And you say, "Well, how about the floods that we've been having?" See, a new subject.

In other words, if you end a subject, say, "We're here talking," and begin a subject again, the person you are talking to stays in communication with you.

But if you go rattling along with him madly about fires, fires, fires, fires, and then you suddenly say, "Floods are bad too."

Much worse, you're talking about business and suddenly you say, "She sure is a pretty girl." He actually, goes out of communication with you because there is no agreement on the subject of the communication, so you end agreement on what you were talking about. You say, "We are still talking here, aren't we," and start again.

Now, a salesman doing this sort of thing very often discovers something very peculiar. He can sell razor blades very nicely, but all of a sudden he brings out a washing machine. The guy wanted razor blades, he bought some, but he doesn't want the washing machine, apparently. But the truth of the matter is something else took place entirely. He was not part of the conversation about washing machines. He was part of the conversation about razor blades. If a conversation existed and communication was taking place on the subject of razor blades, then, of course, there was some wire for the razor blades to travel on, don't you see, to get over to him. But there is nothing to roll a washing machine down! He's not part of the conversation about washing machines. Do you follow this use?

Now, you know the use of all of these communication mechanisms in everyday living is very fascinating. If you can audit well, and if you know these mechanisms so that you are totally relaxed about them, you're still not learning to act on the basis of "Let me see, where — where do I put my thumbs? Do they . . . ?" You know. Get the idea now — "What'll I do with my hands?" You know, sort of thing.

If we have — if we have a conversance — if we have a conversance with our subject we don't have to put very much strain on it. The newness is out of it; we can use it.

Like trying to drive a car the first time. You very often take a hubcap off on the curve or something. But you never did that before, but it's just a new car.

Now, you get so you could really use your communication formulas, you could do the darnedest things with conversation, particularly with a non-Scientologist. You could even do strange things with a Scientologist. In his case just omit some of the steps. And he goes, "Zzzzzzz."

But it isn't just something we invented to know. That's the single difference about this particular subject. It's not simply invented so that we could know something about it. No, we have something else involved here, some-thing entirely different involved here. We talk to somebody in society and they are going chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, you know, "It's all bad over here. It's all bad over there. It's all bad over something else."

Communicationwise, if you want to stay in communication with them, they're — you have two choices — chop! or be a Scientologist. Now, the way you be a Scientologist without putting them in-session is to "outchop" him!

He's doing something to create an effect on you. That puts you in a no-game condition. Do you see? So, you just, you know, pop! swing it the other way and he says, "Do you know that Mrs. Aster — Mrs. Aster actually said the other day that her maid ..."

You know, and you said, "Oh, wait, that's — that's nothing. That's nothing. Do you know that — what her husband told me?"

"What?"

"He said that her maid . . . Well, you know how maids are?"

This person says . . . They're not chopping.

In other words, you use a communication and put it — somebody is trying to put you in a no ... You see, you can talk to anybody about anything as long as they are not trying to make a super game out of it, whereby they are trying to put you in your place and stop you cold! Get the idea. They are trying to fix you up good. You know, chop, chop, chop. Well, all right.

Now, here we go. This person is talking not to inform you, not to spend a pleasant time with you, not to enjoy your company, but simply to cut you to ribbons by cutting somebody else to ribbons. See? Ha-ha! Just outchop him. This person wants to be in a game condition — put him in one from your standpoint, which puts him in a no-game condition, he stops. Do you get the idea? You can always end a game; that is the easiest thing to do in the world. The first requisite to ending a game, however, is to find out what game is going on.

Very often in organizations I am — somebody on staff will — an executive post or something like that over in London or here, they look at me, and they'll say, "We're going to do what? But that newspaper reporter said so-and-so and so-and-so. And you mean, we aren't going to get him down and run birth on him?"

Say, "No. Nope. No."

"Well, how — what do you mean — what do you mean then when you want him back in for a pleasant talk? Do you really want to see him again?" "No. I don't want to see him again."

"Well, what's — supposed to do when he comes in?"

"He's supposed to look over these child group profiles on crippled children."

"Oh, you dog. See, you've got him." Cognite suddenly. See?

What are we doing? This fellow chopped us up one way or the other. He said a bunch of things he shouldn't have said and didn't know anyhow, and tried to chew us up one way or the other, so, we just find a good method of reversing the effect.

Theoretically, we would now hate him. We wouldn't have anything to do with him, don't you see. But we send for him! You'll find out that holding the post is a game condition. Not letting it approach is a no-game condition.

We send for him, we bring him in, we show him some profiles, we ask him if he wouldn't like to write a story on this now after he's chopped us all up otherwise, and he finds himself looking at the profiles of crippled children, and it was free processing given by the organization at the local hospital. He goes, "Oh, zzzzzzz-ssssss."

Handling a communication line is quite necessary. Did you ever think that communication was a subject that was subject to control? Communication is something that one starts, stops and changes.

The fellow who cannot stop talking when he wants to stop talking is in a pathetic state.

Here's a little process you want to run on somebody. It's not particularly therapeutic because it doesn't have masses or objects connected with it. But you ask somebody to do this. Ask him to — you tell him that you will tell him when to stop talking, and he is then to stop his voice from going. We go it this way:

He says, "One, two, three, four . . ."

We say, "Stop!"

And he says, "Ff-iv-ve, ff-iv-ve."

Quite interesting. He knew he could handle his voice. After we get through with him, he wonders if he ever did say anything. Something around there was talking but was he? And we run him a little bit further and he says for the first time, "One, two, three" and we say "Stop," and he says, "Four." See? He stops. He's in control of his communication.

Now, a person who has a compulsive communication lag, in other words, they can't stop talking. They've described something to you and described something to you. They were trying to render an effect of some sort on you, possibly a bad one. And at no time while they were talking to you did you drop dead! So they, of course, have not reached end of line. They're in a position — they're in a position where they wait on something else to tell them when to stop talking. Got the idea?

Well, you run this person on something like this; you say, "Now, I want you to stop talking when I say 'stop.' Now, I want you to count and then at some point, well, I want you to — I am going to say 'stop' and you are to stop talking at that moment. Is that right?"

And the fellow says, "Okay."

And we just go through the same exercise. He starts counting, "One, two, three, four."

We say, "Stop."

And he says, "F-f-i-ive, f-fi-ive, f-f-i-ive, fi-ive, fi-ive, fi-ive, fi-ive, fi-i-ive, fi-i-ive, fi-i-ive, fiv-ve-e, fi-i-ive, fi-ive, fi-i-ive, five."

And you say, "Did you stop yourself from talking?"

And he says, "Noo-ot no-ooot nooot verrrry vv-verrry ww-wwell."

Now, this is all that stammering is. That's all stammering is. He's on a mechanical stop talk. See, he's sitting right on a stop talk. And every time he tries to say something it says, "Shut up!" The stop is out of his control.

So, we ask the stammerer to do this. I'll drop a pearl in your pocket. If you're supposed — if you can stop stammering on somebody, if you could make somebody stop stammering rather easily, you're supposed to be really hot, you're supposed to be really good. I never quite figured out why this was, since personally I've looked around at a lot of people, and I wish some of them stammered more.

But, you're supposed to be able to stop stammering, and the hypnotist tries to do this, everybody tries to do this, and they have very little luck. Well, this one I've just given you will do so.

You say, "One, two, three, four, five ..." You know, you have a — is what the fellow is going to say and then you say, "Stop." He — you have him count up and he's supposed to stop. Well, he's having an awful time getting to five. Now, that's very interesting. See? But you don't run start or change, you simply run the stop.

You say, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight."

You say, "Stop."

And he says .. .

Good. You've made it.

The way it runs basically, a stammerer starts like this. He says, "Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha."

You wait, it's all right.

"Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha — one! Tw-tw-tw-tw-tw-tw-tw-tw-tw-tw-tw-tw-two! Th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th — three!" You let him get up to about "Ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei — eight," and you say, "Stop."

And you know what he does then, he says, "Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . ." Very interesting. In other words, this fellow doesn't have his speech under control.

Now, some people are obsessive — are obsessive not-listeners. Did you ever run into an obsessive not-listener? Well, they've gone through a double inversion on the thing.

Remember, however, that you make a body talk — you are making a body talk. Therefore, you — making a body start talking, stop talking and change talking — are playing a game. You aren't talking! A body is talking. Don't you see? So this becomes a game condition because you are doing it. That's the key-note of a game — a game condition. You're doing it. The game isn't being played for you the way they handle professional football, and so forth; you are playing the game. And you're getting no-effect on self and making an effect on somebody else. So, an individual who is trying desperately to make the body talk better is actually in a no-game condition. You see? He is trying to help the enemy talk. From his standpoint he couldn't be friendly with a body if you gave him $1,000 in bonds along with it. He couldn't be friendly with a body. He'd never come around and put a beam on it and shake hands with the body actually and say, "My pal."

You start to process him and the first thing you know he gets his foot against the back of the body, you know and he says, "Oof — aaahhh." And he says, "Oh, I hate that thing! I hate that thing. Rahhhhhh."

That's merely an obsessive game condition. He's fighting his body.

A fellow finds that his — something is happening; he's got ulcers, see — got ulcers. He's having a hard time with ulcers. Holes appear — swiss cheese sort of thing. And then they come along and they take x-rays of him — shoot x-rays in through it so more holes appear. Anyway, there's a case of ulcers.

What's the fellow doing getting ulcers? He must be fighting his stomach. Obviously if he wanted to control his stomach he'd have to be able to stop his body from eating. Now, one doesn't change or start an enemy, one only stops him. And that is the last vestige of control one has in a game condition. So, one can stop one's enemies. He can sometimes by threatening to stop them change their course, but one doesn't have positive control over his enemies or there'd be no game.

Did you ever play — did you ever play chess with somebody that says, "All right, move your pawn now." And you moved your pawn, and then he moved his knight, and he says, "Now move your king's rook." It doesn't look like much of a game, does it?

It is like some old-time professional auditor being audited by one of his students. Hey, you know we can cure even that today, we can cure even that today. You know even I can be audited. You know I can be audited without telling the preclear what process to run. You're pretty swell. Yes, we've really come along.

Well, if — if the body was on your team — you see, this would be different. But, of course, you never process the body as though it were because the preclear never considers, if it's in bad shape, that it is. He never considers the body really on his team. Down basically someplace he considers it a deadly enemy that he has had to accept — if he's having a lot of trouble with it.

Now, you take some very pretty little girl or something like that, she's getting along fine, she doesn't have any trouble getting into her body, out of her body, doing things with her body, learning to do things with her body, and so forth. She and her body are friends. You know, "Hiya."

But you take somebody who is having a lot of trouble you know, has creak — arthritis — so on, having a real bad time. And what do we discover? The first thing, we examine his attitude toward a body we find out, "Well, let's see, what effect could I have on a body? Let's see now. Well, I could kill it. No, no, no, no; that's not enough. No. No. Now, let me see, I could — uh — I could — uh — well, I don't know, maybe push it slowly into a hot fire. No. No. No. How about falling endlessly through empty space? No, no, no, that is no effect on a body; that's not — that's not a good effect. I mean, that's not convincing. Let's see, what kind of an effect could I have on a body? Let's see, I could take each cell in it in a nutcracker and I could crack each cell very thoroughly. If it were screaming while I did that, yes, I would say that would be having an effect on a body. Yes! Good! Good!"

That's his level of reality. That is actually — level of reality. It's with a great shock that a preclear will realize this suddenly that his attitude toward a body falls somewhat short of a friendly spirit of fair play.

Well, we examine this then and we discover that the one thing he can do with a body is stop. And that is, then, a good game condition. You start to put a body into motion as a process, and you violate this condition of enemy. And we don't care whether he considers the body a friend or an enemy, he can still stop the body, don't you see.

So, I — I'm very happy about one thing — that we don't have to have him stop the body eating in order to cure ulcers. Only the medical profession does that.

Well, here we have — here we have actually a very interesting condition. That the first and foremost point of control when he gets in a game condition with a body is stop. No change, no start, just stop, that's all. Anything else he does to it, he considers to be a sort of a — of a betrayal to — of himself, so he could stop one.

Well, you can stop a body from having things, you could stop a body from eating, you could stop it from walking, you could stop it from growing skin, you can stop it from breathing, you can stop it from eating. You get all these stops? And that's what the common denominator of illness is — stop.

But after a while he really goes down scale. He has just been able to make a body thoroughly ill, see. And he goes down scale and he can no longer stop a body. Wow! Now what happens? The same thing happens that this fellow — he did find he could stop a body from talking. See, he'd go, "O-o-one, t-t-two, th-three, fa-f-four, f-f-five."

And you say, "Stop."

And he goes, "Seven, eight, nine, ten."

See? He inverted. So, when he thinks of stopping the body, it starts running.

He's walking up and down, see, walking up and down one way or the other. And he says, "You know, I'd better stop this." Get the idea? I mean, the thought of suppressing a body's actions puts the body in control of him so thoroughly that he's not controlling its actual actions. Follow me?

In other words, he inverts: the thought of "stopping" causes him to "start."

This is so true that — the button wears out rather rapidly, but we'll take some — take some artist — he's a painter and he stopped painting, you know, standard artist. And he's laid away all of his brushes. He has laid away his canvas. He doesn't ever anymore feel that he can just get up energy enough to paint.

You come around to him and you say, "I'll make you a bet that you have no control over your painting!"

Supposing we were just as ornery and as mean as this (which we aren't) but supposing we said this to him, "I'll bet you have no further control over your painting."

He says, "Ahh-ahh. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're wrong."

And you say, "All right now. I want you to decide to stop painting."

And he says, "All right. I'll stop." He says, "That's silly, you know I have." You say, "That's all right. You just decide to stop your body from painting anymore. You don't want to paint anymore. Just decide that." He does.

"All right, decide to stop painting." This is not a good process, just a demonstration. "Stop painting."

All of a sudden, he says, "Well, all right, I'm going to stop painting."

You say, "All right, you decide to stop your body from painting." "Okay. Stop my body from painting."

You see, he's trying to start painting all the time. He starts painting — starts painting. It's the painting that stops him! It's done.

See, when he finishes a painting, and it's done, then he stops. Do you get the idea? When he finishes a job of any kind, he no longer has that job and so he stops doing the job. What stopped him? Did he stop doing the job? Or did the job stop?

And after a while he gets so that he can't stop. But his body could stop, so he stops working. He stops painting. He stops doing an awful lot of things that might have been very interesting. He stops kissing pretty girls. Any-thing can happen. He never — he never decided to stop himself. Something else decided.

A fellow walking along a dark street, walking along, he has no intention of stopping whatsoever — he is walking along and — a fireplug right there, you see — he's walking along, and bang he hits it! And he says, "Ow!" It stopped him, didn't it? He didn't intend to stop, but the fireplug intended to stop him or did it?

Now, that's the way it is. That's the way — that's the dwindling spiral of life. Everything stops you, you never stop and you stop stopping others and you're dead.

For instance, do you know that there are people alive ... I'll betcha there are some people right here in this audience — I'll betcha there are people right here in this audience that if a .44-caliber bullet were to come flying up here in some fashion or another and they put out a hand or something like that, it wouldn't stop. I'll betcha there are people in this audience that are weak that way.

Now, there's an oddity. That's a curiosity that you ought to examine. What's the matter with you that you couldn't stop a 16-inch shell, huh? You slippin'?

If you've depended on everything in the universe to do the stopping for you, why eventually you go through these two things; you get so that you stop everything, you don't control anything, you just stop everything, you know, bank presidents, and so forth, you just stop things. And then after a while you get so you can't even stop them anymore, and that's that. You've had it! Then's the time — then's the time when you should call your attorney, write out the last will and testament and take a ride with one of these hot rod drivers you see around town.

So, the common denominator that bridges between a friend and an enemy is stop. Do you get that? But stop is part of control. So, you have a control over your enemy to the degree that you are attempting to stop him — attempting to stop him. When you can stop him utterly he is no longer an enemy. He's dead.

Now, I hope I don't restimulate anybody on this. I hope I don't make any people feel suddenly still. I hope — I was running — running a preclear one day on a process like this, and the preclear all of a sudden looked at me and says, "Shhhhhh."

I says, "What's the matter?"

He says, "We must be very still."

I says, "Okay. What's the matter?"

He says, "What you whispering for?"

Well, so as we worked along one way or the other throughout this last year, I've been developing the games condition material, I've been developing this stop material. And the reason I've spent so much time telling you about stop is for the simple reason that an auditor who is on obsessive stop could never audit a preclear.

And an auditor who can't stop a preclear in his tracks usually doesn't make him well. Why? Because it requires good positive control of the pre-clear. And the anatomy of control is start, change and stop.

If you can't control the session so as to get the preclear in control of things, then, of course, you are going to have the preclear out from under you. You are going to have difficulties every time he has difficulties and you're not going to control him through his difficulties. So that's the other requisite I learned about auditing during the past year — control of the session, control of the case.

There is no nice delicate insight nor a bunch of mechanics that can get you across if this stop factor is out of gear in your own — in your auditor's frame of reference. Don't you see that? If he has to obsessively stop every-thing, he will do the darnedest things to you as a preclear.

Ashtray — sitting there, you know, and you are getting deeper and deeper in, deeper and deeper — pop, crash goes the ashtray, and you go "Dahhhhh! What was that?"

Why did he do that? He couldn't simply stop you by telling you to stop — that would be something he couldn't do. But he could knock an ashtray off the table, slam the door, make the telephone ring, do something. Don't you see? So, we've isolated then — this.

Now, if an auditor can't stop on a communication bridge, what happens? What happens? The processes all just take their course, and the session just takes its course, and the processes take their course, and it just goes on and on and on, don't you see? Don't you — don't you see how this would go? I mean, there is nobody stopping anything. The preclear is in a kind of a condition so he can't stop it. And the auditor is in a condition so he can't stop the preclear and he can't stop the process and he doesn't ever know when to end the process and so he merely changes the process. And he has to change it rap-idly because he can't stop the process. And this communication bridge enforces a stop on the auditor and preclear.

A little bit of break, you know, and then, clunk! stop! Okay, and we've got the session — we've got a stop in the session. Don't you see that? So, this bridge gets the session under control.

Well, anyway, a lot of other things about that — but the whole itinerary of indoctrination, and so forth, worked out of a study of this start, stop and change and formula of communication. And I developed the materials — the basic materials and dummy sessions on this — over in London and then developed the other things that went alongside of them. And we all got to working on it very heavy putting it in practice, and the next thing you know, we were having a very delightful time. Let me assure you.

But there were some people at executive level that hadn't been through indoctrination yet. Terrible thing! But, they weren't convinced that indoctrination was absolutely necessary. It had merely been developed and used with a little bit to give people the communication formula and then to teach them the communication bridge and its use — and then to teach them the control of preclears and then to teach them how to use these various factors in order to put the preclear under his own control and square him around and put him in a condition where he could or didn't have to have a game as the case may be.

And we went along in this wise, and we got no cooperation — I got no cooperation particularly from the organization at large.

One day I was sitting in my office, and I decided — you've been watching these dummy process sessions in the morning, haven't you? Do you find them interesting?

Audience: Yes.

Well, I hate to tell you this, but the Director of Training in London didn't entirely approve of this kind of thing. He wasn't working in this direction very much. So, one night he was sitting in the office and a couple other of my pals over there, were sitting there . . . So, he says, "You know about this funny kind of auditing that you have been developing in the research unit?" He says, "What's this — you know, it's kind of funny," he says, "putting somebody through a couple of weeks just doing auditing that doesn't do any case any good." See? He says, "I haven't had time to read over these processes."

I says, "Yes, yes, yes" I says. "Well, I'll tell you, they go this way. They go this way. We'll take this command here, we'll say 'Are mullets wet?' — we'll take that as an auditing command."

"Okay," he says. "Okay, are mullets wet?"

"And then we'll take another auditing command here," I said, " 'Are cats lonely?' And then we'll take another auditing command, 'Is red red?' All right, fine. Fine."

"Okay," he says, "all right. What am I supposed to do?"

I said, "Well, you take a communication bridge, such as you've been hearing about and you'll use a communication bridge to get into the session and out of the session. You'll deliver the auditing command and acknowledge each time it's executed. You will handle the origin of the preclear and here we go. Okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah! Yeah! I've been auditing for years — old-timer. Nothing to that."

So, I was sitting there at my desk.

He starts in. He says, "All right, are you set?"

And I says, "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

He says, "Are mullets wet?"

See.

Was that a session?

Male voice: No.

No! He hadn't even started. Well, he was an old-timer. So, I was an old-timer myself once.

So, he says, "Are mullets wet?"

And I says — being the preclear in this dummy session — "Well," I said, "I don't know. I just don't know. Ummmm, yes."

And he says, "Good. Good. Fine. Are mullets wet?"

"I — well — I don't know."

Well, he says, "Good. Good." He says, "Are mullets wet?"

And I said, "Well . . . What's a mullet?"

And he says, "Well," he says, "uh — well — uh — you know what a mullet is!" I says, "No, I don't!"

And he says, "Well, just answer the question!"

And I says, "Well, all right, all right. What do you want me to say?" He says, "Say yes, of course."

I says, "All right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Yes, of course."

And he says, "Well, now . . . Are cats lonely? Oh, now, are cats lonely?"

And I said, "Yeah, I suppose so. Suppose so."

And he says, "Well, are cats lonely?"

And I said, "Suppose so."

And he says, "Well, are cats lonely?"

No acknowledgment, no .. .

And I said, "Hummm," I said, "What's a mullet?"

And he says, "What are you doing thinking about mullets?"

I said, "I don't know! I — what is a mullet?"

Completely lost his head. He says, "Now! Don't think!" He says, "Stop thinking! And be quiet." He says, "It's all right now!"

So, I said .. .

And he says, "Is red red?"

And I says .. .

He says, "Answer my question. Is red red?" He said, "Come on," he said, "you can talk!"

I said, "Well, thank you. Well, red — is red red?"

He says, "What's the matter with you!"

I says, "You said, 'don't think!' "

The next morning I found him in Indoctrination Course.

Yes. And then he went out the door out of the office that night terribly embarrassed because two auditors — other auditors had been sitting in the office, his closest friends, and he finally says, "Damn it, Ron!" he says, "It takes a sane man to act that psychotic!"

Well, what with him and other little minor matters and getting the subject wrapped up — that's what I've been doing the last year. And if not productive, it's at least been interesting. But it has been intensely productive.

I think the last year — the last year has been in terms of actual advance the most interesting of all these six years because it's given us actually almost the entirety of refined auditing procedure which is about 60 percent of modern auditing, and it's given us the remaining 40 percent which tells you what to use the procedure on.

We were in a very interesting condition last February by the way; we had dropped Havingness out of the auditing procedures — processes, see; no Havingness was being audited. We're doing it with perfect procedure and never remedying anyone's havingness. We never gave anybody anything. He couldn't have anything of any kind, it just dropped out of sight.

But we were doing our auditing with perfect procedure. Of course, if you dropped all Havingness out of sight entirely in auditing, you, of course, never would make anybody well.

But, the insight, the skill, the way the auditor had learned how to hold his little finger as he audited the preclear was so good, so perfect, and was done with such consummate aplomb that even without a technique to handle anything, they were making people well — better than 22 percent, too!

Well, we've had a very, very fascinating time of it. My only regret during the past year is not being with so many of my good friends. I don't particularly enjoy Europe. I don't particularly enjoy fumbling around with foreign languages — such as cockney!

But the level of case was sort of this way. I figured out if I could crack one of those, why, any of yours would be a pipe. And by golly! We even started to crack the cases of old auditors in England!

The last year was very productive. The material picked up along it actually is relatively simple; it is very easy to use; there is nothing to handling preclears now, as long as you know it all perfectly. That's all you have to be able to do. Handle it perfectly and get perfect results. I am not studying that sort of thing now.

For the last three, four years, people have been asking me, "What's an Operating Thetan?" You know they have been asking me this: "What's an Operating Thetan? What is this thing? I want to be an Operating Thetan." Or, "What are the techniques used to make an Operating Thetan?" and so forth.

So having wrapped up auditing procedure, I am going to spend the next few months trying to find out. I coined the phrase a long time ago and made some notes, but I lost the notes. You know how I am with notes.

Evidently an Operating Thetan would be somebody who — well, I don't know, we'll have another congress one of these days and I will tell you then.