On the theory that someone may pick up this book and have only time to read a few lines, or have a constricted ability in amount of material assimilable, right here in a hurry I wish to give you the type of Straight Wire which is today producing phenomenal results on preclears.
THE COMMAND: Recall a moment of ______.
NUMBER OF TIMES COMMAND USED: Until the complete flattening of the preclear’s communication lag takes place, so that he can readily and at some length and quantity give replies without any difficulty.
COMMUNICATION: Always acknowledge with an “O. K.” or an “all right” every answer which the preclear gives you. Always let the preclear originate any communication he wishes to originate, or comment on the process, and acknowledge his origin of communication or comment. In other words, do not override his effort to communicate to you as this will considerably reduce his tone rise.
DUPLICATION: Make sure that you, the auditor, duplicate the command over, and over, and over until the comm lag is flat, and do not be detoured by any rationale of your own into any other process simply because you are unwilling to continue the duplication of the command.
APPLICATION: In the blank space of the command can be placed any subject of any concern or consideration of the preclear whether theta or entheta.
EXAMPLE: The preclear is studious. The auditor then applies Straight Wire in this fashion: “Recall a moment of studiousness
OBSERVED PHENOMENON: The time track phenomenon will be observed while delivering this Straight Wire question. It will manifest itself in this fashion. The first answers of the preclear will probably be relatively close to present time and then will be further back into the past, at which time they will begin to progress (at some time they will begin to progress forward into the future) and will come close to present time again, when they will once more turn around and go into the past and then come into the future. In other words, the preclear will give the time A DAY OR SO AGO when he was studious, then a time A YEAR OR SO AGO when he was studious, then a time WHEN HE WAS A CHILD when he was studious, then a time WHEN HE WAS SIXTEEN when he was studious, then a time LAST YEAR when he was studious, then a time THREE DAYS AGO when he was studious, then a time TWO YEARS AGO when he was studious, then a time when he was THREE YEARS OLD and he was studious, then a time when he was EIGHT YEARS OLD and he was studious, then a time YESTERDAY when he was studious, and so forth. In other words, the preclear sweeps up and down the time track. The caution to be observed in this is, never leave the process when the preclear is recalling moments which are far into the past. Leave the process when the preclear is recalling times relatively close to present time. Otherwise you stick the preclear on the track.
GOAL OF THE PROCESS: The goal of many processes is to raise the selfdeterminism of the preclear. Memory is an automaticity which is not under the control of the preclear. By taking over the automaticities of memory and forgetting the preclear is capable of greater self-determinism. In view of the fact that all mass could be said to be memory, you will see at once that Straight Wire leads to the control of mass.
PREREQUISITES TO SESSION: Present must be an auditor, a preclear, a place to audit and time in which to audit.
WHEN THE SESSION HAS BEGUN: The session is actually in progress and the process is ready to be administered only when the preclear is aware of the fact that an auditor is present, that HE is present, that the auditing room is present and that an auditing session is in progress. TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION or asking the preclear to locate objects in the room simply by NOTICING THAT THEY ARE THERE (a lower process than Two-Way Communication) should then be engaged upon until such time as the preclear is aware of his surroundings and the condition.
ON WHAT PRECLEAR TO USE STRAIGHT WIRE: Straight Wire can be used on any preclear who is AWARE OF HIS SURROUNDINGS, THE AUDITOR, AND AUDITING SESSION AND WHO HAS REALITY UPON THE GOAL OF AUDITING. This is signalized by the preclear being in fairly good two-way communication with the auditor. Straight Wire should not be employed on preclears who are in very poor two-way communication.
SUBJECTS ON WHICH STRAIGHT WIRE CAN BE USED: Straight Wire can be employed on ANY SUBJECT OR CONDITION. It will be discovered that the straight wire processes are PROBABLY THE BEST RESOLUTION OF BLACK CASES. The resolution of a black case is indeed contained rather succinctly in the auditing command, “Recall a time when you were looking at blackness.” The entire HIDE to SERENITY scale can be employed with considerable tone change in the preclear. The key to exteriorization lies in the auditing command: “Recall a time when you were in or associated with a body.” Peculiarities, physical deformities or conditions of any kind could be used on the above straight wire basis with success.
I have given you this brief rundown on Modern Straight Wire, not because it is all there is to say on the subject, but because I wanted to give you the exact essentials present in Modern Straight Wire as rapidly and as efficiently as possible, so that they could be used without having to go through a great deal of material. However, a person, to use Straight Wire, should know a great deal about Straight Wire. While he could simply use the essentials above and could produce a considerable change in a case on any subject, an auditor who is not skilled would be held up by the duplication factor. He would have a tendency, under, of course, very good alibis of his own, to desert the command itself before the process was flat. He would have a tendency to change the command to something else. He would have a tendency to go on excursive trips into the side roads of the process, since a great many comments, considerations and phenomena will come up while Straight Wire is in progress. The self-discipline necessary to continue an auditing command over, and over, and over, and over is not a light discipline. In fact we could say that an auditor who has not himself had a great deal of duplication run would find himself very resistive to repeating this auditing command to a preclear for a long period of time. However, this does not go to say that an auditor in terrible condition himself, knowing this fact, could not then grit his teeth and pitch in and go on and continue a two-way communication with the preclear, and go on and ask this auditing question over, and over, and over, and over until the preclear’s case was solved. Not only is this possible, but it has been done very often. And, in fact, we have a great deal of respect for auditors who, although they themselves are in relatively poor condition, yet go on and produce tremendous advances in cases. We, of course, get more enthusiastic about auditors who are in good shape, producing good results, but we cannot but admire the stick-to-itivity some auditors have in carrying through processes which are above their own case level.
Now, just because we have a modern Straight Wire which is interestingly exact in its application and very predictable in its results, is no reason why we have to throw away all other processes. The Six Basic Steps, done as they are done today, are, of course, of great value and do not go into the discard simply because we have a more effective, more exact and simpler Straight Wire.
There is one particular caution which should be observed in administering Straight Wire: that A PRECLEAR WILL VERY OFTEN GIVE A NO-COMM-LAG REACTION TO A PROCESS WHICH IS ABOVE HIS LEVEL. He will not get well on the process; he will not improve on the process, but also he does not comm-lag on the process. The process is being done more or less by some circuit. It is being done without any reality and it is not involving the preclear at all. One has to go far enough south so that the preclear develops a comm lag. Now, if you were to run Straight Wire on some preclear and simply get your answers every two or three seconds and keep getting answers for a long period of time, you would discover at length that the process was not improving the preclear. The reason the process is not improving the preclear is because the process is above the preclear and the preclear has no reality upon his recalls or his answers. In such a wise it would be very wise to start in below Two-Way Communication and get the preclear to spot objects in the room. Not walk over to them, or perform an 8-C, which is above Straight Wire on the tone scale, but simply to look around and find that there is a chair in the room, that there is a table, and so on. This done for a while orients the preclear and it is discovered that he will go into two-way communication with the auditor. Two-Way Communication, then, about the preclear’s everyday life should ensue, and after this, R2-20, PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS, should be run flat on the preclear, for the preclear who is very short on problems and who is incapable of arriving at solutions is not likely to give up any case problem and is not likely to arrive at any solution. So, we understand that there are actually three points below Straight Wire. Now, a preclear who would need Problems and Solutions run on him at great length is liable, oddly enough, not to comm-lag on Straight Wire and also not to improve upon it. In this wise, the preclear’s reality on the question or the response is very low and he is simply being monitored by the auditor. The auditor is more or less running all of the preclear’s machinery, an oddity which we observe in some auditing sessions. Although the auditor is running the preclear’s machinery, neither the auditor nor the preclear is aware of it. The auditor isn’t aware of it because he would rather not be, and the preclear isn’t aware of it because he isn’t aware of very much anyhow.
Just as an automobile doesn’t much care who drives it, so do some low toned preclears not care who is running the circuits.
A variation on Modern Straight Wire, a little older but still quite effective, is “Give me something you wouldn’t mind remembering,” and “Give me something you wouldn’t mind forgetting.” These two commands are run independently of each other, not alternately, and each is flattened. These are very, very effective commands. It is remarkable that “Give me something you wouldn’t mind forgetting” hits people who are dislocated so hard that a many-hour comm lag may ensue on the question. These people are afraid to forget anything. This is very, very effective auditing and is not discarded. It can be used a little lower on the scale than Modern Straight Wire, but it is slower.
An auditor should test Straight Wire very rigorously in the recommended form given above before forming any forthright opinions concerning it. He should observe that running this Straight Wire on a very low toned preclear produces no comm lag and no betterment of the preclear. This is the first thing he should learn about it. Then he should learn that run in its proper place on a preclear who is in two-way communication and is in fair condition, it produces remarkable, stable results which last for a very long time. It is not a trick process. It is a plow-horse sort of process, but once it has hauled the preclear up the scale it leaves him there. A preclear’s continued stability for a long time after an auditing session is very desirable. The trick momentary flash results sometimes do not last. An auditor should also learn that he himself is capable of repeating one command over, and over, and over, and over, without varying it, without getting so bored with it that he himself goes out of the auditing session. Remember, when the auditor leaves the auditing session (although he is still there giving auditing commands) it sometimes occurs that very little auditing gets done, since an auditing session of necessity has to have an auditor and a preclear present and auditing in progress.
It will be startling to you to know that this process is a specific process for a black case and does relieve the black case’s blackness. And, after and above the black case level this process is a specific for non-exteriorization and will produce exteriorization if “Recall a time when you were in or associated with a body” is employed over a long enough period of time.
There is a great deal more to know about Straight Wire. There are a great deal of phenomena which occur in Straight Wire and there are many other data to be studied about Straight Wire. However, if the auditor cares to study these, first let him learn thoroughly what we mean by Modern Straight Wire and that is laid out above with exactness.
The old Dianetic auditor will have no difficulty in recalling the earliest days of Straight Wire.
Once upon a time Straight Wire was one of the most intricate, tricky, intuitive processes known. There were auditors who were excellent at this, but they were alone in their skill. There were many, many auditors who never did make Straight Wire work.
Straight Wire of the old Dianetic type, expertly done, many times produced such fascinating results that auditors would then specialize in it, but, because it has often failed, their specialization would be tempered with a restless search for some other process that would do the job with greater exactness.
The genus of Straight Wire immediately followed the release of “The First Book,” Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, on May 9, 1950. I developed Straight Wire a little too late to get it into the text of that book, but taught the first ten students at 42 Aberdeen Road, Elizabeth, New Jersey, this process and actually got these students sufficiently expert in the use of Straight Wire that they could straighten out present time problems on preclears with remarkable facility.
Here is an example of the earliest form of Straight Wire: A preclear is observed to be possessed of a nervous affliction — the rapid blinking of one eye. The auditor asks him, “Who had that affliction?” and asks him this with sufficient communication and discussion so that the preclear at length actually SPOTS A TIME WHEN HE OBSERVED THIS AFFLICTION IN ANOTHER THAN HIMSELF. Now, today with our understanding of Ownership Processing, as covered in the Congress of Eastern Scientologists on June third to sixth [1955] at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. , it becomes highly technical, for naturally the affliction, if it persisted, must be misowned. But, it would also be understood that the preclear himself might be the creator of the condition. If the preclear himself had created the eye twitch at some time in his past, recalling it in somebody else would simply reinforce the eye twitch; thus Straight Wire would not work. As, let us say crudely, this condition exists in about 50% of the cases on whom Straight Wire was used, we certainly would have, by the factors involving ownership, a misunderstanding of the process and a great many failures.
In view of the fact that a thing persists only if it is misowned — if a person himself has created it and says somebody else has created it or if a person is saying he created something which somebody else actually created — we get a persistence of the space or mass. If a person created the condition and then says that he himself created the condition, a vanishment of the condition will occur. If somebody else, a specific person, created the condition and the preclear says that person created the condition, then again we get a vanishment. Only when we misown or miscall the creation of a condition do we get a persistence. Thus we can see that the earliest Straight Wire depended in a great measure upon calling the correct ownership; and recalling the correct ownership by recalling observation of the condition in somebody else would be then sufficient to bring about a diminishment of the condition.
Thus, repeating, Straight Wire would not work on conditions which the person had himself created, as long as the auditing command was “Recall a time when you saw that in somebody else.” This would have to be supplemented by “Recall a time when you decided this was a good thing.” And if those two auditing commands had been used on any condition and if we had also known about comm lag and duplication of the question, then Straight Wire would have been very successful. As a matter of fact it was quite successful and quite startling but had the above limitations.
Now, the earliest type of Straight Wire was interesting in that it did not embrace the case that couldn’t remember. To handle this type of case we invented a variation, which was simply to ask the preclear to remember something, anything, and keep him remembering something or anything until his confidence in his own memory rose to a point where he could remember and thus could experience the benefit of old-time Straight Wire. An example of this variation was to ask somebody if he could remember something that had happened today or something that he had had for breakfast, and keep on asking him for various things until he did have a solid reality on one recall or another.
But this too was quite limited as to process, and in order to further improve memories we came out with what is now known as the next-to-the-last list of Self Analysis, which is “Recall something real,” “Recall a time when you were in communication with someone,” “Recall a time when someone was in communication with you,” “Recall a time when you felt some affinity for someone,” “Recall a time when someone felt some affinity for you,” which process capitalized on the ARC triangle which we came out with in July of 1950, which was much better described in the book Notes on the Lectures of November of 1950 and expanded considerably in Science of Survival which was written in the spring of 1951 and released that summer, the above list appearing in Self Analysis, which was written in September of 1951.
Succeeding this “next-to-the-last list of Self Analysis” was Validation Straight Wire, the theory of which was to validate all the good moments in the preclear’s past by having him recall them. An oddity immediately demonstrated itself, however, in the use of Validation Straight Wire to the effect that the preclear would recall just so many moments which were good and would then fall off into moments which were very bad indeed. This phenomenon had, by the way, been observed much earlier as a comment on the running of pleasure moments, a process developed by Parker Morgan in Elizabeth in 1950.
After Validation Straight Wire the whole subject of Straight Wire more or less fell into disrepute and decay, and a great deal of concentration was given to actual incidents on the whole track and an enormous amount of phenomena which had been dug up through my work in Wichita. Only “next-to-the-last list of Self Analysis” continued to be used right up to the time when we developed “Something you wouldn’t mind remembering,” “Something you wouldn’t mind forgetting,” in one of the clinical units of the summer of 1954. Immediately a great many limitations on Straight Wire were swept away and Straight Wire became a much more important process because it was getting much better results. Here for the first time we had entered into the idea that forgettingness was an actual attribute. In other words, it was a skill. A person forgot things so that he could have things. And, realizing that this was a skill and that it was on full automatic we, of course, had the reason why people were not able to remember. They were so anxious to forget.
In the spring of 1955, in the tenth clinical unit, we discovered that “something you wouldn’t mind FORGETTING” was far, far more important than “something you wouldn’t mind remembering,” and made several tests which demonstrated a considerable rise in tone as a result of using this single command: “Something you wouldn’t mind forgetting.” However, because many more interesting things were showing up and occurring we did not give this really the attention it deserved, and actually to this moment the process is not as thoroughly tried as it might be. It might very well occur that this process would succeed many other processes as something which would produce a long-continued and stable result.
With the first clinical unit [October 5—November 16, 1953], which was taught in Camden, New Jersey, we made a considerable codification of “automaticity” and “randomity,” which had first been introduced in the Philadelphia lectures of December, 1952. The understanding of these two things demonstrated that THE GREATEST AUTOMATICITY IN WHICH ANYONE WAS ENGAGED WAS REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING. Thus, exercises on remembering and forgetting were, of course, very, very important.
It should be understood, then, that no amount of engram running or present time processes would handle this highly specialized thing, automatic remembering and automatic forgetting. And in view of the role remembering and forgetting play in everyday living we couldn’t consider the person very thoroughly processed unless we had taken his memory into account. Thus, whatever other processes are run on the individual, something should be done in order to bring this automatic memory factor under control.
We have rather suspected of recent months that it is not necessary to have a great versatility of subject in remembering in order to restore memory. The mere act of remembering something is enough to take over the automaticity. In other words, there isn’t an automaticity for every subject you can remember; there is simply an automaticity on the subject of memory. Similarly on forgetting. One might think there was a forgetting automaticity on every type and subject known, but there is only one mechanism behind all of this and that is simply an automaticity of forgetting.
Now, if you were to stabilize a preclear in present time and do all sorts of other things with him and yet neglect exercising his memory in any degree it is probable that you would have left the sphere of recall untouched to his detriment and would have left him with this automaticity. And the automaticity of remembering and the automaticity of forgetting could, of course, push him on down again. So, we should say that any preclear who becomes stable should have had exercises in remembering and forgetting.
The actual history of Straight Wire is of course a very old one, much older than Dianetics. We did not invent Straight Wire. We discovered and observed a great many mechanics about memory which had been neglected hitherto. But, we find that Straight Wire or memory exercises are actually very ancient and have been used for at least sixty-five years.
There were many excursions and experiments made in Straight Wire in early Dianetic days. One of these was Repetitive Straight Wire. Simply asking a person to remember something over, and over, and over again. This naturally succeeded from the running of an engram. Running an engram through, and through, and through eventually erases it, so it was tried with Straight Wire and it was discovered that this was fairly effective, but again was not an answer.
The old Dianetic auditor can probably remember early Straight Wire with affection and probably can remember a great many successes as a result of using it. And strictly as a nostalgic exercise, he should know now that with OWNERSHIP PROCESSING as given in the Congress of Eastern Scientologists, he could make old- time Straight Wire totally effective with the question “Can you recall a time when somebody else had that condition?” “Can you recall a time when you decided to have that condition?” on all those cases who are already in fairly good condition in the memory department. He would have to ask BOTH of these questions of ANY case in order to get a result and he would have to ask BOTH of these questions MANY, MANY TIMES, until the preclear had flattened his comm lag. This would be a rather crude form of Straight Wire, but it would at least be completing the cycle of action from olden times.
Straight Wire is one of the most agreed upon things in Dianetics and Scientology. There may have been many people who questioned the advisability of running engrams or running secondaries or scanning engrams or doing something else, but, nobody ever questioned very seriously the efficacity of Straight Wire when it worked. It is, and has been broadly accepted as a near synonym for Dianetics and Scientology.
Memory has played an intimate part in existence since the first Thetan. The creation of time and the creation of memory were concurrent incidents. Let us take a single particle. We find that with this single particle no time is possible, since the space occupied by the single particle would be indeterminate in placing the particle. Unless, of course, there were eight particles demarking the space itself, at which time you would now have nine particles, and it would be very simple to have time. But, with one particle we cannot have time. We have to have two particles to have time. And we have to have two particles to have memory.
We have to have two particles to have memory because we would have to have a reference point for establishing where the moving particle had been if one had remained motionless. In other words, let us take a motionless particle and then let us have another particle move in relationship to that motionless particle; we would then be able to tell that it had moved by remembering that it had been where it was originally. And then remembering successively the positions it had gone through until it arrived at its present time position. The moment that it moved further one would have a situation again of remembering what had been present time for it, but observing what was now its present time position.
MEMORY IS THEN, MECHANICALLY, THE TRACKING OF POSITIONS.
Where POSTULATES or CONSIDERATIONS are concerned, however, we must first have the consideration that space, particles in time can exist and then THAT ONE CAN REMEMBER. This latter is more important than the mechanical facts of time. For if one continually makes the consideration that he cannot remember, he is at once making the consideration that he cannot discover the former position of earlier particles, and any advanced student who knows about PERFECT DUPLICATION, or if you care to read about that in The Creation of Human Ability, will find that it would now be next to impossible for the individual to cause the vanquishment of the particle. In other words, if the person cannot remember where the particle came from originally, he cannot establish its original position. And being unable to establish its original position he cannot get an exact duplication of it, which is to say a perfect duplicate of it, and so will get a persistence of the particle. Once one has forgotten its original position, which is the mechanical aspect of this, one is then no longer able to cause it to disappear.
In processing we very often run into a person who has “heavy facsimiles.” In other words, these facsimiles are so heavy and so weighty that he can barely push them around. This is simply basically a postulate that these things are heavy, that energy is heavy, but next to that it is a consideration that one cannot do anything to them. One cannot cause them to vanish — therefore, one cannot cause them to affect one less.
Observing, then, that things tend to become more permanent and more solid the less one can remember where they came from (though this is not a total truth, you understand), we could consider that ALL OBJECTS ARE MEMORY. Or more accurately, that ALL OBJECTS ARE MIS-MEMORY. If an object is there, one comment you could make about it is that everybody has forgotten when and where it was created. And having forgotten when and where it was created, it now persists. Thus, you might say that objects depend, or persistent spaces depend, entirely for their persistence upon forgettingness. Which is to say, mis-memory.
Now, as memory applies to postulates and considerations as well as to spaces and masses, it becomes obvious that conditions, good con