair, sits down, and says, “You must answer me.” He then removes himself to the second chair, then actually looks at the first chair, then says, “All right. What do you want to know?” He then gets up out of the second chair and goes to the first chair and says, “Are you all right?” He then removes himself to the second chair and says, “Yes, I am all right.” He will experience full relief if he does this.

Cellular life runs on a motor basis and very tiny explosions provide the heat necessary to run the cellular motors. In other words, life has used the explosion as the pattern of the motors which it builds both in the body and in engines such as those used in vehicles. Thus we have the interesting fact that an inability on the part of the individual to tolerate explosions or their symbols, such as noise, is reflected in a repression of the actual operation of the carbon-oxygen low-heat engine which the human body is.

Almost any computation of this chair act can be worked out, but the one having to do with answering is the most effective. This explains to you why a communication lag on the part of another person can be transferred as an aberration.

The overall life cycle of an individual in one lifetime approximates the explosion very closely. There is an apparent nothing; then there is something, and the something brightly expands up to its limit of expansion; then darkens, recedes and vanishes. Here we have pre-conception, birth, youth and, at the end of youth, the darkening period which continues on until death, at which time nothing is again present.

We discover, then, that the most basic communication is one which does not have any reason connected with it. It is simply the interchange of a particle from one space to another space, and, preferably, the return of that particle, or a particle like it, to the first position in space.

It should be closely noted that an explosion follows this cycle. There is nothing; then there is a point of intense light which, expanding, becomes larger but less brilliant; and at the limit of expansion, ceases to be bright, turns dark and dwindles. The particles which make up the explosion, even in its moments of intense brightness, turn black after the recession point is entered. You as an auditor should be intensely interested in this, for this is occlusion. The preclear is fixed in an engram — of what age we care not — where he is confronting the dark particles which have been formerly bright. Just as one is not hurt ordinarily by the immediate glare and blast of an explosion so one is not hurt by the energy of youth. But this receding, as in the case of an explosion, seems to leave one in the midst of the particles which have been crushed against him by the blast and which particles are painful. In any effort to run the blackness which surrounds a thoroughly occluded preclear, both the E-Meter and the preclear remark the pain which attends any shifting of that blackness. Similarly an individual who had been caught in an explosive blast would be caked with dark particles which, when disturbed, would give him intense pain.

Any communication is an anchor point. In order to understand the significance of an anchor point, one only has to realize the actual definition of space. For many centuries, in fact, during all of written history, man has not had an accurate, workable, definition of space. This omission is extremely peculiar, because he lives and exists continually in space. Of course, he really avoids space. He would much rather look at a person who is occupying a space, than the space surrounding the person. He is avoiding space to such a degree that he is always trying to work toward something, and is never trying to work toward the gain of nothing, except during some low-toned activity like war.

The explosion is apparently a very definite basis in all engrams and, for our purposes here, can be considered to be basic-basic. And it could be remarked with this PAB that basic-basic for all cases has been discovered and is being delivered into your hands to be run.

You can readily establish for yourself the correctness of this definition of space.

How does one run basic-basic? The process is intensely effective but is extremely simple and is even apt to be slightly monotonous. Thus the running of basic- basic is accompanied by inserting this process as a between-step in each of the Six Steps to Self-Auditing. One would run Step I of SSSA; would then run the cycle of the explosion as given here; would then run Step II of SSSA; would then run the cycle of explosion as given here; would then run Step III of SSSA; and so on. At each address to the problem of running the explosion, about five minutes would be devoted to auditing it, before one went on to the next step of SSSA. He would do that step of SSSA and would then devote another five minutes to the running of the cycle of the explosion. By doing this he would maintain the interest of the preclear and would markedly advance the case. There is no reason why the cycle of the explosion cannot be self-audited by one trained in Scientology.

Space is the viewpoint of dimension.

The cycle of the explosion is audited in brackets. This is to say that one has the preclear run the cycle as happening to himself several times, then run it as though someone else were running it and run the cycle that way several times, and then run the cycle for others confronting others. There is a mirror effect running the cycle of the explosion which gives some therapeutic value to having the bracket repeated as though the preclear were sitting about twenty yards in front of himself and doing it there, which is to say the preclear would be far in front of himself, putting it up for himself, having others put it up for others, and then others putting it up for himself; and then the preclear, where he is, would put it up for himself, would have another put it up for himself, and have others put the cycle up for themselves.

In the earlier editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, one discovers under the heading of “Time and Space” a long article which says bluntly that time and space are matters of psychology, not matters of physics. They must be resolved in the field of the human mind before they can be resolved by the physicists. This proves to be true, for with the introduction of space as a viewpoint of dimension, not only human behavior, but many intricate and complex problems in physics fall apart. Like all things worth knowing, this definition is idiotically simple, but tremendously workable. It is workable to the degree that its direct application in processing can produce, with no other aid, a clear.

What exactly is the cycle of the explosion? One gets the preclear to get nothingness, then a growing expansive whiteness, then turn the whiteness black, have the black dwindle and get nothingness again. You will readily see the similarity of this to Black-and-White Processing and, indeed, this is the furthest extension of Black-and White Processing, but is many times more effective and useful.

The first application of this definition in the theory of processing is to have the preclear sit in a chair and from “inside himself” reach out to the two upper corners of the room behind him and simply hold on to those corners, without thinking. If he does this for a long period of time, he will simply become better and better. He may have some bad periods while he does this, but nevertheless the technique inevitably results in a better condition. If just this technique and no other technique were used this person, at the end of perhaps fifty or eighty hours, would be in good physical and mental condition, if not a Theta clear.

In a case which has a direction reversal (confuses left and right) one should run the cycle backwards, having the preclear get first nothingness then blackness, then whiteness, then nothingness. This runs out regret.

In this technique we are putting theory directly into practice. More and more, we are beginning to use these two things as identities. Theory is practice, and that auditor or that instructor who is trying to separate theory from practice is missing a great deal in the science, and is not getting too good results in his practicing.

When a case has a weak heart or is chronically ill, one should be careful to run this cycle lightly and on such things as the chronic somatic only, or on words coming from the preclear’s mouth (in brackets), getting the words absent, then black, then white, then absent. At any event, be careful of a case that is very ill. On such a case perhaps SSSA or SOP 8 (omitting Step IV) would be best.

In essence, holding on to two comers of the room is making space, but again, this is maintaining a condition of communication. One has an anchor point of his own up in each of the two back corners of the room. One can just as well hold all eight corners of the room with an anchor point of his own and his eyes closed. However, this technique is often too vigorous for a preclear. He can also do a total spacation, which is to say, perform Step III of SOP-8.

This cycle, forward or backwards, used in brackets, betters chronic somatics well enough to prevent their return — an important gain, for chronic somatics sometimes return when audited with older techniques.

When we understand that communication is a fundamental, and is a first action of space, as well as the first action which takes place in space, we can advance our processing markedly. In the first place, we have an immediate index as to how aberrated our preclear may be. Preclears are aberrated if they have a communication lag.

In PAB No. 8 you saw that masses of mock-ups could be run in brackets, and that the most important of these were changes in space. The explosion is the most forceful change in space. Thus from the high echelon mechanic of theta’s purpose in changing things in space, one can go immediately into the first pattern theta uses in the MEST universe, which is the explosion, and he can run this in brackets.

They have a communication lag as long as they have no space. In other words, communication lag is inverse to the amount of space a person has. This may sound very technical, but it is only as technical as you care to make it. There is nothing simpler than sitting down and making with eight points a cube of space, and then moving a particle, which you have created, from one point to another point inside the space you have created. In this way, it is possible to understand both space and communication.

Remember to do the cycle of the explosion exactly as given. Nothingness, then growing whiteness, then the whiteness turning black, the black receding and nothingness again. It does not matter how poorly the preclear runs this. It does not matter if his nearest approach to whiteness is simply the idea that something might be white if he could see it.

Affinity and Reality have taken secondary roles because they are dealing with nothing more than the particle pattern or the number of viewpoints which agree upon the particle pattern. The pattern or velocity of the particle creates the degree of affinity, whether emotion or effort, and the reality depends upon the number of viewpoints which are in agreement upon the pattern of the particle. In both affinity and reality it can be traced that these are secondary to the condition of the existence of a particle and its change in space.

The cycle is run without effort, which is to say one does not permit the preclear to strain and use effort while running the cycle of the explosion.

In working Standard Operating Procedure 8 (as given in Issue 16-G of the Journal) one does not have in the seven steps an immediate index of the sanity of the individual. These are steps relating to techniques used at various levels of difficulty with techniques. These are not necessarily an indication of the sanity of a person, even though Number VII is marked “Psychotic” and Number VI “Neurotic.” VII and VI are so marked only to direct the auditor’s attention to the fact that these two techniques are so good that they can be used on any level of case and that he should not use other techniques on psychotic or neurotic people. These definitions of the steps are not to be construed by a preclear, if they are used upon him, to mean that he is psychotic. In order to have a theory of evaluation of cases which matches with the seven steps of SOP-8, it is necessary to move the preclear out of the seven steps and into a step gradient we could call A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

One can expect an occasional electrical discharge, but if the cycle of the explosion is run in brackets and in masses, this discharge will be minimal. It should be remembered that you are not trying to run out basic-basic, you are trying to feed an enormous hunger. In other words, you are trying to feed enough explosions into the bank to satiate the scarcity of explosions.

This step gradient would be the gradient scale of the communication lag of the preclear. This is a direct index of sanity. A, which compares to Step I, would be an almost instantaneous response, and G, at the other end of the gradient scale, would be a lag so long that it did not return. In other words, this is a communication-return index.

Any and all thinkingness, reasoningness, moralness and ethicalness is derived from the cycle of the explosion. This becomes immediately apparent for, while running the cycle of the explosion on circuit cases, it will be found that they tend to philosophize considerably. This should be ignored. But, for the interest of the auditor, it should be noted that all moralness and ethicalness are directed towards minimization of the wild uses of explosions. Things are right or wrong connected with explosions depending upon whether or not the explosion favors or disfavors oneself or one’s group.

In using SOP-8, if one exteriorizes an individual by using Step III, he often finds that the individual’s communication speeds up markedly or slows down. If he is to continue the practice on the preclear while the preclear is exteriorized, then it is necessary for him to re-evaluate the preclear. If the preclear remains at the same communication speed as before being exteriorized, the auditor simply goes on using the same step level which exteriorized the preclear. However, if the communication level of the preclear speeded up markedly, then the auditor shifts from the step which he used to exteriorize the preclear to a higher, faster motion step. If the preclear’s communication lag became greater when exteriorized, then the auditor moves over into the ABCDEFG scale, locates his communication lag, and moves back into SOP-8, using a lower level step such as VI or VII on the preclear, after the preclear has been exteriorized. As communication is the single most important factor today in processing itself, the auditor will do well to regard it as such.

Certainty is knowledge. Knowledge is basically an impact. After a sharp impact, it will be found that a person believes himself to be possessed of knowledge. When this is coupled with anaesthesia — which is to say, when a patient is anaesthetized and given a sharp and terrible explosion such as that occasioned by the stab of a surgical knife or the yank at a tooth — he will awake from the operation in the confusion of something nothingness and be certain that there is knowledge for him to discover.

After the brightness of an explosive blast, people wonder about the significance of the blast. The most uninformative thing there is is darkness. Darkness is greatly intensified in its blackness after a bright explosion has appeared. Thus, all the times one has looked into darkness and wondered whether or not something was there are, so to speak, collected together into this great wonder about the significance. The blackness is a concern about “What is the significance of it?” As an investigatory process but not for the purposes of therapeutic processing, one can have an occluded preclear simply run in brackets “What is the significance of it?” and he will find the preclear quite taken with the process, for the preclear is trying to do just this: he is trying to discover the significance of the blackness.

This simplicity brings upon us a very grim jest. Soldiers, after an explosive war, are deeply concerned with the significance of it all. Men, after operations or bad accidents, are quite often concerned with the significance of things. But, much more important than this, the entire field of learning is today dramatizing the significance of blackness.

The jest is terrible, when one realizes how he has been betrayed by education. Print is in black, the page is white. In order to read, one has to put forth an effort to suppress the whiteness of the page. This keys in gradually the suppression of the brightness of an explosion, a thing which is automatic, and which is succeeded by darkness. The black letters apparently contain knowledge — and actually often do — but they lead the poor student deeper and deeper into “What is the significance?” And the more he studies, the less he knows, until he is left at length in a complete mystery of darkness. You can run this just to see how it is, not for therapeutic value, and find that Effort Processing on reading will bring out letters on pages. One lets the blackness come through, one suppresses the whiteness of the page. Further, in that the scholar is seeking more knowledge, and in that the knowledge is written in blackness, the scholar is led to suppress the whiteness of the page consistently until he is suppressing all whitenesses. This makes him suppress the whiteness on the cycle of an explosion and thus moves him on the time track past the peak of youth long before his time. The continuous suppression of whiteness retards the metabolism of the body and reduces energy. Educators uniformly dramatize the cycle of the explosion, of course, for their field is thought, and the first thought consists of energy particles not of concepts. Thus the processing of concepts on an occluded case does not resolve occlusion. Processes which utilize and multiply energy are far superior to and infinitely more effective than processes which look for postulates or concepts.

And, mentioning education brings one to the most terrible thing which can happen to the thetan. This is to have a guarantee of no explosions. Once the thetan cannot have, either by manufacture or acquirement, explosions or facsimiles of explosions, he is finished. Prison is so terrible merely because it denies the thetan explosions. The interim after death is terrible to the thetan because it is without explosions. Education as done on the public school system guarantees long periods in cubicles which contain no explosions; and education free from the printed page for long years in cube space is easily the most destructive and effective method of destroying the vitality of a race and the initiative and energy of those who should be its leaders and is, to say the least, rather typical of the MEST universe.

This is the seventh of the series on self-auditing the auditor’s own case. These steps, of course, apply equally to the auditing of preclears. Our task at the moment, however, is to bring about as high a state of case as we can in all of our auditors. Not long ago an auditor in an area where many early auditors had practiced told me that the certificate was degraded in that area. This is not surprising if these auditors have not followed through with processes and have not given their own cases attention; but it is surprising that the auditor who wrote me has not taken over the responsibility of remedying this situation, for this auditor is quite well trained in Scientology. It would be extremely simple to discover the HDAs and HCAs in one’s own area and bring them together for the purposes of mutual betterment and use on them Short 8, Six Steps to Self-Auditing on a group level and, on those cases which are particularly occluded, cycles of explosions with SSSA. This would at once establish a better reality on the part of any auditor who has slipped away and would give him some of the benefit for which he hoped when he studied Dianetics. In fact, I cannot conceive a man being interested in Dianetics and Scientology and knowing these techniques and knowing as well that in his area there are people who have not utilized their training and yet who would not gather these people together — with a blackjack if necessary — and see that they receive group auditing. If one does not like to have himself compared unfavorably with an inexpert auditor who is yet practicing, then the thing to do is to bring up the case level of the inexpert auditor and to give him at least the rote procedure to use on preclears of SSSA.

Auditors have been quite confused here and there in the past because they got their techniques and news of new techniques by rumor and because they did not possess the insight to see that all of this work is of a piece and that the goals we are now attempting are simply higher goals than those we first attempted and yet, though higher, more easily attained. But it would be very difficult for an auditor to fail to understand all the uses involved in Six Steps to Better Beingness (PAB No. 7) and to use these steps with success. He would only have to know this much and he would have well cases. There is no slightest excuse today for an auditor not to get rapid results with Scientology. Because I continue to put out techniques is no reason that old techniques do not work. These new techniques are developed and codified out of experience in auditing by myself. They do the work faster. I am even getting complaints from auditors that some of these processes work so rapidly that after a one or two-hour session the preclears are so well they never come back for a second session. I cannot see how this would be hard on an auditor’s pocketbook unless the auditor had not applied the techniques to himself and was unable to go out and dig up preclears. There are today on earth in excess of two billion human beings. In that active auditors number about a thousand, this would seem to give one auditor a fairly good- sized practice. I myself doubt that I could audit more than two or three million people a year and still keep up with my hobbies. So I feel very sorry about these techniques working so fast and ruining people’s practices. (The auditor who wrote me the above should receive all this as humor, not criticism.)