Thank you.

When you were building this country, why didn’t you fix up the weather? You know, really, I have my opinion of planet builders that go around designing weather like this, and that sort of thing. There’s a great deal to be said for rain, but it quickly becomes hyperbolical.

Well, now tonight, I’ve made notes for lectures, so I probably won’t talk about that. And this is the 1st of November, isn’t it? What year is it?

Audience: AD 12.

AD 12. All right. Lecture number one.

This is a brand-new subject to you. It’s an entirely new subject to you. You have never heard of this subject before. In fact, you have never run it or handled it or had it done. I want to recommend, then, this lecture to you very, very seriously. There have been several bulletins out on it, but you apparently haven’t read those. Now, therefore, this is new material here. And I want you to take to heart what I tell you in this lecture.

And the subject of the lecture is missed withholds. Now, it may surprise you that the first bulletin out on this particular subject of missed withholds is February the 8th, HCOB February 8, 1962, and it’s marked, as a bulletin, “Urgent.” And it says, “The one item Scientologists everywhere must get an even greater reality on is missed withholds and the upsets they cause.” That’s the first paragraph of this. It says, “Every upset with Central Orgs, field auditors, pcs, the lot, is traceable to one or more missed withholds.” That’s what it says. Well, anyhow, on February the 12th, because nobody got it then, I issued another one – rote formulas for missed withholds, and so forth. That’s HCOB February 12th. It’s HOW TO CLEAR WITHHOLDS AND MISSED WITHHOLDS.

Well, they didn’t get it then, so we issued another one on February 22nd. And on February 22nd, 1962, we had WITHHOLDS, MISSED AND PARTIAL, see? And it has a lot to say on that particular subject. And it says, “I don’t know exactly how to get this across to you except to ask you to be brave, squint up your eyes and plunge. I don’t appeal to reason, only to faith at the moment. When you have a reality on this, nothing will shake it and you’ll no longer fail cases or fail in life. But at the moment, it may not seem reasonable, so just try it and do it well and day will dawn at last.” Well, day didn’t dawn. Well….

So, on May the 3rd, 1962, you have the HCOB ARC BREAKS AND MISSED WITHHOLDS, and it says, “How to use this bulletin: When an auditor or student has trouble with an ‘ARC breaky pc’ or no gain, or when an auditor is found to be using freak control methods or processes to ‘keep a pc in-session,’ the HCO Sec, D of T or D of P should just hand a copy of this bulletin to the auditor and make him or her study it and take an HCO Exam on it.

“After some months of careful observation and test, I can state conclusively that: All ARC breaks stem from missed withholds.

“This is vital technology,” and so forth.

It says also, “There are no ARC breaks when missed withholds have been cleared up.” And it goes on, technically.

Well, on May the 21st, we have one: MISSED WITHHOLDS, ASKING ABOUT, and so forth, but that’s just a little more data.

And on June the 28th, 1962, we have DIRTY NEEDLES, HOW TO SMOOTH OUT NEEDLES. There it is, and it talks all about missed withholds and so forth. It’s not obviously and directly on the point, but it does mention withholds, missed withholds, overts and secrets and so forth.

And on July the 4th we have BULLETIN CHANGES which include missed withholds, and then on July the 12th, 1962, we have MOTIVATORISH CASES and so forth, and that goes on talking about how to get missed withholds out of people.

And then on August the 13th we talk about ROCK SLAMS AND DIRTY NEEDLES. And there’s some more about missed withholds then.

And then on August the 30th, while I was stateside, why, Mary Sue got desperate and issued some bulletins. And of course the first subject that she picked up was missed withhold handling. Well now, that is a lot of bulletins. Let me call to your attention, there’s weight here, man. There’s weight. There’s been a lot said on this subject, see?

And it’s just about the most important subject in an auditing session and keeping the show on the road, short of actually clearing and helping people, you see, it’s just about the most important subject there is. And there isn’t one here got it. None of you. You haven’t got it. So I’m going to give you a lecture on it.

And I might as well start this lecture with, “The one item Scientologists everywhere must get an even greater reality on is MISSED WITHHOLDS and the upsets they cause.” Do you see? That’s out of the February 8th bulletin. And “I don’t know exactly how to get this across to you except to ask you to be brave, squint up your eyes and plunge,” on February the 22nd.

Listen. All you’re doing and all you go on doing and all you keep on doing and all you do, endlessly, every time you’re told to pick up a missed withhold, all you do is pick up a withhold. Honest. You’re picking up withholds. I don’t think you have ever picked up a missed withhold off of a pc in any session you’ve ever run. You’ve only picked up withholds.

You ask the auditor to pick up the missed withholds and the auditor promptly picks up all the withholds. You got the idea? Everybody says this, and I guess it’s because of the semantics of the word missed. It says they’re missed withholds, and by God, they are! Everybody misses them! See?

You see, it is so pat and it’s so plain to the naked eye that this is what happens: Pc has a withhold, and you haven’t picked it up. So therefore it’s a missed withhold. No! That is wrong.

So, when I tell you to pick up the missed withholds, all you’re doing is picking up withholds. You say, “Well, he wants us to pick up the missed withholds, so therefore I better pick up the withholds I’ve missed. So therefore, ‘Do you have a withhold?”’ When sometimes you even say, “Have I ever missed a withhold on you?” “Has anybody missed a withhold on you?” and the pc gratuitously gives you withholds; gives you more withholds and more withholds and more withholds.

No pc has ever given you a missed withhold. I’ll bet you you’ve never picked one up. Now, I may be very harsh on this line, but let’s get down to tacks here, man! Brass, iron and otherwise.

A missed withhold is a withhold that people nearly found out about but didn’t. And you’re only looking for the nearly found outs. You don’t give a damn what the guy did. You don’t care what the person did. You only want to know what people almost found out!!

Honest! I’ve been talking since February, you know? I’m getting hoarse.

You see, a withhold is something the pc did. That is something the pc did – do you understand? – that he isn’t talking about. See? He did it and he isn’t talking about it. Now that is a withhold and that is all a withhold is. And please don’t keep saying also it is a missed withhold just because you didn’t get it in a session.

You see, it’s all very neat. You got it all figured out that if you didn’t get the withhold in a session, why, therefore, it’s a missed withhold. And that’s not what a missed withhold is! A missed withhold has nothing to do with what the pc said. Nothing! Not anything to do with what the pc did and then withheld. It actually hasn’t a damn thing to do with what the pc is withholding.

The missed withhold is something people nearly found out. It’s an other-person action! Look. It’s not the pc’s action! It’s nothing the pc did or is doing! You keep trying to pick up missed withholds by asking the pc what he’s withholding, you never get anything but withholds and then you miss some more of these and you’ve got a pc even further upset.

Look, here are – here are absolute pearls on a silver platter. They’re actually beyond price. And I’ve never got it across to you. A missed withhold has nothing to do with the pc. But nothing! It is an other-person action and the pc’s wonder about it. I just know right now I’m not making any sense to you even this minute. I’ll betcha I’m not making any sense to you.

It hasn’t a thing to do with what the pc is withholding. Let’s just sever the end off of the “missed.” Let’s forget that it is even a withhold.

You’re looking for exact moments in the lifetime or lifetimes of this pc when somebody almost found out, and he’s never been sure since whether they did or they didn’t. And we don’t care what they almost found out! We only care that they almost found out something! And that is the address to a missed withhold. It’s an other-person-than-the-pc’s action. It’s an other person’s action.

I really didn’t realize that I hadn’t gotten it across to you in bulk and in gross form till not too long ago in a catch-as-catch-can session I said to a pc – this pc was going natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, natter, yap, yap, yap. So I just routinely was running a little bit of – I said, “Well, what have you done?” “What have you withheld?” “What have you done?” “What have you withheld?” “What have you done?” “What have you withheld?” “What have you done?” “What have you withheld?” you know, that sort of thing. And got stuck in this area of the track and started saying natter, natter, natter, and natter, natter, natter, and natter, natter, natter, and started giving me withholds and withholds and withholds and withholds out of that area of the track, and withholds and overts and withholds out of that area of the track, and they would have been going yet if I hadn’t – that’s one of the dangerous things is Instructors are actually going to stop you sometimes practically right here. Because once you shove this down the pc’s throat, it looks just like a Q and A. It’s almost in the teeth of the laws about Q and A. You understand?

But the pc isn’t clearing this. You’ve got this thing called a recurring withhold. You understand? You run into these things all the time. You were auditing a pc, so they’re going to run some withholds, and they run the time that they locked their husband out. And you say, “Ha, ha. Thank you very much.”

And you note down this fact, and a few sessions later, they tell you they locked their husband out, see, and they didn’t tell him that they were the person that had locked him out, you know? Never confessed to it since, and he got pneumonia, and it was all pretty rough.

And so, a few sessions after this, you know, why, you’re running down the track and they tell you they locked their husband out. And a little while later some other auditor is auditing this same pc, and they tell him they locked their husband out.

Look. Sometime or another, won’t you get tired of hearing the same withhold? Isn’t it boring? It’s like watching a “C” movie that wasn’t very good in the first place for the tenth time. That is a missed withhold.

Look. It has a very special anatomy: It isn’t the moment they locked the husband out; it isn’t when they withheld it from the husband; it isn’t when they withheld it from you. These things have nothing to do with the reason this is charged up! That it is an overt, that it is a withhold – ahhh, yes. But there’s this special thing called a missed withhold, and it hasn’t got anything to do with either one of them. It merely uses them for fodder to feed on. And the overt and the withhold won’t blow if a missed withhold occurs.

Now, what is the missed withhold? The only thing you have to ask this recurring - withhold pc is “When did your husband nearly find out about it?” Not “When did he find out?” – see, that would have blown – but “When – when did your husband nearly find out about it?”

Now, here’s the actual mechanics of it. A few days later while he was lying there suffering with a fever of 118, why, his eyes opened slittedly and suspiciously and looked at her and glanced toward the lock on the door. Now, that was his action, not hers, see? That was his action. And ever afterwards she hasn’t known whether he knew or didn’t know. Ever afterward! She doesn’t know! And that’s why the recurring withhold hangs up.

Now, I lowered the boom on this pc, and I said, “All right. Fine. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Now, tell me the exact moment you suspected somebody knew what you are telling me.”

“Ohhhh.” And that was dead easy. It was right there. The whole package blew, and that was that.

Somebody had made a comment which might or might not have been interpreted as the fact that they knew about it. And the pc goes off in this fantastic confusion. Now, how can it be a confusion? Well, it’s a confusion because there is an overt and there is a withhold. And these are the primary mechanisms which sit back of all this. But they actually aren’t very serious until they get a mystery on top of them.

Now, you take an overt, a withhold, plus a mystery, and you’ve got a missed withhold. It’s a mystery! Now, did her husband know about it or didn’t he? “Did-did-did he find out – did he re – and – and is he withholding? And is he – did he – as he was lying there in a fever and so forth, did he – he really mean that look toward her and toward the lock of the door as an accusation for having accidentally locked him out in the snow storm? Or did he – did he ever know, or – or – or wasn’t that? Or did it or didn’t it? Did he fi – . No. He couldn’t have known about it. Oh, he – he did – no. No. He couldn’t have. He - he did, but still he looked straight at the lock of the door and he looked at me. He must, I – I – I – I don’t know.”

Do you understand this? Now, that is a missed withhold, see? Had nothing whatsoever to do – you can say, “Now, what have you done?”

And she says, “I locked my husband out in the snow and he got sick with pneumonia and he was sick for seventeen months and eighteen days. Lost his pension.”

A few sessions later, you say, “All right, rata-ta-tatta-ta-tatta. What have you done?”

“Well, I locked my husband out in the snow, and – and he – he got – he got sick, and – and he was sick for eighteen months and eighteen days and he lost his pension.”

You say, “Good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good. (Maybe if I acknowledge it this time, maybe the pc will find out that I heard it, see?) Good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good, good. Good. Tha – thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I got that. I heard exactly what you said there. I heard exactly what you said. Thank you.”

Next morning in session you’re running some General O/W, see? “I locked my husband out in…

Now, of course, that isn’t as comprehensible as some offbeat – because this society is a bit offbeat on the subject of the second dynamic – you get some juicy second dynamic withhold of some kind or another. Get this girl, and she’s making love to a dog, you know? You get this, you know? And then you, the auditor, get pulled right in on this. You say, “Well, of course this is heavily charged! Of course the pc is having trouble getting this off. Of course, of course, of course!”

Don’t be so damn reasonable. There isn’t any reason why the magnitude of the overt has anything to do with the readiness of its blowing. The magnitude of the overt has nothing to do with the speed of its evaporation. I don’t care if you’ve blown up a husband or a planet. It’s an overt. And it – one doesn’t blow any harder than another.

Well, therefore, we have to ask this question. “How come this doesn’t blow?” Don’t sit there and say, “Well, because the society is rigged the way it is and because so forth, and it’s on her terminal chain, and it’s probably something that rock slams. It’s on the oppterm side, dogs are oppterms, and – and so forth, and I’ll fix that. Actually she is stuck on the se – and that’s why that overt worft blow, see?” Figure, figure, figure, figure, figure, figure, figure, see? That’s why you get this second dynamic overt ten minutes deep in every session, or every third session. Or every Prepcheck, it comes up.

Wouldn’t you be a little bit curious why this thing keeps recurring? Well, don’t be so reasonable. It is not recurring because it is badder than other overts, see? It’s not recurring because it weighs heavily on the pc’s conscience. I don’t know where people keep their consciences – lunch boxes or something like that. Obviously, it’s very dangerous to squash a conscience because things are – shouldn’t be kept on the conscience, and so forth. It’s all a very interesting mechanical problem to me, this whole problem of consciousness. Because you see, everything that is on a conscience is unconscious. It’s all confusing. And you can just figure yourself into a grave with this if you don’t know this mechanism.

One day they had this elderly man and he came to the house for dinner. And he had a rather false smile. He had false teeth, see? And he had – and he had a false smile, and he looked straight at this girl, and he says, “You like dogs, don’t you?” And that’s the missed withhold, see? The pc that you’re auditing didn’t do it. And ever since then: “Did he know? Did he really know? No, he couldn’t have known. Yes, he….”

Now, you getting hold of the corner of this thing’s tail, huh?

All right. I – maybe I haven’t been as articulate as I could be.

Actually, I figured and I figured and I figured and I thought and I looked at it and so forth. And on this demonstration the other night, I actually couldn’t believe it when the pc said, “I never thought you had to remember a specific moment in time to get off a withhold.” Even the pc had missed it, but the thing had evaporated. There was no more natter in that area. There were a whole bunch of overts and a whole bunch of withholds. But this was just pursuant with natter until the exact moment when somebody was standing there – see, this is the moment we had to find – and I said, “All right. Let’s look for it. This is the exact moment I want, see?” Pc is just going off answering questions, answering questions, getting noplace, see? I say, “This is the exact moment I want. Who almost found out you were doing that?”

“Oh, well.”

And we picked up this exact split instant in time and it was just somebody making a casual remark that it indicated that they might know about these overts. You get the idea? They might know. But they didn’t. But did they? See, there’s the mystery sandwich.

If you want to see what is sticking a pc to something, always look for the mystery sandwich. Mystery is the glue which sticks thetans to things. Mystery is the glue. Even overts wind up in mystery. You shoot somebody. Now you don’t know whether you shot him or you didn’t shoot him or if it was a lucky shot or you should have shot him or if he was a bad man, or if, if, if, if, if, if, if, or if you should have done it. So it’s the “if you should have done it” which causes you to pull back the withhold and sort of withhold a further action like that.

All things boil down to right conduct. Here is the crux of this situation. If you go on asking the pc, who doesn’t understand what you’re asking for, “Have I missed a withhold on you?” or “Have we missed a withhold on you?” and the pc is glibly giving you withholds, you ain’t gettin’ noplace. You is on the Arkansas Special with its wheels locked, its brakes on and the rails torn up. You’re not going down any track anyplace.

Now, you can take the edge off of a case. I salute the fantastic workability of General O/W, you see? See, it is – it’s the woof and warp of the GPM itself And it’s right on down the line. That’s why it’s totally unlimited in the amount of run it can have. But I don’t think you’d like to run out a GPM with General O/W. You’re perfectly welcome to try if you’ve got a few centuries. Numerically, to count up the number of withholds that the person has, pursuant to the number of overts which they have committed, gives us some figure that if we were to write it up on the wall behind me in very tiny figures, starting at that corner and then just keep on writing across the whole top of the wall with groups of three zeros, you see, and then without ending the number, come just down below it and start right straight across the wall again, and then come down another quarter of an inch and start writing zeros there, you’d get some kind of an idea of what this guy has done and withheld.

Well, that many answers is not necessary to clear somebody. So although the overt is very powerful in its ability to aberrate the individual – the withhold which follows it is locked up by the overt itself, of course – and although this mechanism is the mechanism underlying the gathering up of energies which results in solid-mass terminals and gives you the game in the first place (see, the whole anatomy of a game is O/W).

In spite of all that, why, you don’t have time and the pc doesn’t have enough body years to run out all those overts, even if you could keep him in-session that long, even if he could spot them all that long. And you don’t even have time to run them out for one lifetime. How do you like that? And you haven’t got time to sit around watching a pc’s dirty needle go bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, and try to settle it with General O/W. Recurring withholds will result.

General O/W, of course, is enough to straighten out the thing and get the session running, and all that sort of thing – a very valuable process; don’t think I’m running it down. I’m just going to say it’s too lengthy for that sort of thing.

And when I tell you to pick up somebody’s missed withholds, I want you to pick up another person’s action and not the pc’s action. And it’s best characterized as “nearly found out.” Don’t ask the pc for a missed withhold because he obviously, I have learned lately, he doesn’t know any more of what I’ve been talking about than you have. See, you’d have to explain the whole anatomy to him. So there’s got to be a better thing, see?

It – “What did we almost find out about you?” It’s got to be that “almost.” It’s got to be “might have.” It’s got to be some conditional word. And then you will see a case suddenly go spoing! nyyow! and pick up the – a funniest, funniest series of disrelated incidents that case had never looked at before, never had anything to do with it before. You’ll see the tone arm do peculiar things and the needle do peculiar things that you’ve never seen it do on O/W because you’re running a different track. You’re running the “almost discovered” track.

Now let me give you an example. Once upon a time I was up in the wilderness and wilds of Montana, and for some reason or other, a wolf, gray timber wolf, showed up and I shot a bullet over his head. I don’t know just exactly why I shot at him because I never have any trouble with animals. I was very young at the time. And he heard this bullet go by over his head and he reached up and he snapped at the place where the bullet had been. And he decided to come my way. It upset him to be missed.

Honest, you never quite see anybody quite so upset as somebody who has been just barely missed. Look at a pedestrian who was not hit. The examinations flunks which you’re most upset about were those which you passed all except for the last half of the last question. See? That’s the nearness of the miss. In other words, missing things upsets things. It’s a misestimation of effort or thought or something of the sort.

Now, a thetan’s main attention is on estimation of effort, estimation of thought, estimation of look. He wants to know how much look is a look and so forth, and his certainties are all based on proper estimation of how much look is a look and all that sort of thing. See, just look at your Know to Mystery Scale, you see? How much knowledge is knowingness, see? That’s an estimation. University is very simple. University hands you an old school tie, and you now know that you have the knowledge necessary, see? You can wave a pennant with your right hand so many motions to the left under the sis-boom-bah, and you’re all set in life. That’s how much knowledge, you see, is necessary to be knowledge. So that’s an estimation of knowledge.

Now, you can go right on down the scale and how much emotion does it take to be emotional? How much emotion is emotional? Well, you get lots of answers to that: enough to create an effect on somebody. If you’re a TV actress, it’s very simple: enough to please the sponsor. You can go on down and take another one at random. What is a proper symbol? How proper is a symbol when it is a symbol, see?

Well, you can estimate everything, except “How much mystery is a mystery?” And of course that’s a mystery. You’re into the no-estimation-of-effort band. No estimation of the think, no estimation of anything; it’s all mysterious. You don’t know. The not-knowingness of it all is what is upsetting.

But now you take a not-knowingness which is probably known and play it both ways. Now, they knew but they didn’t or couldn’t have known, and you knew that they knew but you know they didn’t know.

Now let’s just get the four-way flows on a not-know and you’ve got a missed withhold. And it’s very painful to a thetan. So I really don’t blame you for avoiding it like a plague.

See, the fellow walks up to the girl and he smiles and he looks at her in a sort of a false smile and he says, “Well, little girl, I understand you like dogs.” Well, right away, her concept of him is – is “Did he know? Didn’t he know? He couldn’t have known,” she thinks to herself. “He must know.” But then complicated in to this is the fact that he looks like he knows but he hasn’t said enough to indicate that he did know, so he doesn’t know. It’s strictly ding, ding, ding, here comes the wagon, you know? Strictly. This is the stuff out of which insanity gets made, see?

It’s a can’t reach, not reach, must reach situation, and so forth, in the effort band. When you get insanity in the mystery band, it’s a “did know, but didn’t know, but mustn’t know,” you see? But he must know, but he mustn’t know, you see, and it’s the sort of reach and withdraw, only it’s not a mechanical thing. And there it is and it’s just pure mystery mucilage. And a thetan will stick right to it, man. Now, in trying to pull off the overt and the withhold in the presence of something that has a missed withhold on it does not accomplish an as-isness of the section of track in which the pc is stuck. Because the pc is not stuck with the overt and is not stuck with the withhold; the pc is stuck with the “almost found out.” So, of course, nothing as-ises and you get a recurring withhold, see, because he isn’t looking at that section of track where he did it or where he’s withholding it. He’s only looking at that section of track where it was almost found out. And you ask him for what he did and what he withheld, you don’t as-is the section of track he’s stuck in. So therefore, it just perpetuates itself and goes on forever.

And if you want to see something very remarkable in a pc, just very remarkable in a pc, just sit down in apropos of nothing, after you’ve got the pc in-session and so forth, just start running in any command sequence, “Well, just get the idea of nearly being found out.” See, it has to be nearly being found out, see? “Get the idea of somebody nearly finding out about you.” “Get the idea of you nearly finding out about another” – that’s an unnecessary leg to the thing, but you could make it up – and the next thing, more track would be going by that this person had never heard of before. Didn’t matter what else you’d run. That’s got a brand-new track area. They’ve never seen this track before and it’s been with them all the time. It’s what’s stuck out in front of their noses. Directly in front of their noses.

I could just ask you at this exact instant to “Recall a time you were nearly found out.” Now go ahead, think of a time you were nearly found out.

Having any trouble finding this time you were nearly found out?

Well, I shouldn’t think so because that’s the bulk of the stuff in front of your schnozzola. Most people can’t even find an engram, merely because there are so many missed withholds in front of their faces. They can’t get any clear view of anything, because they got missed withholds in front of their faces.

“Did they really know or didn’t they? Was I actually discovered at that time or wasn’t I?” See, that is the question.

“Who has nearly known about you?” Think that over for a while, you’ll come up with people you have been leery of or felt nervous around.

And when I tell you to pick up somebody’s missed withholds on Scientology, I don’t want you to pick up the overts that they have been withholding. See? I couldn’t care less about these overts, don’t you see, that they have been withholding. That they have been withholding them, oh, all right, so they have been withholding them. You can get TA action by finding all the things the fellow has been withholding. That’s good. That’s fine. But this is a junior action. That would be asking you to run General O/W on a pc. That’d have nothing to do with missed withholds.

Now, when I ask you to find out something about missed withholds, get this pc’s missed withholds. Don’t you dare come up with any withholds. Just don’t you dare! I want the name, rank and serial number of the person who missed it. God, I couldn’t care less what was missed. You understand? I don’t want the pc’s actions, I want the pc’s guesses about the other guy, see? That’s what I’m asking you to find out.

Now, this is very arduous to run, because sometimes you actually have to bear down on it if your command has not been sufficiently explicit. You have to direct the pc’s attention rather heavily. Let’s say you’ve run a lot of O/W and so forth. Well now, you think you’ve got this all licked, you see? This person has been taking things from their company, you see? And you’ve run this – and they’re taking things from their company and stealing them, actually, and you think you got it all licked. You’ve got the number of fountain pens and the number of stenographers, and all these things they’ve stolen from their company, you see? And you think you’ve got a tabulated list now and you say, “Well, that cured it” and so forth, and next week, why, they take a typewriter.

There’s something missing here, something – something went wrong. You got all of the overts, and you got the fact they were withholding it. They’re not now withholding because they told you – see, there’s the rationale. And so therefore it’s now all hunky-dory, and so they go back and steal a typewriter and the week after steal the boss’s secretary, see? They’re still nervous about the company. The person is not in a forgive – or – forget mood about the company. See, that’s because they’ve gotten off these overts, why, you have a feeling, and your feeling is quite right by the way – you’re not totally stupid – your feeling is quite right when you suppose that after they’ve gotten this straightened out in their mind they’ll feel all right about the company. And they very often don’t. They feel propitiative or they feel sort of guilty, or they feel some other weird misemotional way about the target of these overts and withholds, and you don’t feel this is right. And so you keep plunging and asking for something else they did. And if there’s anything guaranteed to drive the pc round the bend, it’s after he has told you everything he has did, you insist there must be something else the pc has did – did. You’re in essence cleaning a clean, see?

Now, actually, because you sense that this pc is still a little bit “mnyah” about the company, why, then you assume there must have been some other overt. Well, he can always dig up another one or two, or something like this, and the basic on the chain, and… And the trouble is you so often have a near win on this that you really never get your win. You sort of quit eating just before dessert.

And there was a lot of people that were with us in 50, 51, that sort of thing, are starting to write me now and they’re starting to get in contact again and that sort of thing.

I just sort of laugh rather raucously, by the way. The last one that did, I said he quit before dessert, you know? I’d realized after I had mailed the letter that I had missed a wonderful sort of an epigrammatic sort of thing that he deserted before the dessert, you know, but it’s – that’s what you’re denying yourself You’re denying yourself a forkful of strawberries and cream, see? You quit with the gravy and mashed potatoes, you know? There’s still one more course.

So, he stole a typewriter, and he stole an eraser, and he did this, and he withheld it from this person, he withheld it from that person, and he stole the boss’s secretary, and he goes so, and yes, all fine. Yes. And he’s withheld it all these years, and now you know about it, and that’s fine.

And he’s sort of still kind of blowy and sort of nattery about the company a little bit. A week or so later, you see him; he really doesn’t feel good about the company, and so forth. Well, you just quit before the dessert was served, that’s all. You’ve got to find out who nearly discovered this, when and how often? And he’ll give you exact split instants. Now. Now. Now. Now. All of a sudden he goes “Uu-huugh-coooo. I should say so. Ohhhh!”

See, the idea is you’ve gotten off all the overts, you’ve gotten off all the withholds, and he still doesn’t like the Materiel Executive. Got the idea? He still feels a little peculiar in some parts of the organization. You see, you really didn’t clean it up. Because the key-in – the bullet that passed almost into his ear but not quite, you know, just fanned air – was one day the Materiel Executive stepped out of the back door putting an inventory sheet in his pocket and looked at him rather frowningly and went on by into his office. Like somebody who has been in a hotel that has thin rooms and floors, you know, and the guy upstairs drops one shoe, you see? Five o’clock in the morning, he’s still waiting there for the other shoe, you see?

Next action, you see, never proceeds from this point. We have started a piece of time track here which doesn’t go anyplace. Next action is he’s – you see, he’s doing all this quite reactively, and it’s down underneath the surface of analysis, you know? I mean, at the surface of his analytical processes. And he saw the fellow do this, and he knew it made him nervous, and he goes back in, and he doesn’t want to have the phone ring. Because he knows what’s now going to happen, you see? If the fellow did know, this is what’s going to happen: You see, the phone is going to ring, and he’s going to be sent for by one of the directors of the company, and then one of two things will happen. They will either hand him the pink slip, or there will be a policeman standing there, see? And then there’s two choices that come out of that, and if it’s the policeman, that’s got one choice, you see? And you get a big dramatic sequence about the trial, you see, and he has to have all of the bad things the company did to him, and how it’s actually one of the junior directors trying to cover up. See, he’s got to have all the whole story manufactured for this, but is there any reason to manufacture the story? Did the Materiel Executive really know? See?

Here we’ve got the track that goes nowhere, don’t you see? And it could develop into track, but is it going to develop into track or isn’t it going to develop into track? Here’s where this thing – just as far as time is concerned, it becomes a mystery sandwich and there’s no time in it because those events don’t take place. So therefore, there is no time track for it so the – which hangs it. It’s not spotted in time. It doesn’t fire off right, don’t you see? There’s nothing goes right about it at all because this isn’t any estimation of it. You can’t figure out what you would do because it didn’t happen. You can’t figure out what you would have said because nobody said it. You can’t figure out what explanation was the right explanation because you never had to explain it. You see? But you should have explained it, but you didn’t. So there’s just nothing known and you just get this terrific area of just total – it’s not even hardly a positive-negative. It’s just 1haah. And that’s a missed withhold.

And the missed withhold depends on the other guy – the accidental action of another person.

Sometimes it’ll be a piece of paper, or something like that. He’s sitting there. He’s sitting there in conference and he suddenly notices that just showing in the boss’s in-basket is a memorandum with his own name just showing above the covering pieces of paper. That conference is ruined for him. You see, he never has another thing to say during the whole conference. He sort of sits there and sweats, you know? But he really doesn’t quite realize what he’s sweating about. You see, there’s his name on a memorandum. He doesn’t know what the memorandum is about except that it concerns him in some way and he can’t see what the subject of it is, do you see?

Now actually, three people are standing together in the hall, you come by and they shut up. There’s a very good missed withhold situation. If that was preceded by an overt which the person wasn’t telling anybody about, if that was the morning after the high-school girl’s first raw escapade – see, the truth of the matter is that they probably had their mouths full of candy and couldn’t talk when they went by. But then one never really knows what the truth is, you see? No, there’s no truth contained in any of it. It’s just one huge glob of mystery. And that is a missed withhold.

It’s a “should have known” as it has been described, but you will pick it up and be able to relay it much more ably if you call it a “nearly found out.” It’s a nearly known, see? Nearly found out.

Now, if you wished to clear up somebody’s missed withholds on Scientology and you said, “What have we failed to find out about you?” he would give you a whole string of withholds. And this would then go no place, see? No. You want another word, and this will clarify it to you and this will clarify it to the pc and everybody will be as happy as clambakes. Now, “What have we nearly found out about you and when did we nearly find it out?” comes much closer in to what you want, see?

See ‘ you want to know what. Well, he’s not likely to give you the rest of it until he has identified, to some degree, what. See, “Well, my escapades with young boys,” see, or something like this, see, or wild women or something, see? “That’s what you failed to find out about me,” you see? That’s what he kind of answers. “What did we nearly find out about you?” “My escapades with wild women,” see? Oddly enough, that doesn’t clarify the situation at all. That doesn’t make him like you any better, or anybody else. That doesn’t keep him from getting ARC breaks. You’ve got to follow it up with a second question. Now you’ve got the missed withhold, see? You’ve merely identified what the missed withhold was about. You haven’t got the missed withhold. Takes some additional step. All right.

“When did we nearly find out about it?” Now you could follow that through a little bit further if it wasn’t blowing well with “who?” you see? “Who nearly found out about it?” “When was that?” You get the concatenation of questions – the series of questions – that would deliver all of this data into your hands. You’re looking for moments in the HGC’s, D of T’s office. You’re looking for the instant when the PE Instructor all of a sudden paused. Fellow realized that he’d better cut this short because actually, he’s gonna miss his ride home, see? This thought suddenly strikes the PE Instructor, you see? He’s liable to miss his ride home, you know? So he’d better cut this short. So he’s looking over the class and he fixes his beady eye on one person. Seems to lose track of what he was saying, don’t you see?

Said, “Well, all right. Now you understand ARC and we’re going to have to conclude the talk this evening. And so, good night,” and hurriedly walks out the door. Now, the person his eye accidentally lit on in those pauses goes, “Beenk,” see? Nearly found out. “Did he know? Didn’t he know?” See? “Wa-wa-wa-was he on the ri-ri-ri-uh-uohhhh. What did he guess at that moment? What did he recognize about me at that moment? Which one of my various crimes?” You see, here’s something else, see? Now he doesn’t even know which one of his crimes have been identified. Maybe the Instructor has been talking about the fact that people with big heads have more brains than people with little heads or something, you know? And this person gets some kind of a rationale about this thing.

He couldn’t make up his mind whether he had lots of brains or little brains because he’s always realized that he had a medium-sized head. See? Now, that’s already got a little mystery connected with it, which is just nothing. Then all of a sudden the Instructor seems to completely look down, seems to completely change pace, and then abruptly leaves. And you know there’ll be some people leave that PE class very, very nervous, because they realize when they go out the front door that the police are going to be waiting for them?

What did we nearly find out? Well, it isn’t good enough to find out just what was nearly found out. We’ve got to find when it was nearly found out or might have been found out, but doesn’t know if it was found out, don’t you see? When and by whom? We got to spot these points. And all of a sudden, why, this person, tah! Everything is marvelous. Everything goes off beautifully, smoothly, and there it is.

Now, you can give me a gold star tonight, at least, for trying.

Audience: Yeah!

Thank you.