Want to talk to you now about R1-6.

I want to talk to you now concerning the steps in Route 1, continuing with these steps on Route 1-8.

If we had no other process anywhere than "Have preclear hold two back anchor points of the room for at least two minutes by the clock," and we didn't have any other process but that, do you know we'd have more people well? That's one of these important processes; that's one of these interesting, important processes which has quite a lot of history back of it.

Here we have, in exteriorization, the main difficulty on the part of an individual in perception. He believes that it is dangerous to look; this is his main reason for not seeing. He believes that it is dangerous to hear, which is his main reason for not hearing.

This is making space. Here we're immediately and directly applying viewpoint of dimension.

Actually, there is a slightly better reason than these two main reasons. The main reason is he's a problem to himself if he can't see, and he's a problem to himself if he can't hear, can't smell, and so forth. We learned that under two-way communication, didn't we?

One of the things which a thetan is very afraid of is that he is going to get up against this stuff or put a beam on it — this MEST, you know — and stick. He's afraid this will happen to him. Also, he's lost his ability, to some degree, to make space. And this is a very essential thing — that he make space — because he won't have any space to exteriorize into unless he himself makes space. A person has as much space as he makes, not as much as he sees.

Well, he turns off his perception and this makes a very, very nice problem. And under Route 1-8, however, we discover most thetans have gotten into a condition where they believe that it is now so dangerous that it has ceased to be any kind of a problem. It's just simply very, very dangerous to perceive anything.

You just assume you've got space and you've got space; if you assume you don't have space, you don't have space. It's as easy as that.

And so this is simply a process which, when the individual is exteriorized, gets him to change his consideration.

But "the two back anchor points of the room" is an old process. It has many, many variations, and amongst those variations would- be "Now, find one corner of the room — upper corner of the room. Now find another upper corner of the room. You got those two? All right. Hold on to them. Now find a third upper corner of the room. Now put your attention on all three. Now find a fourth corner of the room. Put your attention on all four. You got the idea? Find a fifth corner of the room. Put your attention on all five." Sneak up on it. There's a group process in the Auditor's Handbook, printed edition — one of the back group processes in the book — which is just that process. Only you do this for fifteen minutes at a time. You add a corner every fifteen minutes. This just makes the fellow make space and gets him over being afraid of the material universe.

You must realize that on somebody exteriorized all you have to do is ask him to change his consideration and he is then capable. He can change his consideration that he is capable; he can change his consideration that he isn't capable.

An important part of this is "don't think." The reason why "don't think" is an important part of it is the thetan keeps postulating himself, all the time you're processing him, into various conditions. He could postulate himself into anything or any frame of mind.

Actually, aside from coaxing him to deal with energy masses and perceptions, the only process there is to a Clear is ask him to change his mind. That's all the process there is: he changes a consideration. We drag him out of the field of mechanics, in other words, and as soon as we've got him out of the field of mechanics, why, he processes simply by getting him to change his mind.

So, you've said to somebody, "Be three feet back of your head"; you've had him copy things; you've had him copy nothingness; you've remedied this havingness problem with him; you've got all that whipped. Now let's get him a little bit more stable in the immediate environment, and let's let him find out the environment is actually there. And we do this simply by having him locate a couple of the back corners of the room and hold on to them and not think.

If a thetan exteriorized cannot change his mind, he is still very, very enmeshed in the whole theory of mechanics. And being enmeshed and immersed in mechanics, he feels that these mechanics are going to smite him one way or the other. The biggest deterrent to somebody getting into this state is fear of the environment, and the energy masses and spaces contained in it. That is the biggest deterrent to his changing his mind.

While a person is exteriorized, he can make and break masses and do all sorts of things just by thinking, you see. So we just tell him not to think; we hold on to the two corners and not think.

As an individual gets smaller and smaller and goes on down the dwindling spiral, he believes that exterior forces are more and more dangerous to him. Now, the saw which is inserted at this point is really more of a saw than an axiom: A man is as sane as he believes himself to be dangerous to his environment. See, that's a very low-level look, isn't it? But he is as sane as he believes himself dangerous to his environment. That's very true of man.

Quite important that he doesn't think — and that's all he does. And if you do that for less than two minutes, you're just wasting your time.

So this is Dianetics, mainly, we're talking about when we say "man," "dangerous to his environment," and so forth. People come up through a tooth-and-claw strata before they get up into a sanity.

Now, why do we say just two minutes? Well, two minutes is a long time to a thetan. The equivalent in the body would be two or three hours. See, it works faster while he's exteriorized than when he's inside.

"All roads lead through force;" that is another saw. "All roads lead through force." Anybody who has seen the now-nonextant lecture charts of the Philadelphia sixty-four hours of lecture will recall that one of the last lecture charts there has a big "Force" inscribed in the middle of the chart. [See lecture chart in the Appendix of this volume.]

So let's ask this boy to do this stunt. Let's ask him to hold on to the two back corners of the room and sit there and not think. And then let's take him two minutes by your clock, huh? Let's not take him two minutes out of his hat. Because two minutes to most auditors is usually twelve seconds. A minute is a long time when you're sitting in an auditing chair. So really, actually take it two minutes by the clock — long time to the thetan.

You'll find out his visio will pick up and other things will occur, but most important, he can find out that he can look that far away from himself with-out everything falling in on him. His body is liable to get somatics, various things are liable to occur. And if things start to occur simply because he's doing this process, why, of course, you know, the natural thing to do would be to go on to the next process just because it's the next process. Is that right or wrong? Huh?

And then low-level aspects of the Chart of Attitudes are below this huge word Force, and the high-level aspects of the Chart of Attitudes are above this word Force. And, let us say, Distrust is below Force, you see, and Trust is above Force. But to get from Distrust up to Trust, it is necessary to cross the bridge of Force. If there's any bridge involved here anywhere in Dianetics or Scientology it is a bridge called Force. An individual believes that forces are greater than him-self. He believes he himself cannot cope with the forces around him. And we discover that an individual is very prone to believe that all forces are greater than he is.

If anything starts to happen by reason of his holding on to the two back corners of the room — his comm lag goes down, he starts to get dopey, he gets groggy, he gets somatics, he gets some violent perception changes, he's having a hard time fishing for them — any one of these things occurs, that is a communication lag boosted up to the dignity of a process lag. In other words, the process isn't finished yet.

Actually, he would never have to be afraid of force at all unless he him-self were being a mass of some sort. Force can only impinge itself upon mass of one kind or another. A thetan either mocks up a little piece of mass to receive sound waves, and so hear, or he is no mass at all and the sound wave goes straight through him. Well, he could do either one at will; so he could hear or not hear. There isn't any mechanical action, by the way, to hearing, really. One simply postulates that he hears and he hears; and he postulates he doesn't hear and he doesn't hear. That's about all there is to that.

And so, although I say two minutes by the clock, I say that because it usually takes that long for the fellow to forget himself enough to let things start to happen.

But as long as he's down below Force, as long as he feels that he is op-pressed by the enormity of space, by the savageness of electrons battering him by explosions, and so on, as long as he feels that he can be injured by force of any character, why, you will find him below this level of Force on this chart. He believes all force is dangerous to him. He does not believe that he himself can emanate force which would be dangerous to anything or anybody else.

Now, two minutes by the clock ... And now suppose something really is happening with this fellow — you know, he's er-wrr and he's getting perception changes and so forth. Well, you'd just better do that process until he ceases to get changes — until as long as he's getting a change, you do that process! It's a process all by itself. Savvy? So he gets perception changes. So you do this thing for five hours; this guy is exteriorized and he's still getting changes at the end of five hours. Fine, it obviously was the best process that you could have given him at the moment, because it's the one that's producing all the change.

Now, the only reason a word or symbol has any effect on somebody is because he's below the band of Effort. Now, similarly, the common denominator of all people who are having any difficulty in life — similarly — that common denominator is inability to experience effort. In other words, they can't work, they can't play, they can't move and so on. They're afraid to experience effort.

Well, you know, you ought to be chasing this fellow around over the moon, and you ought to be doing all sorts of things. "And Ron said that he ought to be exercised and he ought to be able to patch up his body and he ought to be able to heal people, and so forth. Well, that's the thing we ought to be doing, then, isn't it?"o, No! It says right in the Auditor's Code: "Run processes flat." Run a process as long as it produces change. If a process is producing no change, why, go on to the next process. Give it a fair trial. Well, a fair trial for "Hold the two back anchor points of the room" — a fair trial for it is two minutes for a thetan exterior. A good trial for it for a person when he's in his body is fifteen or twenty minutes.

In other words, force is outside someplace, threatening them. Now, the only reason a symbol has any effect upon an individual — for instance, the only reason you could criticize somebody and have him feel bad about it — is because your verbal criticism is associated by him with times when he has been hit, invalidated.

You know, you ask the fellow while he's sitting there in a chair, "Hold the two back anchor points of the room." He holds them. And he holds them for fifteen, twenty minutes and then things start to happen. All of a sudden then he's getting whoom! bing. It kind of takes a little while for it to wind up sometimes, so a fair trial exteriorized would be a couple of minutes — well, let's say fifteen minutes for somebody who was still interiorized. See, that would not be a Route 1 process then, would it — if he were still interiorized.

Now, invalidation, criticism ... Criticism is the lowest level, and then we get outright, overt invalidation, and then tight above that we get this rather more understandable thing of the lightning bolt, see. And a fellow could only take criticism to heart if he were afraid of lightning bolts.

The difference between Route 1 and Route 2, you know, of course is just the fact a Route 1 is run while a person is exteriorized. You'll notice some Route 1 processes are the same as Route 2. This one, by the way — "Hold the two back anchor points of the room" — also appears in Route 2, done in a different way. Done almost the same way, but it's done for a fellow interiorized.

You see, he's got as criticism, actually, a symbol of force. If he's afraid of criticism, then basically he's afraid of force. Invalidation converts immediately, as you come upscale, into force. "Invalidation" means to be hit. But if you could impress somebody by invalidating him — telling him he really didn't think that, or he really didn't believe that, or something — it's because he's afraid of being hit. You see? And he associates the little criticism that you give him, or the contradiction that you give him, with force. He has been taught to avoid. And when even the symbol of force shows up (criticism), he then backs off. So he is below the Force band.

So this is the way you'd do it, and you run that as long as he would get a change. If he got no perception change by reason of holding on to the two back anchor points of the room, then there are two possibilities — three possibilities: (1) he went back inside; (2) he wasn't doing the process (you know, he didn't hold on to the two; you told him to and he's sitting there, but he's not doing it — that possibility, you see, occurs); and the other one is that he's in such good shape that merely contacting some MEST doesn't disturb him any. See, so you just pays your money and you takes your chance.

He is actually in conjunction with a body which is extremely liable to wreckage by reason of force. He's extremely tender. A body goes two miles, three, four miles in the air, it starts to notice it very badly. If it went ten or twenty miles up in the air, it would probably die — I mean, it can't survive up there. If it went five miles in toward the core of earth ... That isn't very far, you know. If earth was reduced to the size of an apple, you wouldn't be able to find five miles thick with a microscope. And he goes down toward the center of earth just five miles, and it is much too warm and intolerable. The body is a frail mechanism mainly. And he is trying to protect this body.

But listen, if he's still interiorized, if he went back in, he'll come back out again on this process. So you just go on doing the process. Two, if he isn't obeying your orders, then you didn't sound the case — you know, you didn't size this case up; you didn't do a good human evaluation on him before you started to process him. You know? He's not doing what you're telling him to do, what you should be doing with him is Standard Operating Procedure 8-C's Opening Procedure. Good old R2-16 — that's what that fellow needed.

And so, as he is protecting the body — he'll eventually start hiding the body, by the way — but if he is protecting the body, he is protecting it from what? He is protecting it from space, from force. You see? And a thetan gets himself associated with a body very thoroughly, and thereafter he becomes afraid of force because he knows the body can affect force.

And, by the way, let me go into it right away (I may or may not have mentioned it elsewhere), but the place where you discover whether or not a person should be entered in Route 1 or Route 2 is not "Be three feet back of your head." It's whether or not he's got a comm lag while doing Steps 1, 2 or 3. You're doing Steps 1, 2 or 3, applying your knowledge of human evaluation, this fellow has lots of comm lags, and so forth — don't bother with Route 1, just go on over to Route 2. See, he won't be three feet back of his head. Long comm lags, and that sort of thing, and he's fouled up and he can't give you direct answers and so forth — go to Route 2. Run R2-16, Opening Procedure of 8-C. You see?

Nothing can affect a thetan. Remember this: Nothing possibly can affect a thetan. As a matter of fact, as ultimate effect he cannot be affected. As ultimate cause he actually cannot himself be an energy bolt; he can only say he is. And here we have cause and effect. And as far as a thetan is concerned or an awareness of awareness unit is concerned, he would be at either end of this line, and he would have to have some kind of an energy mass at both ends of the line in order to be cause and effect, you see. There'd have to be some energy in there someplace. Well, he'd have to be protecting or holding on to that energy. He would have had to have postulated that he was some section of this energy to be affected or, actually, to begin some type of cause.

I should have made that clearer there: you're only on Route 1 where the fellow had practically no comm lag. You were able to talk to him, get straight answers, and so forth. And you did this, and all of a sudden you said, "What do you know!" Route 1: "Be three feet back of your head." He probably is, you see.

In order to be thorough cause, for instance, he could postulate a bolt of energy out in front of him. But he would have to postulate also that he was connected with that to even get the idea that he was being affected by it.

All right. So this "Hold the two back anchor points of the room" refers to somebody that's already entered and gone down Route 1, right? All right.

One of the most difficult things a thetan faces is really trying to affect another thetan or to be an effect himself, or to actually overtly discover the cause of anything. You see, the cause, the real cause of anything, has no mass and so can't be located in space. All right.

How long would you do it? Well, you could do it as long as it produced change. You give it two minutes to really make sure that it is.

So this thetan must have postulated that he was something, that he's being something, before he can be the effect of force. Do you follow that now? Overt-motivator phenomena, all these other things, can only take place if the individual has postulated that he is something that can be the effect of force.

I'll go over that again with you. You have no business being on Route 1 with a person who would have snapped back in his head. If he has bad comm lags and things like that, if you did get him out, he'd just snap back in. Furthermore, he won't obey your auditing commands, he won't do what you're telling him to do anyway, so there wouldn't be any reason to be running him on Route 1.

And so, one of the best ways I know of — if somebody has very poor perception — one of the most effective things that you can do with him to improve his perception is just ask him, "Now, look around you and find some-thing that it is safe for you to look at." "What is there in this room that's safe for you to look at?" you say to him.

You understand that you can't walk around back of a thetan, making very sure that he is where he says he is. They're deceitful! And so the best thing for you to do is to size him up by comm lag and then choose your route.

Oh, and some of these thetans, they'll look and they'll look and they'll look and they'll look, and they'll finally opine that there probably is a dust particle under the couch that it would be really safe for them to look at. Ah, but that's an improvement. "Find something else that it would be safe for you to look at. Something else it would be safe for you to look at." And get an answer each time from him. "Something else it would be safe for you to look at. Something else it would be safe for you to look at." And do you know the environment becomes plainer and plainer?

You could, of course, choose your route by going into Route 1, say, "Be three feet back of your head," and then he couldn't be, so you go on to Route 2. But you've given him a failure, haven't you? And that will stand in the road of his later exteriorization. So don't give him a failure; exteriorize him when he's ready to exteriorize.

And now you could go out the same line, and you could say, "Give me something now which it would be safe for you to hear." And he'll get a condition or a concept at first: "Well, somebody could say 'Hello' to me, you know, or 'Good day' or 'How are you?' That would be safe to hear." He means the idea would be safe to pay some attention to.

Route 2, by the way, run all the way on down — somewhere along the line of Route 2, he's going to blow out of his head anyhow, whether you've told him to or not.

You want a beam of energy of something that it would be really safe to hear. But you just ask him this and he'll improve his consideration. The simple auditing command is "Give me something which would be safe for you to listen to." That's while he's exteriorized, you see.

All right. So we got as far, then, as holding the two back anchor points of the room, and he just seemed to hit a big comm lag at this point, and he's snarled up, and so forth. Well, his behavior right up to this point has demonstrated that he's exteriorized — he didn't have much comm lag and so forth. Actually, the process is just working like mad. That's the only thing that's happening here. So you let it work as long as it works. This is the least "workful" process imaginable.

Now, you could run this process interiorized, too, you see. But it really is a Route 1 process, or exteriorized process. "Give me something that is safe for you to look at." Now, there's Straightwire questions which are used on an interiorized basis: "What wouldn't you mind looking at?" You see, that's the same sort of thing. "What wouldn't you mind listening to?" "What would listen to you?" "What wouldn't you mind looking at you?" Something on this order will pro-duce a considerable change on somebody whether he's inside or outside.

The only thing really wrong with this process is the auditor always feels that he ought to get in there and pitch, you know? — he ought to kick around things and run a show and keep things popping, one way or the other. And the preclear sitting in the chair — his chair — and the auditor is sitting in his chair, doesn't deliver to us the idea that a great many things are occurring. No lion acts or anything, you know? And the fellow simply sitting there, holding the two back anchor points of the room, minute after minute after minute after minute after minute after ... doesn't seem to be very therapeutic. Well, it's one of the more therapeutic things that you could do, if it is producing change.

But the basic question of R1-8 is: You tell him, "Now, look around. Now, what is it safe for you to look at in the environment, in your surroundings here?" And just get them to name item after item after item after item. "Now, what is it safe for you to listen to?" And if you wanted to go the rest of the way on perception, "What would it be safe for you to smell?" "What would it be safe for you to taste?" You see? And he gradually has to improve his consideration and he realizes that he can experience force — that there aren't forces immediately surrounding him here which are going to murder him, mow him down, blow him up.

So we'd ask the preclear every once in a while, "Have you got them? How is it?" We ask him quietly because we don't want to jar him. This is one of those quiet processes. And we ask him to hold on to them, and ask him how it is and if he's having difficulty with it.

A lot of people, the first moment they exteriorize, will hear the auditor's voice while exteriorized, and it will scare them half out of their wits. And they will go back inside — boom! — you see, and then you have to dig them out again. Hearing something outside is very startling to them. That's because you're asking them to take on more than they can.

And he'll tell you, "Yeah, I'm getting quite a perception change." "You know, there's a lot of locks flying off," he'll say. And you'll get various manifestations. "Yes, I'm remembering a lot of things that ..." You say, "Well, just sit there and don't think, huh?" Of course, this is a lead-pipe cinch — to give him a lot of locks flying off — because the main common denominator of things he's suppressing is that he mustn't think about them. You follow how that would be?

You've got to let a thetan learn that he can safely experience any force phenomena in this universe before he will cease to be trapped in the universe. As long as he is going to be afraid of force phenomena in this universe, he is going to be trapped in this universe. Do you follow me?

So, if you tell him not to think, all the things that are suppressed in his life will start to fly through the air, and they'll start to come right on up by him. That's a curious thing. You're just as-ising the blocks which keep him from remembering.

The only way you make him trapped in anything is get him to be afraid of the force phenomena. The greatest thing a thetan is afraid of, of course, is unknowns. But that's also taken up in Route 2; he's afraid of not-knowing. But then afraid of not-knowing is the consideration back of the consideration of force.

Well now, you shouldn't advise him of that. He'll actually eventually get to a point where he actually can sit there and not think. And this will be the first time in his life he ever sat still and didn't think.

Okay. Now, do you understand this Route 1, part 8?

Freud and fiction writers and other people have long told us that there isn't a single moment of the day or night when associative reasoning isn't taking place. Well, this was the way Freud made his bread and butter. He said it wasn't possible for a person to be quiet and not think. This was beyond his capabilities.

Good.

Actually, a stream of consciousness — which is followed by the very best fiction writers (Dash Hammet and the rest of the boys all do it; I used to be guilty of it, too) .. .

"One thought leads to another thought leads to another thought leads to another thought." The psychologist really turns a shotgun on your chest with that one. He says, "Well, really, all of your thoughts are being motivated and caused by the last thought you thought." Or, "What you saw in the environment, you see, that's what really started you thinking. And that starts this stream of consciousness, and it starts at the beginning of life and it ends at the end of life. And that's stream of consciousness, and that's the way people think." Well, that may be the way some nut that's teaching psychology thinks, but it's not the way people think.

So you're telling somebody to sit still and not to think. This is a new, strange experience — if you just wanted to do that, you know — sit still and don't think! He's exteriorized: "Hold on to the two back corners of the room. Sit still and don't think." He would eventually get to a point where he'd as-ised out his main suppressed thoughts, and he would be able to sit there and not think. And it'd be the first time in his life he had ever experienced peace! Up to that time, it's all been the chatter-chatter-chatter, gob-gob, walla-walla of machines. You know? They have critical demons and, you know, all their demons going, and .. .

That, by the way . . . the psychologist thinks this associative reasoning is reasoning. It's not. It's demon chatter. People really don't even act on this associative stream of yap-yap that goes through their heads. When you take a bite of food, you don't say to yourself, "Now I am going to bite my food," do you? Okay.

Well, so you get him out of the habit of associative reasoning with this particular process.

Okay.