[Start of Lecture]

[Start of Lecture]

Thank you. Okay, I'd like to talk to you about the handling of difficulties when they are difficulties and avoiding difficulties when they aren't and otherwise indulging yourself in looking over preclears.

Okay. I'd like to talk to you now about something I don't know anything about.

Never tried to teach diagnosis to a unit before. I never have. That's diagnosis: it's after Dianetics; direct word source. It's not medical diagnosis we're talking about. It's „look-agnosis,“ and we were going to coin another word on it and call it „obnosis“: knowing the obvious.

The difference between me talking about something I don't know anything about and somebody else talking about something he doesn't know anything about, is the fact that I'll tell you so.

The great unlearned item in all of Dianetics and Scientology has been diagnosis. That is the one thing which auditors never seem to learn very well.

I want to talk to you about testing. Don't know anything about it, see. As a matter of fact, this is factually true. Don't know anything about testing and so it's a very, very good subject for a lecture.

Never had any reason for this, until one day we were looking at some gamma rays, and we suddenly decided the reason they were attractive to people, and people were attracted to them, and they did things that were bad, is because they were invisible. One couldn't see them, and not being able to see them, he then got nervous about them. Got that?

Now, testing was invented sometime, I don't know when, see. I don't know when it was invented. I don't know who invented it. I could hazard some guesses. I could say it developed originally out of the cave days. One caveman would get out and he'd pull a woman by the hair for a quarter of a mile, and he'd say, "I'm feeling weak today, I guess. Only made it for a quarter of a mile," or something like that.

What you can't observe and which might or might not be present becomes an anxiety. One doesn't know whether he can confront something or not, because it's not there to be confronted. He cannot prove it, then, to himself If he could prove it to himself, he would no longer be nervous about it.

It might have developed then. It might have developed some other time, but I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. I never read a book on the subject, either.

You find young men enlisting in war, usually, merely to prove to themselves that they are not cowards. Although what's cowardly about not using a body for a bullet screen is something I wouldn't know. I mean, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with courage or bravery. It has a lot to do with wasting mock- ups, but young men go to war to confront the enemy to prove to themselves and their girlfriends that they are not cowards. Of course, since it's become rather fashionable to be a coward in this particular line, I don't know how they're going to fight the next war. But I imagine they'll manage.

The whole subject of testing is probably, though, a very great subject. I've met an awful lot of people who knew an awful lot about testing, and so on, but I never had the benefit of listening to them say very much. They're sort of reticent about the thing. So I'm quite sure that there is a huge subject known as testing. I'm sure of it! In other words, I am convinced.

Now, the hidden influence: If you don't have an enemy, you cannot prove you are brave. It's one of these fabulous stupidities, you know?

But the facts of the case are that it has never been proven to me. See, I'm convinced that there is such a subject as testing. But it has never been proven to me – it's never been proven to me conclusively – that up till the days of Dianetics and Scientology, it had any value at all. Because what was the good of knowing somebody's existing state – what was the good of knowing it – if you couldn't do anything about it?

All right, diagnosis could cover what the fellow is trying to prove. It could cover who he's trying to prove wrong. It could cover several items as you go down the list. One of the things that it could prove very easily is whether or not the individual is sane. See, I mean, the fellow is trying to prove that he's sane. Well, that's an interesting thing, because you can't prove you're sane unless you can prove that you can react against insane duress.

Oh, well, maybe it merely convinced him he was in bad condition. I know, but what do you want to convince him he's in bad condition for if you can't do anything about it? Got the idea? Factually?

See, you can prove you're sane by reacting favorably against insane duress. You have insane pressure against you one way or the other, and you react sanely to it, that proves you're sane, doesn't it? So it demonstrates that you can confront insanity. That's all it demonstrates, very easily.

So all the tests that we have and are using – most of them – are based on just one premise and one premise only: that Homo sapiens is in an existing state, and their textbooks say that it can't be altered. So all testing was designed to prove, evidently, before 1950, is that man couldn't change.

But there's many a fellow down here in the insane asylum who is simply proving this madly. The first thing that an insane person tries to do is prove to you how sane he is, which I think is rather remarkable. We look it over — rather remarkable, because he obviously is sane. But something around there is insane.

Now, it's interesting that we have found an area where man can't change. It is very, very difficult to change a man downward. Very difficult to change a man downward. The things you have to do to him to change him downward made very good newspaper reading throughout the end of the Korean War – brainwashing.

The auditor has already learned that it is the something around there which is nuts. It is the something around there. It is not the preclear. The preclear is always — no matter in what unconscious or comatose condition — reacting as favorably as he can to the circumstances in which he finds himself. And he has the circumstances which he is surrounded by clutched to him, so as to demonstrate his ability to confront it.

But even a psychologist who only knew these methods couldn't change people downward with any consistency. And as a consequence he assumed people couldn't change.

Therefore, any man rushing down the street, spinning in small circles and leaping into the air with high-pitched screams is, of course, the sanest man in town. He can confront insanity; he's demonstrating this. You see, we have to think of him as a thetan confronting this insane body, and we demonstrate at once that the fellow is the sanest fellow around. Because only he could confront insanity to this degree.

But what would a group that assumed people couldn't change – what could it have been trying to do?

Now, the psychiatrist with his obsessed sanity — he is usually a case of dramatized sanity (a good phrase for you to remember, by the way: dramatized sanity) — is actually unable to confront insanity. He's not capable of confronting it. Therefore, he has a lot of dramatizations which he calls „sane,“ which are about as silly as you could possibly look at.

Now, a man can be changed upward with such ease that it's fantastic that nobody ever found this out. I mean, if I could think up something anybody could think it up, see. I mean, it's easy. How come he never found this out?

Now, if everybody is proving that he is confronting, is proving that he can at least confront a substitute to something or for something, then the whole problem of diagnosis becomes rather involved. Because we see an insane preclear as a sane person. We see a „sane“ (unquote) psychiatrist as being a very insane man. Don't you see? You get this? We see these manifestations taking place where the individual is clutching to him things and is proving that he can confront them, and this makes him something. This is a game: proving what you can confront. This is a game.

Now look, you think I'm trying to lay at the door of psychology and psychiatry a criminal intent, don't you? Well, that's absolutely correct.

It's not the only game there is, and you understand that confrontingness is not the highest order of human aberration and so forth. But it is certainly a common denominator to people in this universe, involved with this space and energy, these masses and distances. And confrontingness goes a long way toward explaining these things. It's a common denominator of everything until you get into — right up the line — until you get into creativeness. And when you get rather full scale into creativeness, you of course jump this whole thing of confrontingness.

The discovery that man could not change could only have followed an effort to degrade him. And for the first time, we are trying to scale him upwards, and we find that the most elementary things can change a test upwards. Very elementary things can change a test upwards.

You can use creativeness to solve confrontingness, but you can't use confrontingness to solve creativeness. Wrong way to, you see? I mean, you got that? You could use creativeness to solve confrontingness, but you can't really solve — this is by actual test — you can't use confrontingness to solve creativeness very much. They are different classes of action.

If you, for instance, were to sit and smile pleasantly at a preclear for twenty-five hours, he'd probably get better. If you just said, "Yes, is that so?" you know, "What do you know!"

Confrontingness concerns itself in the main with „that which is.“ It conceives that things are and that they were not created, that they exist, and that their sole purpose is Axiom 10 — cause- distance-effect.

If any psychoanalyst had ever contented himself with sitting and listening to some patient rattle on, I'm sure that some patient not deficient in havingness – which the comm would have cut down – but not terribly deficient of havingness, would have improved so considerably and so markedly that we would now have libraries full of books on this one case. That's a "series" in psychoanalysis – one case.

Now, you enter into Axiom 10 with confrontingness, so you actually have the totality of Axioms from 10 up to 1 standing senior to confrontingness. I just don't want you to go too far overboard on this thing called confrontingness. Confrontingness works. It works like mad! There is nothing more workable in the work-a-day world in which you find your preclear. But it's the suborder of things. It works on him; he can get reality on the processes connected with it and, as a result, becomes highly functional to the auditor — very, very functional.

The only series on schizophrenia in psychiatry, for instance, that I know of, that is real schizophrenia, is a series of one: one girl who assumed five personalities. And although it's been banned in Boston as pornography, it has made good reading for everybody else for a long time. And that's a series of one and that is total information concerning. That's a book by Morton Prince. You, by the way, would just have a ball reading that book because he gives you all the dope. He gives you all the clues necessary to solve the case, and minimizes every one of the clues and maximizes all the things that are completely unimportant about the whole thing.

The principle, then, explains on this low order, human phenomena. It explains actions and reactions, and it explains diagnosis.

Now, I am not trying to indict psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis or phrenology, or – I don't know, what are some of those others? There's one there that had to do with transmutation of gold into lead or lead into gold or something like that. Yeah. Alchemy. Oh, yes, yes, modern chemistry.

You see, you're diagnosing somebody who is working in a work-a- day world. He is working in a live-a-day world. It's a world in which the space already exists, the walls are there, the particles are there, planets, suns, moons, politicians; all kinds of things are there. And you get these items as the items of the game, the units of which the game is composed.

And I'm not trying to degrade these, because they don't need it. It's sort of pouring mud in a mudhole, you know.

Now, only to that we need to add the living beingness of a thetan and many thetans to have the game in its actuality the way it looks in this live-a-day world. That's the way it looks. It looks like, „Here's this universe, and to this universe we have added all these living beings. And they are in contest in one way or other against each other, against various types of beingness and against the universe itself”. That is the way it appears. And his reality on this is so strong that he processes in that sphere of action. The truth lies from Axiom 10 on up, all of which is above confrontingness. Do you understand that?

But when you look over this astonishing fact that today our testing programs... I don't know a thing about testing, but our testing programs demonstrate that we can change people and change them upward at a great rate – very fast. I mean, it's not difficult to change people upward – it's not very difficult.

You see, you mustn't go too far astray on this, because, a preclear will get just so well, he will just get so able, and then he will hit a null point. And for a long time I was looking for this null point after which these processes did not work upon him. Well, at that moment, the Axiom 10 processes and all of the Creative Processes become intensely workable. Once you have run all of these Confrontingness Processes flat, you then have the entirety of processes from Axiom 10 on up to Axiom 1, which is, naturally, a considerable lot of stuff. But it's all creativeness. It's all under the heading of creativeness — one phase or another of it. Do you see that?

If a person is on the bottom, sometimes you get some suction trying to pry him off, but once you get him rising a little bit, why, he generally goes on up, as long as the auditor will sit still and listen.

So that 8-C, Part A works a certain distance on a case. Op Pro by Dup works a little bit of a greater distance on a case. Communication all by itself common-denominator's this. You can't communicate unless you can confront. And it works a considerable distance on this case.

But where do we have any use for testing? You should ask the question, "Why don't I know anything about testing?" It should have occurred to you there that there might be some hooker in the statement, because I don't go around saying, "I don't know," you know, except when I'm being honest.

But then the case will hit a null of some kind or another; it doesn't seem to be gaining or advancing very rapidly, and then we must look at processes which we already have and had long before we had these other more basic processes.

But there is really a hooker in the subject. I want to know if there's anything to know. See, I don't know anything about it. I've read some books on the subject, and I've done some testing, and so forth. Is there anything to know about it at all?

This whole subject has been evolved backwards. You notice that. We had first, a fairly complex series of processes in Dianetics. Then we had, with a leap, the most elementary processes. People just didn't understand them in droves. They were just too darned elementary. And those were the processes from Axiom 1 to Axiom 10. And those processes, most of them, have been around for a long time.

Well, the actual fact of testing – no. There is very, very little to know about that. The actual fact of existing state is such a mystery that there's nothing you could know about that. You see, because it would simply be comparable data. "This person compares to a twelve-year-old schoolchild." That's a statement, that is! In what school, which teaches what curriculum, in what part of the world? See, they don't ever say.

Then we had to develop processes which were again on the engram, live-a-day-world level. And these all head up under the heading of Confrontingness.

They don't ever say "Jefferson High School, Lincoln, Missouri," or something like that, you know. They say a twelve-year-old schoolchild has the intelligent equivalent of..." I suspect statements like this. They're not specific, they're not exact, they have no location, they're floating in space.

Now, as confrontingness goes downscale we get substitution, about which I have talked to you. That fits, really, below confrontingness — substitution: substituting this for that. Then below this, we have pure identification processes; processes which are entirely identification processes. They are so far below significance that there is no significance as to why they should be done at all. And you will find yourself occasionally at a loss to understand why they are producing the results they produce.

So what about this? Well, I do know something about the change of tests or recorded change. That I know something about. And if they were more honest, and if they'd ever changed anybody, I guess that's all a psychologist would know, would be alteration of condition. Because you can compare one condition to another condition, but when you say a person has a test like this... What is the proper curve? Is it up here? Is it down here? Is it over here? Does it have lace pants on it? What is this? What's the proper test? What's the proper curve?

After an individual has failed to confront consistently and continually, he has things. Look this over, see? He's failed to confront things completely; now he has things. Got that?

Somebody says, "This is the curve of Joe Jones. Joe Jones's curve is just like that." Everybody stands around and says, "Yeah. What do you know. That's pretty good. Mm-hm." Or "That's pretty bad, isn't it?" Compared to what?

Well, to fail to confront completely would be to even run out of „substitutes for.“ You know, „I can confront that wall, but I can't confront that wall on fire. Therefore, that wall could be a substitute for a wall which is on fire. Therefore, I confront that wall and the wall which is on fire becomes less terrifying to me.“ Do you understand that?

Well, it's compared to something called the hidden ideal, the false ideal, the understood ideal, the suspected ideal or the represented ideal. Do you understand what the word would be? It would be an ideal which doesn't exist. But everybody knows it exists, and we have testing dramatizing this more than any other single human activity.

Well now, first there's pure confrontingness. As we go down — let's go from Axiom 10 down. We're not making an effect yet, we're merely confronting, don't you see? Effect has no bearing on this whatsoever. We're not ranging in that purpose level. Here we have effect as Axiom 10. Now, let's just drop just below that level of processing — not necessarily to Axiom 11, but just below this in importance and height — and we have direct confrontingness.

It is a hidden fact behind all criticism – whether of plays or a person or cats, kings, coal heavers or bats or pigs with wings – that there is an ideal, there is a perfection "That I know about, but you wouldn't," which is never spoken. And we should call this the pretended ideal.

„I may not be able to knock an elephant's head off, but I can face one.“ Got it?

There is evidently an ideal state in Mother's mind when she says we are bad children. There is evidently an ideal state in the sergeant's mind when he says we are poor soldiers. There is evidently some ideal of some kind or another in the priest's mind when he says we are sinful.

Now we go down just one step below that, and we get into much more interesting data, which is substitutes for elephants. See? „I may not be able to face an elephant vis-÷-vis, but I can face the stuffed head of an elephant. There it is on my wall. Shot him in Kenya, I did. Uh-hah, rather! There he is. I faced him. Here's the substitute. I can continue to face him,“ don't you see? Now, that's just about the shadow. The fellow has faced something, and he is demonstrating to people that he can continue to face it. Do you see that?

But they damn seldom say anything about what it is! They say we don't measure up in comparison to it. What?

All right, now let's drop down below that, and let's find out that the fellow failed completely to face the elephant in Kenya. He stood there with his double-barreled derringer, and he just completely missed the whole show. The elephant came charging at him, and when the elephant got to about a quarter of a mile away, why, he threw the derringer down and grabbed the nearest tree, and nobody could get him out of it. As a matter of fact, three days later they had to have the fire department from Nairobi up there to get him out of that tree, see?

We read in the papers, "This is a poor play." See, some critic, he's sounding off, "It's a poor play." Well, you could say, "Who said so?" That's easy – the critic. But by whose standards of playwrighting? Now, this thing did appear on Broadway, and I'm sure compared to Bill Smith's play – Billy Smith being only in the third grade – that it shined. See? So that would make it an excellent play, wouldn't it, huh?

Now, this fellow is unable to face a live elephant. It is doubtful if he will. It's doubtful if he will go and buy an elephant head. See, it is doubtful if he'll go and buy it. He failed on this one completely. It's doubtful if he'll go and buy an elephant head. That is not a good substitute. He doesn't have an elephant head on his wall, but you'll probably see the most beautiful collection of butterflies.

But compared to one of those little things Shakespeare dashed off between sonnets, the thing might not be quite so good. But then I am sure that people walked up to Shakespeare and said, "Well, Bill. Ah, well. This thing – this – this thing you've done tonight – what was its, name? Uh... uh... Hamlet. Hamlet? Was that it? Uh... Bill, uh... I don't think it'll go. It won't go, Bill. It's a poor play." Compared to what? The one that the critic said was a poor play, or Billy Smith in the third grade said was a poor play, or compared to the Passion Play as done at Oberammergau, or a poor play compared to Bill's last effort. Well, possibly, you could get a comparison there, couldn't you?

Now, why is he collecting butterflies? He doesn't like butterflies. He is colorblind and so forth, but these butterflies are all from northern Canada. That's far enough away from Africa.

So we've moved into about the only standard that could exist, "Is the fellow being bad or good compared to himself?" And that is what testing is in Scientology. Is he being bad or good compared to him? Is he being better or worse than him?

Now, it'd amaze you to discover that a case of butterflies hanging on his wall was a substitute for an elephant he didn't shoot in Kenya. Which lifetime, who knows? Got the idea?

Well, unfortunately for the guy, we happen to know how good he can get. So we can measure him up against this standard. So, being honest, we can say a change is attainable in existing state and we are interested in the change, we are not interested in either existing state, don't you see.

All right, now, there is a case of substitution. He is substituting for something. He will at least substitute, don't you see? He's really not in terrible bad condition. He's not in awfully bad condition; he'll still substitute. He had a failure and so forth.

But there are certain existing states necessary to the performance of auditing – we say to auditors – so, therefore we know that auditors that fall below this existing state, fall below it. This we know for sure. They fall below being able to audit. They crack up somewhere along the line. They say to the preclear, just about the twenty-fifth time, "Now, go over to the book. That's right. Look at it. What color is it?" And they all of a sudden say, "Heh-uu-hu-hm-hm, let's go out for a Coke." The preclear at this moment has somatics; he's about ready to drop his eyeballs on the floor. "Let's' knock off the, session. I can't stand it anymore."

Some guy has been driving in races, and he's banged one into the brick wall and torn wheels off on other cars and done other interesting odds and ends, and so on, and he will still keep a cup around for a race that he won, although he doesn't race anymore; he knows it's dangerous. He will face the win. He will face the cup. He will face the token. But the funny part of it is, he wouldn't put a steering wheel from his first car on the wall. Just a little bit close, see? Little bit too much on. But the cup, that is an association, you see; that's a substitute.

And we know that they will do certain things below that state. But we, then, do have some kind of an idea about the state auditors should be in. And if we're certifying an auditor, we want to know if he's in some comparable state, but that again is against a known standard. It's a known standard.

Now, out of this, we get everything that you know as logic. It's a gradient scale of substitutes.

Well, who's it known to? Well, boy, if you were this guy's preclear, you'd know it. See, it'd be known to you too. The fellow has to be able to persist, duplicate, communicate, acknowledge communications. He has to be able to get in there and pitch. He has to be smart enough to be able to figure out where the preclear won't go and make him go or knock his head in. He has to be able to do certain things, see. And we can test what sort of a condition a fellow has to be in, in order to make somebody do those things. That's very easy. It's very easy. But it is a standard. It's a known standard, not a hidden standard. It's very important.

I ask you to jump your logic on purpose right at this point, you see — at that point — just to look at this. You actually have to look at the principle of substitution. First you have to look at the principle of confronting, then the principle of substitution in order to see the gradient scale of logic. It's quite interesting.

This pretended standard, this hidden ideal, this thing which lurks in the back of people's minds when they say "We aren't smart enough. We aren't good enough. We aren't quick enough," is actually the basis of all criticism to which we object. Because we essentially are not objecting to their statement that we aren't good enough. We're objecting to the fact that they never say in comparison with what. They never say what we are supposed to be as good as, what we are supposed to be as fast as.

Well now, you see, logic has been jumped when we get a case of butterflies on the wall. That's not quite logical outside the field of Scientology. It is logical within Scientology, but it's not logical elsewhere because we cannot proceed along any gradient scale and achieve the answer to the case of butterflies and, at the same time, why a case of butterflies sometimes makes him nervous. Do you see that?

Therefore, we rather favor physical tests, things like that. Can we broad-jump five feet? Anybody in order to join this team has to broad-jump five feet, see. We know what we're doing then. We can broad-jump five feet, therefore we have passed the test. But it's only a standard that is set down, and somebody has found out that an athlete or a soldier or somebody has to be able to go through certain actions, since athletes and soldiers go through these actions.

Now, that's what we used to call an associative restimulator in some fashion or another. A little bit different. There was a butterfly, but we explain it now by mental image pictures. A butterfly was present while he was running from the elephant. He sees a butterfly — associative restimulator. Now also, space was present when he ran from the elephant, so that any space that is present there at all is an associative restimulator, and he doesn't want to face that space because it was present when he ran from that elephant. And there was a tree there, so that any forest, suburban — or even suburban living is just a little bit uh-urh to him. And another thing about it, he was recovering from his fright for days against a rather yellowish plaster wall. And the yellowish plaster wall, a butterfly, a tree, any one of these things could act as associative restimulators.

Therefore, the only sincere and honest test that you possibly could lay down, really, in actuality, would be a test against observable performance – observable performance.

Let's say it in some other fashion. They are too close to the thing to be an acceptable substitute. They are not acceptable substitutes at all.

Now, to show you how thin this bad and good thing is, a soldier goes out, sets up a machine gun, fires at a mad rate and misses completely his target. He doesn't kill a single human being. Bad soldier. He goes back into civilization, runs down the street, doesn't even knock over a human being, hits a cop, and we say he's a bad citizen. The common denominator of these two remarks is that people are critical.

Now, we would have to go all the way away from this whole incident to really get total comfort. There were no women present at all. He really likes them. Get the idea? He can confront a woman any day. Nothing to it.

Now, testing had its origin, I am sure – this is my suspicion, since I really know nothing about the subject – had its origin in the early days of brainwashing. It was an effort to make people self-critical, which is a keynote of brainwashing. If you would test somebody long enough and often enough, you'd drive him daffy if you never told him what he was being tested for, or against what standard. You'd have to have a standard against which he was being tested so that he could achieve, himself, a comparison of result.

Men, by the way, carefully preserved this area of confrontingness — women — by not permitting women to engage in hunting, sports or outdoor activities of any kind for many generations. And then the women, having been armored against this and not having had to confront anything for a long time, began to become bold. And they started to take up archery and that sort of thing. And eventually women got wound up in his sports, automobile accidents and things like this. Even a safari in Africa probably contained a woman, so she became an associative restimulator for all this sort of action.

Therefore, I would say that all those tests which simply evaluate by the observer...

You'll find men are probably being more brutal and more careless of women these days. They are less willing to confront them. They confront them with more ferocity or less care. It's very hard to confront a woman, for some men. That woman is an associative restimulator.

I tell you, here's a test that – we have a technical expression which is a condemnatory expression in Scientology – "It's for the birds!"

Of course, the deathblow to womankind was Florence Nightingale. That was that. This is a horrible thing to say about a beautiful, lovely lady like that. It's a terrible thing: She probably did more for homosexuality than any other person in our modern times, except maybe Oscar Wilde. How do you get that? You put a woman into every painful incident: the treatment after the accident, the illness, and so forth. You keep putting a woman into the scene. Don't you see?

This thing is called a Rorschach. A Rorschach is probably called a Rorschach uhm... It's a Rorschach. Anyway.

Why put a woman in the scene? She's something you're supposed to be able to confront when you're not able to confront anything else. So you get her in there as an associative restimulator, you run fellows downhill like mad, and they eventually won't even confront a woman. You get the idea?

You go four years to a university to learn how to interpret one. Boy, there sure must be an awful lot there to know how to interpret. There sure is. I'm sure there's more significance racked up in less time – wow! Four years to learn how to interpret one of these things.

All right, now, let's look over this idea of substitutes for confrontingness. And we get this long parade of items, just on and on and on, and somewhere along the line, we have something the fellow will confront. Therefore, if you run substitutes one after the other, he will follow along the line of a gradient scale which will lead him eventually to the thing he won't confront, with the discovery that he can confront it. Do you see that? He will be more knowing and less reasonable — be more knowing and less logical. Do you follow that?

You know what people do with these things? They're inkblot tests. Kids back in about 1820 used to take some ink, spill it on a piece of paper, fold the piece of paper over and open it and they have a pattern, you know.

In other words, you, with processing people with substitution, can start anyplace you like. The substitutes they give you for things are the wildest things you ever saw in your life. I just sit there and boggle at some of these preclears. It's one of my more amusing things to do lately is to run Substitution on somebody.

Well, some psychiatrist got stuck in this period, got the measles and died back in 1820 or something. And he died when he was doing this and it's a dramatization, you see, or something like this. There's an explanation to its origination I know.

„Now, give me a substitute for your mother.“

Anyway. He shows this to people, he shows this test to people, and he looks at them and he says, "What do you see? What do you see?"

„Well, good, good, yes, all right, I will. Now, let's see. Oh, that tree.“

And people say, "Ohhh, I see a fox or a bat or a kangaroo or, uh... it's a flying carpet," or something or other. Each time they say one of these things, they say, "Well, I think it's a fox."

„All right. Now another substitute for your mother.“

"Ahhhhh," he says. "Patient thinks it's a fox." "What else do you see?"

„Well, that rock out there.“

"A bearskin!"

„All right, good. Give me another... Now, make sure this is a substitute for your mother. Another substitute for your mother.“

"Patient thinks it's a bearskin. Patient thought it was fox, then bearskin. F-B. F-B."

„Uh, well, yes. Now, that grass. That bit of tar.“

Well, they have about five or fifty of these plates and people are supposed to read them and so forth.

You say, „Now, wait a minute.“ If you start straining your own logical processes to draw the concatenation from what he considers an adequate substitute for Mother — right on up to Mother — you're going to strain or sprain your medulla oblongata! Because the substitution pattern lies only in his bank. Get that.

And it was a source of great embarrassment when one of them showed me one of these tests. They used to test everybody during the war. They didn't have anything else to do. And you get shipped in. They'd run out of clinics to send you to, you know. Go get your teeth fixed, go get this fixed, go get that fixed. Nobody would let you out of the joint, you see. You were there awaiting receipt of orders or something of the sort, you know, and so they would keep sending you to clinics, here and there.

The only place this pattern exists, and the only pattern like it, and the only approximating pattern in existence, is in that one bank, peculiar to that bank, and only in that bank! Now, you got the idea?

So, of course, they'd send you to a testing clinic. They'd send you to the psychological clinic. They'd send you to the psychiatric clinic. They'd just send you around. You go around and people would spend an hour or so looking you over, and that sort of thing.

There's no telling on what route he would go from a bit of tar, up any kind of a gradient scale to finally confronting Mother. The second he says, „Substitute for Mother: That tree, that tar, that grass,“ you know doggone well that this boy will not, cannot, confront Mother. If he did, he would be looking straight through her. She would be unreal. He would have another mother mocked up in her place. Get the idea? See, I mean, there's a real distance here. Follow me closely. Hm? It's a big jump from a bit of tar to Mother, let me assure you. And that is why I look at these substitutions with such amusement while I'm processing a preclear.

I almost got scared out of my wits! It just – it frightened me. I was very timid in those days. And I sat down and... I was supposed to go to the psychiatric clinic, the eye clinic, and so forth.

I don't hide my amusement. I'm not sitting back laughing at him. I laugh right out loud at him. And that's really a bad thing to do to a preclear who is being very serious about this. He knows for sure that that tar is a substitute for Mother. And I say, „No kidding?“

The eye clinic didn't know what was the matter with me. I couldn't see. I kept telling them that was what was the matter with me – they didn't believe me. And anyhow, I went in the psychiatric clinic, and I sat down. And all of a sudden he says, "Ahhh!" he says, "Ahhh!" And it was a very, very learned "Ahhh!" I will say.

And he looks it over. „Well... Well, maybe... maybe that wall over there would be a better substitute for Mother.“

And he shoved a Rorschach test at me. He didn't have anything else to do, or I was the wrong patient or something. He was confused maybe. And he shoved this test at me, and he says, "What's that?"

I say, „No kidding? Is that a fact? That'd be a good substitute for Mother, huh? Well, all right now, let's find a better substitute for Mother.“

And I said, "It is a piece of paper with some ink on it! What do you suppose it is!"

And he eventually gets into things that we could understand, like „that lamp.“ Naturally you could associate a lamp with Mother being the actual thing. Don't you see? You don't see that.

Four days later he was still looking in his manuals.

That's what you do, you see? You look at him and you say, well now, there is no logical track between what he's saying and Mother, you see? But to you, some other track would be totally logical, don't you see? Follow me? So therefore, when you're trying to diagnose his case, you're diagnosing a near incomprehensibility.

I don't know to this day whether I'm supposed to be sane or insane, you see. Because there's nothing in any Rorschach manual that tells you what this response means. It frightened me all right, and he turned sort of pale and he jumped up on the table and took off his glasses. He started to chitter, you know.

„What's wrong with this fellow,“ you say. „That lamp — Mother. Now, that's logical. But he says tar — Mother! That's just completely insane.“ You follow it out?

So I took the test and I showed it to him! I said, "All right, you don't like that answer! What's it mean to you?" So he got back in his chair and sat there, and when I left he was still staring at it. Anyway...

Well, that's the basic difficulty of diagnosis. So the safest thing to do is to go into a field where no gradient scale is even vaguely traceable on any subject whatsoever, which has no relationship, and one doesn't even know what he is substituting for or that he is substituting while being audited. And that, of course, becomes a very workable, usable process, and that process we call Havingness.

We didn't have much respect for people in those days.

We say, „Look around here and find something you could have.“ Well, running an undercut — actually, those things which he couldn't make confront things are things which he can have, which he has to have, by the way. He has no choice. Don't you see?

Well, anyway, having been given a Rorschach from beginning to end, of course, I'm wise enough to know I don't know all there is to know about Rorschachs. But this isn't the case with most people. When they've been given a Rorschach, you see, they become experts on Rorschach. And I'm smart enough to know that I have my limitations. Definitely have my limitations. I couldn't even read anything into it. And that's pretty good for a science-fiction writer. Anyway... I should have at least told him there was a spaceship there.

So, we're running „failure to confront,“ bottom rung of, with total identification. There is no rationale at all why he says he can have that wall.

Anyway, looking over the whole subject of testing, one learns that there could be tests which simply measured against a standard necessary for performance, see. You had to be able to do something. Well, where did they come in relationship to that so they could do that? Well, you see, there'd be a role there for testing, definitely a valuable one.

Now, back of that statement, „I can have that wall,“ would lie the total collapse of walls on him. See, the wall — whole subject of walls has collapsed on him. He no longer is not only not able to confront walls, but walls are something which collapse on him. And if he were permitted to go along this line too long, he would find out eventually that walls were him and that he was walls. See?

Now, that's fine. But they don't call that psychological testing, usually. There is some sort of testing in psychology that goes in that direction, but usually that's done out on the athletic field, or it's done somewhere else. "Can you drive this car around the block?"

I've seen people do this, by the way. They stand up in front of television screens when you're trying to look at the screen. They'll stand between you and the screen. Obsessive thereness. They are being things which collapsed on them to such a degree that they are them. And the function of such a thing was to debar sight, cut out light, or do something of this character. And they dramatize its potentials. And you'll see them dramatizing this thereness. And they'll get up and walk — you can't explain why, but you're sitting there comfortably looking at the television screen, and they get up and on the pretext of adjusting the knob, or something of this sort, step forward to the screen and then step back to observe the effect, between you and the screen, and will continue to stand there.

"Yeah."

So, below the level of being able to confront, we actually have the capability of being on another determinism. And then we get doing and having and we get all sorts of interesting lower-range manifestations, you see, that are also high-range manifestations, but these are the obsessive „have to be.“ This fellow has to be a wall because he can have walls. Why can he have walls? Because he has not confronted enough walls so that he became one, see? Now, there's no logic that you could trace between his — first, his being able to have a wall, his being able to be a wall, his being able to confront a wall, except just those exact steps which I am giving you. That is a series of very exact steps.

"Well, if you drive well, you can have the job. Well, get in the car and drive it around the block." He does, he drives it around the block, and he says, "Okay, you've passed." See, now that is a type of testing which is against a standard. A person to be able to drive a car must be able to sit in the car, must be able to operate the throttle, the brake, and wiggle the steering wheel. That's all that is required in the District, anyway.

Now, how he got that way is some other thing, and that comes under the heading of speculative diagnosis.

Here then is testing. When we reduce it into a tremendous additional significance, we are liable to get into more trouble than we care to get into, unless we wish to measure a state of case against a state of case. We take a state of case this week, and a state of case next week. We take these two states of case and find the difference between them.

Now, we start in there, then, that the individual is unaware of it when he is standing in the middle of a wall; he'd be unaware of the wall. To some awareness that he was in the wall; he could have a wall. In other words, this says, „A wall would collapse on me.“ This he recognizes. But that's still a communication, so it's good processing.

Well, in view of the fact that nobody has ever been able to make states of case vary like this, it would really amuse you how stable these profiles are. I saw one the other day which would utterly knock your hat off.

Now, the next little gradient scale up from that is that he could be the wall, you see? The wall would collapse on him, he could be the wall, but he could recognize this with some awareness that he was being a wall. Next, he would confront or could confront in some fashion, with some substitute for himself, a wall. Next step up the line is he could have an effect on a wall. And we move into the Axiom 10 range. You get how the — what these steps are?

This fellow was given a profile – a type of profile which we have had in use in the organization. And he was given this profile before he went in the army. And in the army they used him for a guinea pig or something of the sort, and he had a nervous breakdown and had a lot of psychiatric treatment and so forth. And at the end of this time he had varied about fifteen degrees on "Nervous," and the rest of the profile was all the same.

Well, I'm not trying to arrange for you the perfect pattern of exactly how this happens because there are inversions lower on the line of be-do-have and so on, and these are all enforced. These are a DEI Scale of the fellow desired something, and it was enforced upon him, and then it was inhibited in some fashion. And he is in an unknowingness band. So that we get Havingness Processes being totally identified processes to such a degree that we don't even know what the preclear is identifying them with. It's just a total identification process.

In other words, here's this tremendous career, all this treatment, this hammer and pound, and the only variation on the test was about fifteen percentile in "Nervous." He was a little more nervous. It took them years to manage that.

Therefore, if you start to run Substitution on total identification, you're going to get results — that I assure you — because it would be a low range that's low, low, low, low, low. And this is why people go unconscious when you start to remedy their havingness. It's right in the range of total identification, unconsciousness: See, everything is everything; all things are substitutes for all things; anything is a substitute for anything. You take a workman who misuses machinery, continually misuses machinery. He's an artist at it, let's say. How do you mean, misuses machinery? Well, the chronic way they misuse machinery — and you'll laugh about this if you ever go around investigating. You'll find somebody who is an apprentice carpenter, and not a very good one. And he's struggling along somehow, and he's pretty low-toned anyhow, which is why he's doing this. You'll find him using tools, and he uses the pliers to hammer nails. He tries to use the chisel for a screwdriver, don't you see? He at least can get the similarity of shape there. The pliers have mass and the hammers have mass and the chisel, and so forth.

Well, that's an existing state. But as long as it's not against anything, as long as all states measured are the states measured, we really don't know anything about this thing called sanity, because nobody ever found anybody that everybody agreed was sane. See, so there is no agreed standard for sanity. So a test never could tell you whether you were batty or walking down the chalk line. No test really could factually tell you this.

Well, they get wilder than this. They get much wilder than that. You can understand that one. But how in the name of heaven they could substitute some of the things they substitute is quite remarkable, because they substitute uses. And then you could say they abuse machinery. Abuse machinery.

There is an oblique way of using a test that way which will amuse you, and that is if the person can't and won't take it, why, you can assume something wrong – either in your offering it to him or his acceptance of it. And that's pretty positive evidence – we don't know for what, but it's pretty good.

You'll see a passenger car going down the road loaded up like a truck. That's understandable; the fellow doesn't own a truck, but he does own a passenger car. All right, that's understandable. But it is not a very bad misuse. But if this fellow needed something to haul dirt with and had the money and walked out and bought a passenger car, then you'd have it in the aberrative band, you see? The aberrated band.

But these tests when given are stable. They are very stable. In Scientology, we push the guy upscale – a direction nobody ever went before – and they just move upscale just like that. Bzzzzz. Really, really fabulous. I mean, we change the existing state, and then we can measure how much it's changed by the new state. Interesting that we have now a comparison of states.

And people do this rather consistently. You'll find them misusing things. For instance, a very fine ironer that was installed the other day is being used by the maid as a clothes dryer. Well, that's understandable. There was nothing to hang clothes on, you see? There was not an immediate clothesline that was close to the tubs and so forth. And so one says, „Well, that's better than nothing. You can hang clothes on that ironer because it does hang up.“

And in view of the fact that we have some standard required for a fellow to audit, and knowing this is more arduous than living, why, we can say the fellow has to be in this kind of a condition with this profile to get along fairly well in life, and we can do something about it. But we still don't know anything about testing.

But then a clothesline was provided, a very good one, very easy to reach and much closer to the zone of actions than the ironer. And the ironer continued to be used as a clothes dryer. Get that? The misuse of machinery.

We really don't know anything about testing. We know about a comparison with a comparison. We compare his new profile with the profiles that we know are necessary to auditors in order to audit, and we compare this profile with his old profile. And the only starting ground it has is auditors have often folded up when they weren't fairly high in tone on certain points. And when they are high in tone in these points, they couldn't care less. I mean, they can get chewed up like mad and they're not chewed up. You get the idea? But it's by comparison.

The fellow who goes to see a lawyer when he should see a doctor. Misuse of personnel.

Now, nobody, then, would ever be able to give you a test, get any answers off of it and be able to say that you were peculiarly sane or peculiarly insane. Nobody would be able to give you a test and say this, just bluntly, bang, without comparison to something. It'd have to be "saner than what?" see? "More insane than whom?" You'd have to have some sort of a standard.

I hate to tell you what leads into that category. You look at any organization that can't use or place personnel in the zone of their capabilities and you're looking at a psycho organization. Now, I did not mention the U.S. Army, Air Forces or Navy. Now, you're just hanging me with libel.

Well, in view of the fact most tests are developed from some standard or another, we then have some concept of their accuracy.

I've fished more firemen out of engine rooms — they were rated firemen, who were good deck men — and have put more deck force people in engine rooms who were good firemen than you could shake a stick at. And it didn't take any great personnel sensibility to do this because their former experience had been the experience of firemen and their former experience had been the experience of deck men, and yet they were just completely wrongly rated and classified and sent the opposite direction, don't you see?

I'll give you some idea of how tests are developed as to standard. It's an interesting way to get a standard. We take 259 Safeway store managers and have them grade their stockmen. We take the 259 managers, and we say whether their stockmen are bad or good, happy or unhappy, efficient or inefficient, you see. And then we test the stockmen, and then we assign the value of the Safeway manager, and we've got the leading – huh! – leading efficiency test of the country.

Takes a lot of straightening out — I don't care whether you're in a business organization or a service, or something of the sort — to get this misuse, misassignment, misidentification of personnel straightened out. But organizations which are batty will always misuse and miscall tools, machinery, personnel. They always will. They just — because they're running a total identification. A truck isn't a truck to them. It may belong to a class of something like metal objects. That's their nearest ability to identify. Best identity that they could assign to a truck would be a metal object, don't you see? Now, really, they're incapable of calling it or using it as a truck. Do you see this?

Now, listen, I've known some Safeway managers, and they were good men. Nothing wrong with that, but they weren't ever noted for their human charity. In other words, what have we got, finally, as the standard? We've got the opinions of 259 Safeway managers, not coordinated against each other at all, but each one assigned to his particular stockmen. And this is a standard? That's why I don't know anything about testing. Get the idea?

Now, that is just nothing more or less than the band of total identification, and that goes down to „we don't know for what,“ and we have havingness. And you run Havingness on an awful lot of people and they go unconscious. They're running in the band of total identification, and no one knows for what anything is identified. There is no starting point to it. Eventually they will cognite and tell you something. Well, they have found a starting point. They have found something that they could vaguely confront. Out of this bundle of identifications they found one item that they've walked back up on and they've confronted it, and we call that a cognition.

It also says the scores were weighted. I don't know why they were weighted though. In other words, we test the efficiency of people against the opinion of Safeway managers, and I'm not working in a Safeway so the test couldn't possibly work on me, don't you see.

Now, it's an upper range of that to have an effect on this thing. You see, just to stand and face something is a high skill. See, that's a big skill. Stand and face a wall? Oh, wow! Why, that's pretty terrific! Stand and face a wall. Hm! Really takes some doing.

But we could take any test, no matter how arbitrary, and get a curve on quite a few people, and then process them for a while, and then get a new curve. And we could say then this process on these people gets us this change. You got it? And in view of the fact that nothing else has ever been able to change this test, we must have been changing the test. Not even Russian brainwashing or sergeant brainwashing could alter this profile, thus an auditor must be doing something.

Now, to do something to the wall is higher than that. But to do something to the wall, believing that the wall is a blackboard, is of course lower than that.

Now, we observe the fellow in life, and we find out that he no longer – well, he's dropped a lot of his nastier habits. He's dropped a lot of his nastier habits. For instance, he no longer sits silent while his mother-in-law is talking. See, that's dropped a nasty habit. He hasn't permitted himself to be arrested for just months, see. I mean the guy's getting in better shape.

Now, what about the case that can't remedy havingness in any way, shape or form? Now, you look at this case and you say, „Well, I know exactly what's wrong with that person. I can just add it up just as neat as you please. Can add it up just as fine as you please. I know what's wrong with him. It's so-and-so and so-and- so and so-and-so.“ And we process him on this and nothing happens.

For instance, he used to read all the time the Wall Street Journal. Although he didn't buy stocks or anything else, he used to – you know, he had nasty habits. And he'd never read the "Ball Street Journal." (That's another paper entirely.) And now he only reads the "Ball Street Journal," see. In other words, he changed, his conduct in life changed.

Well, it's obvious what's wrong with him, but what he's substituting this for, Lord only knows. What he's having, Lord only knows. What he can't have, Lord knows. We're just wham, you see? It's a level of substitution on a complete identification.

It used to be that he let the other fellow keep the job for him, and now he can even work. See, something has happened here. Performance has shifted.

And people will tell you, „Yes, I know that's wrong with me,“ and go right on in the most conversational tone of voice you ever heard of, see — just go right on. Yes, they know they shouldn't beat the car to make it start. You point this out to them.

So, we in Scientology come straight back to performance. What is our standard? The standard is "Can an auditor who gets this curve on this test audit?" Our findings have been, yes. So that's a satisfactory curve. He's able to stand up to a lot of clawing. All right. Therefore, his auditing performance is acceptable. To whom? To us! We're not reticent!

The living of life in this day and time mainly consists of pointing out to people things which are terribly obvious to you but aren't at all obvious to them, and having them not listen.

Well, if it's acceptable to us, why, it's probably acceptable to preclears because that's what's acceptable to us. We're honest. And it's true enough it does. It is acceptable then to preclears. And the fellow leads a successful life. He even has a successful auditing career. He's able to do things with Scientology and auditing, don't you see. But that's a performance test, isn't it?

Now, there are ways to get almost any datum across, but to go through a total identification instead of any logical chain at all — no logical chain, no bridge left... The fellow who is below havingness, however, can still — can still be salvaged. By some gradient scale he can be walked upstairs. You still have to find out some zone where there is a recoverable ability and improve it. That is the formula of making anybody well. Find a zone, area, class of recoverable ability and improve it.

And can he hold his own in his environment – domestic environment and so forth? Yes. All right. Therefore, that's a performance, an observable performance, isn't it.

Now, that might be a recoverable ability to have. You see, you'd have to get more complicated, see? You'd have to say, „What would you have to do in order to have that?“ See? We've run Havingness on him for half an hour. We notice that there's no change of comm lag, nothing of the sort. He just doesn't cognite. The wall isn't there.

Well, now, the reason I don't know anything about testing at all is because testing itself is an esoteric subject. It is a very deep subject, and the reason I don't know anything about it is its standards are all hidden

So we ask him, „What would you have to do in order to have that wall?“ Oh, and he will give you some long, involved logical chain.

Original psychological testing was designed to tell us that people were bad or not quite bad or worse. And it was designed against these lines and so on. I'm sure I'm maligning them. There are many psychologists that have gone out and made a sincere effort to test, actually, four or five living beings before they released a test which was standard sanity for everybody in the United States. I'm sure they've done this. I'm sure they have, before they released it and said, "We have tested a thousand people." I'm sure they did test a couple, maybe the wife.

Now, have you noticed in running Havingness on some people that they will explain to you continuously that, „Well, I could have that if...“ or „I could have something just like it if I bought it, if I had enough money.“ You got that?

But the main thing that I'm getting at is that we have found – we're very tolerant – we have found that these tests were useful, very useful, extremely useful. For the first time we found a use for them. And I should be standing here sounding off about psychologists, when they worked, for I don't know how many hundred years they worked. It was since 1879 on physiological psychology, and a lot longer earlier than that on a noncommunist line of approach. And they worked for all of these decades. They worked, they slaved, they amassed figures, papers, they tested people, they thought of things, they filed things, they unfiled things, they published books, they plagiarized each others' stuff; just all these years and years and years and years and years, just so that we could come along and find, for the first time, a use for their activity. And so I should malign them. I shouldn't at all. They undoubtedly have done us a very great service.

Well, that — they actually have altered the auditing command. The auditing command is „Look around here and find something you could have,“ and when they add an „if“ they have altered the command.

Well, they've done us a tremendous service as a matter of fact. Tremendous. I've known just exactly what to throw away here in the last week or so that I've been working on a new test battery for us. Yes, I have. I mean, they've given me all the things you don't do. A tremendous number of things, tremendous assistance.

By the way, they don't get any better. The preclear who is altering the command on you like this is not running the process and is not improving.

You look down the thing, and you say, "Well, that couldn't possibly tell you anything. Therefore we won't write that kind of a test. This test over here is highly uninformative. It wouldn't be of any use to anybody. A total verbalization. Might test somebody's verbs, but we're not interested in verbs, so we can push that one aside."

You'd have to ask an auditing command which was answerable by those phrases in order to get any improvement, you see that? Otherwise he's avoiding you. You've permitted an avoidance.

They've done this tremendous amount of work and it has been extremely useful. It's been extremely useful, and I've been able to lay it aside. I haven't been able to learn anything about it particularly – I don't know anything about it yet, as a matter of fact. But I do know that it isn't against a performance, and where it isn't regularly and routinely against a performance, of what use is it?

You find out he can't have. All right. You'd alter the auditing command. „Look around here and find what you could have on how many vias.“

Now, if somebody had gone out and tested a thousand racing drivers or a hundred race drivers and said, "This test on a thousand (or a hundred) race drivers got this curve" – wow! Boy, would I have riches. Boy, that would be riches. If somebody went out and said, "We routinely took right on down the block in Des Moines, Iowa" – see, I'd be able to grade that, for sure – "right down the block, Des Moines, Iowa. And we tested each housewife in succession down the block in the year 1927, and we got this final result." I could even find some use for that. I'd know that wasn't the curve for all housewives in the country.

Now, it's quite remarkable that the people you are processing, most of them know they are being processed in some vague way. Most of them will sit still, most of them will answer questions, and so on. Now, I want you as auditors to look on that as an asset. It is a tremendous asset.

If they'd said, "We've taken a great many schoolteachers teaching elementary school, and we've given them this test and we've gotten this result." If these factual things on which we could really count were actually listed, what riches we'd have. But we actually start from scratch in Scientology.

You start processing people who can't sit still, who can't answer your questions — and you haven't gone into an insane band to find that level of people, either, you know? They're hardly even classifiable as neurotic. They're just totally unable to have or be or confront anything vaguely resembling a personal approach which is a personal approach — personal to what their actions are or their beingness or something. They consider all these things a wild criticism, as hot as being hit with a ray pistol, see? Just the thought of standing there, the thought of being there, the thought of answering any of these questions and so forth becomes a subject for intolerance.

All we can do is take a series of questions – almost random questions – plot them on some kind of a random curve and say, "This is a good Scientologist because we know he can audit" – by experience. See, we know he's all right.

Now, there's a whole lot of people like that. They're crazier than hell. They can't play a game. But they're getting by in the society for being sane. Everything in their vicinity is going at a hot spin, that's for sure. You look for such a person, look for the unprocessable person in a household, and you will generally discover the person in that household who, on how many vias, is upsetting the entire household.

And we take and run it again, and we say, "Well... not this guy." And then we know something else. We know, with processing, we can take this low curve and we can put it up higher and put him into a bracket where he can perform. See, we know these things. That's all we know. We don't know anything about testing.

This explains to you the difficulties of the squirrel. You know, it's an odd thing about squirrels... Just the scientific- technical word „squirrel.“ Something very odd about these people is they always have — a real squirrel has in his vicinity somebody who is unprocessable by him and who is opposed to the subject of Dianetics or Scientology. You look at the squirrel, you have to look one step beyond the squirrel, and you will find the opposition to the subject. Now, because he can't get this person to confront the subject he eventually takes on the valence of that person who cannot confront, and so he himself becomes critical and upset about it.

In the first place, there is no such thing as standard performance. Your behavior today was undoubtedly the best possible behavior that anybody could have behaved in this society at this time. But if you had behaved as you behaved today in the middle of the African jungle, there wouldn't be a one of you alive tonight. Do you see the slight difference? Now, that's an extreme example.

Now, he doesn't become critical to the point of moving completely out of the sphere. He unfortunately stays halfway in and halfway out. You got the idea?

Therefore, who could say what is a survival test? – unless it would be a survival test against an environment. In other words, the test must always be against conditions which exist in an environment. It must always be a test of performance. You follow that?

Wherever you've found a squirrel you find this kind of a condition. Now, that's a little rule of thumb that we've developed here for years because we've had experience with this line.

It's important, because for years people have been telling you that you were dumb or mediumly bright or something, see. They have been telling you that you were bright and dumb or telling you that you could be smarter or something of the sort, and they've never told you against what standard. What's the standard? Brighter than whom? Dumber than which?

But let me show you something: That person who is unprocessable, no matter how logically this person declares it, is actually incapable of confronting any part of anything anywhere, don't you see, that even vaguely relates to personal experience. And this person is unable to confront personal experience in any way.

I know I had a teacher used to tell me I was awfully dumb all the time. She used to say, "You are the stupidest child I ever had!" She used to say this just routinely. "You're the stupidest child I ever had." She'd just would keep this up. Every day, you know, I'd try to read something or do something – "You're the stupidest child I ever had."

Have you ever had a preclear fly into a dispersal somewhere during a session? You tell the person to look at the wall or do something like this, and the person sort of rises half out of their chair or something and they flinch and they say, „Rrrowrow,” and they go off on some other subject or other. You've just hit one of these total-identification areas, and it is so strong in its command power over the preclear that it causes the preclear to go into a frenzied dispersal. You ever see that?

Finally found out what was wrong with her. I went into consultation with a couple of other kids and I says, "What is the matter with the old babe?" you know. "What's the matter with her?"

Well, these people go into that as their only dramatization. Doesn't matter how they phrase it, put it, say it. You ask them to be audited, you ask them to let you ask them to do something, and they go into one of these frantic dispersals, or they simply go into an apathetic sort of a collapse state. You understand? I mean, there's just no cooperation in there at all.

And they said, "You know, there's times when you're diplomatic."

Now, what do you suppose a person like that would do to somebody else's private life? This person cannot confront any personal problem of any kind. Let me show you, then, that the person who is associated with them in making them — trying to make them confront personal problems gets this person falling back on them all the time. And this person falls back on them, falls back on them.

And I said, "What – what do you mean diplomatic?"

This guy or this girl cannot hold this other person up into a position of confronting any personal situation of any kind. The person falls back on them, fights them, talks at them, does something or becomes totally 1870 — you know, „I'm so weak and helpless, cough, cough.“ Get the idea?

"You take her an apple."

Now, that person's action of falling back on them in this fashion eventually brings about this interesting phenomenon of causing the person who is making the other person confront, be that person. Now, you'll see this phenomenon untangle, and you yourself could experience it rather easily, by mocking up people and making them confront the wall. Now, the same process, almost, with the added thing that it has some motion in it, is „Make so- and-so fight the wall. Mock up somebody and make them fight the wall. Mock up somebody and make them fight the wall. Mock up somebody and make them fight the wall.“

So I said, "Hey, what do you know!" You know, I was a kid out on the Western range most of the time, and I learned fast, you know, quick. And so next time I rode by a neighbor's of ours orchard , why, I took her a saddlebag full of apples. Smartest child she had. Always afterwards the smartest child she had.

And you find out one of these weak universes and have the preclear mock this person up and fight the wall, you will have the personality, the nonconfronting personality that collapsed on him. And now he's having trouble with that valence.

So I figured out the standard of performance there was a bag of apples. So I know when I'm stupider than a bag of apples and smarter than a bag of apples. I hope you've had the similar good fortune to know what you're stupider than and smarter than.

You see, this doesn't violate the old communication and distance formulas and so forth. His attention gets so fixed upon an effort to make the person confront and gets so many failures in making that person confront that eventually he is totally fixed on that person with no distance — no affinity, no distance, bang — and as a result he becomes that person, and that is a valence. That's all a valence is. Doesn't matter much how you try to separate these valences. Doesn't matter what you do with a valence. The basic mechanism of happenstance in a preclear is that.

They give you university examinations, give you high-school examinations and they give you a grade. The grade says "A," but they never say "a" what? They say "B," but they never tell you what to be. They say "C," and send you out of the place stone blind on any subject you've been studying. Now, that's an awful pun, a bad series of puns, but bad in comparison to whose?

Now, you're thinking at once in terms of, well, he had a mother; he couldn't make his mother confront things. This is rather usual for a child. He had a wife, she had a husband, had a schoolteacher, somebody. There was a drunk uncle. We have a case hanging fire right now, not too awfully — well, at least on this continent — that we will have to round up one of these days, that had a drunken uncle and was so thoroughly (this drunken uncle) in a drunken vomiting spell and so on that it was rather peculiar. We did not have the mechanism which I'm giving you at the moment these years ago that we processed the case, and we never were able to strip that valence.

You just remember that, will you, on tests. It is true that today we have tailored up a test which tells us that somebody will cause us trouble. In other words, his performance in our hands will be deplorable. Maybe the guy's a good marksman. Maybe he'd be excellent as a shrimp fisherman, down in Mexico shooting Mexicans. The guy might be... might be – you know, he might be anything, you know. But according to our demands on his performance, such as to sit still and answer pleasantly, he's a bad character, don't you see.

We finally got the valence isolated, but what could we do about it? We know what we would do about it now. We would find somebody she could make confront a wall, and then we would have her run this long enough, arduously enough, until we could finally pick up the uncle and mock him up confronting the wall, and that valence will break.

And when he gets to be a good character, we know that he's capable of certain performances. We know he's capable of certain persistences. We know that his ability to handle people, his ability to live, his ability to do, communicate in general, will be very good.

Now, you also have the entrance of havingness. We want to know what Uncle can't have in the room. Why „can't have“? Well, it's a games condition: the opponent. See, the opponent must never have anything.

But again (and I give you this very factually), from our viewpoint – from our viewpoint. He will be able to talk to people; he will be able to make people better; he will be able to have the world happy that he's around. But that's only our narrow-minded viewpoint. He'll be of some value in any community, since he will produce. He will be missed when he's gone. But remember, that is only our viewpoint.

Never run „What can your mother have,“ see? „Look around the room and find something your mother can have.“ Boy, is that wrong! See, that is just wrong. It just — it's a no-game condition, and so on. The proper phrasing — I know it defies logic, but one isn't being logical; he's treating aberration — is „Look around the room and find something your mother cannot have.“

And, please observe this, it very well may be true that it is a terribly incorrect viewpoint. Maybe it's completely too narrow; maybe it's a worthless viewpoint entirely, you see. Maybe the actuality is that a fellow who is in a rage all the time, who stamps his feet, who makes everybody miserable, that kicks dogs when they've been hit by cars and spanks kids who have just sat on hot stoves – maybe these people are the salt of the earth. But it just happens they're not, from our viewpoint. But it's our idiotically narrow-minded viewpoint that objects to this. You understand that? I mean, it may not be true that these are bad people. They're bad from our viewpoint.

Well, do you see that that gets an identification? We're striking at a basic identification there. So we might have to run that before we ran „Mock up your mother and make her confront the wall.“ Do you see that?

It may require people like this to aberrate people so that we can process them. You see, there's always this sort of thing to think of. There's always something to think about like that.

We're walking up this same ladder of steps I gave you just a moment ago. Total identification, total collapse, doesn't even know what he's associated with or what what is associated with, has no knowing of this at all. That would run, perhaps, on a „can't have-have“ basis, some substitution on a „have“ basis, but you're not even asking him to substitute.

It may be that standards of performance vary. Now, you take Tarzan's standard of performance. I was a great student of Tarzan's. I used to read Edgar Rice Burroughs quite regularly when I could... The librarian ordinarily wouldn't let me have books. I kept them too long, and so forth, and read them too arduously: read right straight back through their covers and things like that, and very bad habits. And I'd never have money enough to pay the fines of the books I already had kept out too long and which I'd forgotten to return or hadn't finished yet or something of the sort. We were always having a feud. Fortunately, there was a small window at the back of the library, so I checked my own books in and out. Anyway...

Then the next thing you might do with him is find some substitutes for one of these things, you see? And the next one up is mock-ups and „confront these things.“ Follow that?

Edgar Rice Burroughs's stories of Tarzan were very encouraging to the youth of America in that day. They were very, very encouraging. They were a fine, upstanding example of a man acting like an ape. And I very often used to feel constrained by these books from highly civilized conduct and that sort of thing. But I was tremendously intrigued by this since that was a standard of performance to all young America. See?

Now, 8-C, Part A is running on a total-identification level. You don't know who he's being while he is confronting the wall. You don't know what's confronting the wall, see, but neither does he; that makes you even. And he'll eventually be able to make something confront the wall, and he confronts the wall with more and more accuracy. And he may have made five hundred or a thousand people confront that wall without himself knowing it and without the auditor having had very much view of it. Just running on a total identification all the way on the track.

If you acted like Tarzan, boy, you were in. Man, who wouldn't be willing to swing from tree to tree. I done broke my neck more than once. The dull crash, some old frayed rope strung up one way or the other, tarzaning from tree to tree, you know. They never tell you that the arc circumscribed by a rope is the length of the rope.

All right. Do you see this mechanism of the collapse of a valence on the individual?

But this was still a standard of performance. Now, not modernly, but just yesterday, I told the two chaps that invented Superman... I knew them rather well up in New York, and they were looking for a good idea. And I told them that I thought they were overdoing it a bit. Seems like I was right: they were overdoing it from my viewpoint. They got more popular than anything I was writing. Well anyhow, these boys and Superman, you know.

Well, that is actually the way the individual got into this universe, too. Couldn't make this universe confront anything. First, couldn't have an effect on it, then couldn't confront it, and then became it and had it. Don't you see? So that the way out would be run it on a games condition of what could you have in it, what it can't have, possibly, substitutes for it — sounds like an impossible process, but substitutes for it. You can run substitutes on data of incomparable magnitude, data not of the same order at all, and he'll eventually give you data of a similar order. And you've found a substitute for it the moment that you've done that.

Now, actually your wearing two identities and being schizophrenic, from the standpoint of a psychiatrist, would be extremely questionable – extremely questionable. I mean, supposing you met somebody that jumped in behind doors and peeled off all of his clothes in a public hall and threw on some dyed underwear and then leaped out of windows, never used doors. From a psychiatric viewpoint that standard of performance is nuts.

And then we go up into the next stage immediately above that, which would be confronting this universe. And that would be the universe as a universe, don't you see? I mean, on the whole thing.

But from young America of a decade ago that was quite acceptable conduct. Someday you'll have a preclear. These young men are still growing up, I call to your attention; you do not yet have them as preclears. And one of these days you will find that you have a preclear whose only foible is stepping behind doors... and running around in dyed underwear. The only difference is when you try to cure him of this, he probably will be able to fly.

Now, in the live-a-day world we only have small parts of this, and we work with small parts of this, but I want you to be warned that you're running the small part of this rather overwhelming process which I just outlined to you.

Well, although I don't know anything at all about testing, I can tell you that, finally, standards of performance have to some degree unwound. There's hardly one of us who hasn't asked himself the question, "Isn't it better to be mean?" Almost every one of us has had the feeling that we were a bit soft. We didn't like flying into the teeth of some human being and making him feel bad or making her feel bad. We've told ourselves, "We ought to be tougher. We ought to put up a better front; we ought to be... You know, know when to snarl, know when to show the sharpened tooth." And I'm sure that we have walked away occasionally after we've loaned somebody five dollars or something of the sort and said, "When am I going to learn to be tough? When am I going to learn to be tough? When am I going to learn to be hardboiled and just stand right up to that little kid and say 'No!' When am I going to learn this?"

Now, we find, then, that there is a scale of what we can make the preclear do. And we have Havingness Processes run on a games condition. They include „can't have“ processes. Never „can't have“ for the individual, you know. „Have“ for him, „can't have“ for something else. We go up into substitutions, subjective or objective; we don't care what. There's a way of running substitutions you might be interested in. We call it stable data.

And the motto behind this is "Isn't it better to be mean occasionally? It's only from being kind and a sucker" – synonym: being kind, being a sucker – "being an easy mark, so on. When am I going to stop being all of these bad, soft things and be a hard, forthright, capable-of-saying-no person? When am I going to be able to do that? Isn't it better to be mean? I would be a much better manager. I would be a much better person if I knew when to come down with a slight slam. If I could just know, occasionally, when I should be mean, and if I just was willing to be mean, wouldn't that be right. Isn't it true that I should be more mean than I am? Isn't it true that I should be harder, more forthright, much more positive. I should be able to just take the people out there and just sweep them aside? And isn't there some rightness in being tough? Isn't there?"

„What would be a stable data to your early childhood?“

And I used to ask myself this question. I used to ask myself this question. Everybody does. And I used to ask myself, "Isn't there a time when I will finally get rough enough, mean enough, ornery enough, that people will flinch?" You know. "Something wrong with me that I don't want to be mean. Something wrong with me."

„Oh,“ the fellow would say, „a chest.“

And I used to think about this occasionally, and as the years went along I could spot times when I should've been tougher – you know, I knew it; sure of it – and very recently, very recently, ran a series of processes which were highly informative. Very informative. That person that's willing to confront other things doesn't ever have to say no, he doesn't ever have to be mean, he doesn't ever have to be tough at all. As a matter of fact, it's a silly thing to do; it's a silly thing to be. It is perfectly all right to be nice to people. It isn't a weakness at all; nothing weak about being nice. And a matter of fact, if you aren't, you're in the soup.

„What kind of a chest?“

You could say that the only times for which you are suffering are those times when you weren't nice enough, when you weren't kind enough and when you weren't unmean enough, and those are the only times from which you're really suffering.

„Oh, the kind you lock up.“

It is not true that being mean gets anybody ahead anyplace. That's really factual, really factual. Because being mean is going out of ARC with. And a careful analysis of games conditions and the processing of preclears demonstrates that if you were to run the process "Go out of communication with, go out of communication with, go out of communication with, go out of communication with," he goes to pieces. Fascinating little test, isn't it.

„All right. That's fine. Mock it up. Mock it up. Mock it up. Mock up a chest. Mock up a chest. Mock up a chest. Mock up a chest.“ Never saw so much commotion in the world. Commotion will fly around and hit that chest and go in all directions. And you just do that for a long time. This one gets kind of fozzle-fozzled, and he can eventually mock one of these things up, and it will sit there. And with your coaxing and so forth, you've improved it until he can just mock up a chest and it sits there right in the room.

"I should be mean. I should say no. I should say I don't want to communicate with you. I should say I don't want to have anything more to do with you. I should be able to say, 'You do so-and-so regardless of the consequences.'" Willingness to mess somebody else up, you know, being hard about the whole thing.

And you say, „That's fine.“ You say, „Give me another stable datum for your childhood.“

Well, if you run it on a preclear, you will just run out a few of his incidents of his doing that, but it's a cut communication the whole way.

He says, „Apron strings.“

When you deny your fellow man, the only thing which you can deny is to deny him communication. I don't care how solid the particle is or how light and airy the particle is. You say "no"; you say "be mean," you say "be very positive," do this and do that; the truth of the matter is that you are denying him communication, one way or the other – being tough.

You say, „All right. Mock up some apron strings. Good. Mock up some apron strings. Good. Mock up some apron strings. Good. Mock up some apron strings.“

The only thing you should ever be tough about is insist that the other fellow ought to stand on his own feet, too. And the only way you will ever communicate that to him is to communicate it to him in a very nice way. Then he's liable to receive it.

What are you doing? You've got a cognited substitute for something, see? It's there. And you just run it. And you run it until you run off all of the confusions for which it's standing as a stable datum. See, it's the resistance point.

Being mean is simply going out of communication with things. And that's always – always will be and always has been – very aberrative.

Why this substitute stable datum? Because a stable datum is something that confronts the confusion, and you're running confrontingness of a confusion, don't you see? Got that?

So I've got the question answered and have a standard for conduct at least from a standpoint of aberration. The individual who is kind, who is decent and who does communicate and who is nice and who isn't averse to conversation and saying this and doing that, who is tolerant, and so on, we find gets along beautifully. We find the things that he runs into in life run out. They don't pile up on him and swamp him.

„Look around the room and find something your mother couldn't have.“ Very fine. „Look around the room and find a substitute for Mother.“ More or less the same process; if anything, a little more workable. „Look around and find something you can have.“ That isn't even for anything; it's just total identification, so of course it's the undercutting process and on most cases works best.

But the fellow who's mean and who's ornery and who's cutting comms all the way along the line, and so on, we find he's in the soup.

And as we get upscale we discover that there are other processes that are quite usable in terms of confrontingness. You could reduce a fever with this dodge: „Look around and find something that is motionless. Find something that is still.“ Fellow finally does. Well, it's a no-game condition to find something that is still without any effort of your own, but that's all right. This just tells you it's that — that much of it is a bad process. And then you say, „Now make your body confront it. You make your body confront it. You make your body confront it,“ see? Ah-hah!

Now, I don't know anything about testing, but all testing must be conducted against a hidden ideal or a known ideal. But if it's hidden, somebody must know it. Somebody would have to know this ideal.

Do you know that'll reduce a fever? That'll take a fever down from about 103 down to subnormal faster than seat, half an hour of it, twenty minutes of it. Quite remarkable.

You could test a fellow against a hidden ideal where you knew the answers to the test and he didn't, but you had better know the answers to the test.

If it doesn't take it down objective, it takes it down subjective. „Look around the room and find something motionless. All right. You make your body confront it.“ Now, if this was not working and didn't take the fever down, then what would take the fever down would be „Look around the room and find something motionless. All right. Mock up your body and make the mock-up confront it.“ But that is quite a trick, that process.

Therefore, I can tell you tonight that a test which is measured on the basis of human kindness as a high and human meanness as a low is a standard of human optimum performance. That sounds very silly, and that's a very obvious sort of a thing to discover, but nevertheless it's a discovery.

Now, the fellow is making his own body that he has, right here and now, confront things. Let me bring that to your attention. He is successfully doing this. Now, that ability can be improved. It is the body that he has, this is what is going on in the world. He is doing this. But there are many things which deter it from doing any confronting.

I don't know anything about testing, but now I think I know how to make one. I think I know how a decent fellow would grade and how a bad one would grade because I know the answer at last to whether I should have been mean all those times or whether I should have been more kind. And I know I should have been more kind.

Now, for a long time we've known about theta bodies, but we've never been able to do anything about them that was very effective. But you can run a preclear on „Mock up a theta body and make it confront the wall.“ You take your black case, you do this to this black case, and you run this very thoroughly and, brother, he will cease to be a black case. After how much pain and duress we don't go into.

Thank you.

„Mock up some blackness and shove it in,“ of course, is the lower identification. This blackness he has, if you mock up some blackness and shove it in, eventually becomes a theta body. You know, a black Fac One body or something of the sort. Well, what do you do with it? You could do the same process. Or you could remedy havingness on black theta bodies — identification, some more. Or you could jump to this higher level and — in many cases, not totally successful — „Mock up a theta body and make it confront the wall.“ An amazing amount of phenomena and reaction occur on such processes.

Well, now, this is diagnosis, just this: which of these processes handles the obvious difficulty with the preclear? And the heart of diagnosis is something that needs no discussion at all: You look at them and find something obvious about them and cure it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

[End of Lecture]