[Start of Lecture]

Thank you.

And this is January 28th, 1957, 16th ACC, lecture number eighteen.

We are continuing these lectures on the subject of techniques. To give you the final rundown on what all Scientology techniques will be and will be forever and that is the way it will be from there on out, is not possible. It never will be possible. It'll never be possible because if we got the whole world straightened out, the world would then give us a bunch of learned responses one way or the other, and we'd have to shift our attack.

They would have again picked up this cure mechanism. Cure. The solution — the solution to the problem — is another way you could look at this cure mechanism. People get a problem, they get a solution to it; and then they get a problem and they get a solution to it. But the funny part of it is, the solution of the old problem always becomes a new problem.

This is the way governments run. I'm not going to be vitriolic. I will remain pleasant. It is the stupid, backwards, unimaginative, totally reactive (I'm being pleasant), confounded nuisance of „It happens, we react. It happens, we react.“ You get this? See? „Something happens, so we react.“ No plans. No plans anywhere. It happens and we react. That's the way we run a government.

Oddly enough, we found one small, isolated department in this organization — Membership Department — has evidently been running for six years on a totally reactive basis. That is to say, memberships occurred startlingly and surprisingly, and the first people that had anything to do with them asked me, „You know, people want to become members of the Foundation?“ No planning. No planning. No imagination or prediction invested into it whatsoever. In other words, no analytical functioning of any kind whatsoever. So membership applications arrived and the organization reacted in some sort of a haphazard manner, and so have been reacting for the remaining six years.

And just recently I looked this over and found out oddly enough, startlingly enough, that it'd never been planned what is done with a membership. Nobody had ever sat down and become cause on the subject of a membership unit. And as a result we had trouble from there on out. Do you get the idea?

So, what is this all about? What is this „Something happens and we react. Something happens and we react“? Well, you can look at this as problems and solution; you could look at it as diseases and cures. See? All of a sudden something happens. All right, let's react. That's a cure. Got it? Something happens so let's react. Big problem, so let's solve it.

Somebody walks in and presents us with a problem and then we solve it. And somebody else walks in and presents us with a problem and we solve it. And this doesn't matter whether it's on the first or the eighth dynamic; this is the way it goes.

Everything is running along, and all of a sudden somebody walks in with a big problem, and then what do we come up with? The problem? No, never. The solution is what we come up with.

So after a while we become totally obsessed with the automaticity of problems, so that problems are totally on automatic. Nobody creates problems. It isn't possible for anybody to create a problem; that's against the law. That's the one thing you mustn't do to your parents, is create any problems for them. It's the one thing you mustn't do to your boss, the one thing you mustn't do to the society at large, and certainly never the government. Don't ever create any problems for the police. There we are. Don't create problems; that's the common denominator of social reactivity.

Now, you know a great deal about the reactive mind on the first dynamic. But you probably have never suspected the reactivity of the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. But I already talked to you about reactivity on the sixth dynamic, and we're sewing that up right now.

I gave you an earlier lecture; talked to you about Newton's laws. What is that but an engram reactivity? „For every action there's an equal and contrary reaction,“ indeed! That's just sixth- dynamic reactive mind. „For every action there is an equal and contrary reaction.“ Bull! Nuts! So what!

It only is if you think it is. It's only so if you consider it so. And if you think your life is going to work out just fine if you don't permit people to bother you, you're going to be wrong. Because people are always going to bother you. Life's always going to bother you one way or the other. But if you leave problems and their creation upon a total automaticity, you're sunk and nothing will ever bail you out.

Now, that is the basic, seeable, viewable occurrence on all dynamics. This is not something, then, that is isolated to a thing we call the reactive mind, which is made up of mental image pictures which we call facsimiles and engrams and locks and secondaries. See, that's the reactive mind on an individual, and you can watch that thing in operation. Something happens, it reacts; something happens, it reacts; something happens, it reacts. And one day it doesn't react anymore. Why? Because no new life has ever been put into it. It's a machine which has been set up in order to solve problems; it is not a machine which has the fluidity or flexibility of being able to create a problem as well as solve a problem.

The dwindling spiral could be characterized as an inhibition of problem creation, an inhibition of illness creation, inhibition of accident creation. People inhibit accidents, inhibit accidents, inhibit accidents.

Very interesting. I was in a foreign-car repair shop here a very short time ago (this morning), and the fellow was in stitches. What the head of that shop was laughing about, of course, was oddly enough laughable to him — wouldn't be laughable to the society at large, but funny enough, is laughable to us.

He, of course, is in the business of repair. Three doctors, one after the other, today have called up to inform him of accidents. Each one of three doctors has been bunged up, gotten himself injured. One fellow got himself injured on a power saw. Chopped off a couple of fingers on a power saw at home — one doctor. Another one just barely bumped his kneecap when a car skidded. The kneecap swelled up eight times its size and had to be put in a cast immediately. And another doctor accidentally hit his head, and they now suspect a fractured skull. And he's out of the running.

He thought this was very funny that three doctors all — that are supposed to go out and cure things — are getting themselves bunged up with this frequency.

Well, of course, this is very germane to exactly what we are talking about at this instant. Those doctors are presented continually with accidents, with illnesses, tailor-made, already made, and they're supposed to solve them. And if the AMA can hold out very much longer, I will be very surprised.

A psychiatrist is presented continually with a case of insanity. A fellow walks in with a case of insanity. All right, he solves it — tries to. Possibly, once upon a time, he actually was capable of solving a case of insanity — possibly on the backtrack — but not for a long time has he even been interested in solving one. He is a case of insanity. It's on a total reactivity, so you have the total profession reactive, very definitely.

All right, if you as an auditor sit there, and a case comes in and presents itself, and a case comes in and presents itself, and a case comes in and presents itself, and you solve the case every time, see? The case comes in and presents itself, and you solve the case; and the case comes in and presents itself, and you solve the case; the case comes in and presents itself, and you solve the case — and one day you've got a hell of a case. Why?

The automaticity of presenting the problem has been left untouched.

Now, oddly enough, only in Scientology is this mechanism covered, and so becomes null and void. It has no liability once you understand it. A complete understanding of this mechanism actually does nullify the mechanism itself. Got that?

All you got to do is nullify this mechanism, then, with total understanding, and understand what you are doing, and then for the first time you are not the effect point. Why? You're at causation. Along what line?

Psychiatry today is causing cases — reactively, unknowingly and stupidly. It couldn't do anything else. There is even a word in the medical profession which described this. The word is „iatrogenic.“ It's a mouthful, but it means an illness caused by a doctor. They have gotten so inverted on this that they create insanity.

If any of you have ever had to handle an electric-shock or a prefrontal-lobotomy case, you will know what I am talking about. The person might or might not have been in bad condition before he was put on that table or under that machine, but he certainly is in secondhand condition when he comes off of it. In other words, we have insanity causation.

Now we have science. Science! Somebody called it „the sacred cow“ in a book not many years ago. A gorgeous book. You ought to get it and read it; you'd laugh yourself silly. Science is a Sacred Cow is the name of the book. It was a very, very wonderful book - - very funny.

What's science done today? Science-fiction writers have long been writing stories about the day when science became an anathema to the entirety of mankind, and it was enough to present yourself as a scientist to be shot down in the streets. This is an old plot for a science-fiction writer. Of course, science-fiction writers are anything up to a hundred years ahead of any current thinking, because they pull it off the whole track and look it over and recreate it and do things like that with it.

But the day has come when the man in the street is saying, „It is too bad that anybody ever thought of an A-bomb.“ I hear some scientists say „Poor Einstein,“ you know, „to have his work suborned in this fashion.“ I don't know what's poor about Einstein.

The late, and as far as I am concerned, unlamented mathematician of Princeton, and points Germanicized, was the fellow who wrote the letter to FDR and said, „With this mechanism we can create a bomb which will destroy whole cities in one blow.“ He wrote that letter. He brought it to FDR's attention with his stature. He proposed in so many words that the United States create a weapon sufficiently large to obliterate all of mankind. I don't know why we're saying „poor Einstein.“

Reactively — totally reactively — this fellow from that point there on tried to get behind peace movements. See now, this is a reactive overt act-motivator sequence; nothing more than that. It's probably what killed him. He probably didn't mourn about it; he probably didn't even know he was mourning about it. He wrote the letter to FDR. FDR wrote a check for three billion dollars. We now have an A-bomb and an H-bomb and a Q-bomb, and we have cobalt and strontium, and we have all kinds of things in all directions. And we got a whole bunch of military people that do nothing but work on a reactivity. And science has at last reached that level where it is no longer the boon of mankind but its curse. Now, that point has been passed, and it was passed a very short time ago. It's quite interesting.

As a matter of fact, it would interest you that in recent months several members of the organization, field auditors, have said, „Why are we calling Scientology a science? You realize the word is unpopular, don't you?“ Now, that's quite curious, quite curious.

Science, fifty years ago, if you were to go back and read its essays, was the thing which was going to save all of man. And now it's the thing which lies as the black dog of Karnak upon his back.

Now, what is the exact mechanism by which this occurs that is of interest to us? I'm showing you several examples, not propagandizing with you, because certainly all of you have watched these things pass. I'm showing you that they fit into the framework of what we are doing here.

What happens? Science left all the problems on automatic, and only took responsibility for the solutions. General Electric has never released a goodwill ad saying, „We are the people who created the shortage of copper.“ Interesting, isn't it? They say, „We are the people who solved the rah-rah-r-rah-rah and built all the electric-shock machines for the psychiatrists,“ or whatever it is, see? See, „We're the big boys. We solved something.“ Got that?

All right. If that is the case, then how does this fit into the case of your preclear? It fits in broadly on every dynamic. Not only in your own action of auditing him to resolve his case does it fit, but also in every activity in which he is engaged, do you discover this reactive mechanism. It is on every dynamic.

Overt act-motivator sequence is another way of describing reactivity. The fellow makes an action out, and because no creativeness is being done, an action then comes in. Why? Because a certain amount of energy was consumed in the outthrust, and therefore a small vacuum of that much energy was left, so that we get a reaction. Something moves in, then, to fill this vacuum. Do you see that?

A fellow does not create the energy with which to reach, but simply reaches, using up the energy contained in his bank. This leaves a small hole, because a certain amount of energy was consumed — heat loss and so fort — hand we have an inflow of energy to that point.

Now, in view of the fact that he hands out, usually, an engramic situation, he ordinarily gets the nearest cousin to that engram (by association) replacing the lost energy.

Now, this is all right, as long as the person is very, very exact in choosing the exact kind of energy coming back. He puts an AG situation out; he gets an A´G´ situation back. Do you see?

When a person goes mad, he puts out an AG situation and gets an XQ situation in. In other words, he loses association between his action and its reaction. In older witch-doctoring this actually did have a phrase. It's called „disassociation.“ People have noticed this since time immemorial, that when somebody started to lose his wheels, disassociation occurred.

What is this thing called disassociation? It is reactivity gone off of a positive or logical sequence into an illogical sequence. The individual hits his wife and immediately becomes guilty of having cut the grass.

Now, if his reactive mind is in good shape, you only get overt- act-motivator sequence: He hits his wife and he feels his own nose begin to be tender. See, he gets the exact blow back. Of course, it wasn't the blow he struck. That left a vacuum. He didn't create that blow; that blow was simply motivated by some engramic situation, and so he pulled in an old blow that he had gotten. After a while, he begins to run out of old blows to pull in, and he starts to pull in old taps, old kicks, old shocks, you see? And you get disassociation, which means that you are no longer doing a smooth Q and A — no longer doing a Q and Q, you see? You're no longer getting the exact reactivity to that outthrust. No longer is this thing logical or understandable. And the disassociation factor takes place, and we normally, when we see it, brand it as insane.

Who is to say that it is not insane at the moment it becomes a perfect association on an automatic basis? Just because it is not observably insane is no reason that it is not insane. Because here we have a person using his bank or machinery or something to make an action. And just because he gets back a very closely associated action is no reason that the mechanism is good; it's no reason the mechanism is sane.

No, I'm afraid the individual would actually have to create the outthrust. If he did not create the outthrust, he would use part of a bank or stored machinery which would then demand an inflow. And he gets into the situation, „For every outthrust there must be an inflow,“ which is the mental, reactive level of Newton's laws. That's true on every dynamic.

Now, similarly, he reverses on this reactivity, and for every inflow he must have an outflow. Of course, that's not sane either. Because he had an inflow, he has now got to strike out. Somebody hit him; that becomes a good enough reason for him to hit somebody else. He uses the blow which struck him in order to strike another. This is a wonderful thing; it's conservation of energy.

The god and goal, the motto, the altar-cloth design of science: conservation of energy. That is its tombstone. And it takes off from that point, and the whole science of physics proceeds from its own tombstone: conservation of energy.

A scientist is the first to tell you that creativity is not possible. „This material in this universe has been here from the beginning of time, and will be here long after time ceases.“ I've heard them make some of the most idiotic remarks concerning this. „Energy cannot be created.“ „What is energy?“ „Energy is that which cannot be created or destroyed.“ Scientific definition! „Nobody can create anything.“ „It's all been done before“ is the final answer to that. And the communist scientist has gone downstairs so far that he believes implicitly that there is no new action anyplace possible anywhere. And this is the theme of dialectic materialism, which says that every idea is the product of two or more forces in collision. Every idea arises from two or more forces in collision, which is the basic tenet of dialectic materialism, or psychology, whichever you want to call it.

Now, what do we have here? What do we have when we believe that „it's all been done,“ that „nothing is new,“ that „energy cannot be created“? We have total reactivity.

Newton's laws are not at the top of the sentience scale of physics, but actually lie in its bottom basement. They are way gone on the road to dissolution.

Now, where do we see any sense? You alone, in your ability to perceive and in your ability to create a thought or action, are sentient, capable and actually capable of experience. You're only capable of experience to the degree that you can create an action. If you can't, then you would be totally reactive. But that of you which is ethical, which thinks, which works, which is capable of production, which is capable of viewing the world or understanding it in any way, is totally analytical and is not at all reactive, and so lies completely beyond the boundaries of dialectic materialism, psychiatry, psychology, all of these other subjects, including physics.

In other words, that with which you appreciate, that with which you can understand, that with which you can endow life, is entirely caused as far as you are concerned. You are causing it. You are as alive as you can cause life. A machine is not alive, a reaction is not alive, reactivity is not alive, but is entirely parasitic upon life. Do you follow this? It's entirely parasitic.

This desk exists only because you are sufficiently analytical to endow its existence. The moment you become reactive along any line, you are simply the cause of endowment of the reactivity, and you would only know you were reactive to the degree that you were causing reactivity to take place. So the life that you know (underscore the know), the life that you really experience, is analytical existence. So the entirety of human experience lies above the level of reactivity, otherwise it cannot be experienced.

If you think there is any real value in reactivity, then you must believe that your fellow man needs to be in chains.

The onset of these postulates and conclusions came about when some beings became afraid of the actions of other beings and so wished them to be inhibited, and, like Christianity, went down the spout.

And I say „like Christianity“ because Christianity is an amusing thing. In the earliest days it was a control mechanism which was used in order to inhibit and civilize. And the boys were around giving everybody at every hand the idea that they ought to „glory hallelujah, do unto others the way you would be undone,“ and they were having a wonderful time.

Give you an idea of the spirit of the people who were using this subject; it's quite wonderful to read the annals of slavery. They went down to the Gold Coast and the Ivory Coast, and they took rum and Christianity. They knew that these would procure slaves. Quite interesting. The people who used these things were beneath contempt.

Nobody says the mechanism itself does not have value. Nobody says that there was no nobility in it. Nobody is trying to wipe out the actual nobility of Christianity; I'm talking about the users of Christianity.

You would find, if you went around the neighborhood and tried to get some contributions, that if you could absolutely guarantee that you were going to put every member of your congregation in utter and complete slavery, you would find every millionaire in the neighborhood very, very anxious — if he was a bit batty, if he was worried about his fellow man — willing to contribute you money. You'd find every union leader who was worried about those union members very anxious to contribute some money. You get the idea? You'd find every tough bully or bum in the shops willing to contribute some money. In other words, that strata of the rich, the middle class and the poor alike, who were worried about their fellow human beings would give you money. But you wouldn't get any money from people who wanted others to be free, because you were dedicated to putting people in chains.

All you have to do is prove to people conclusively that you have a mechanism which will enchain them forever, and you will get very liberal contributions. And I'm very, very sad and sorry that that happens to be the case, but that is what Christianity was used for throughout the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages. It was to place people into ignorance, it was to enslave their imaginations and it was to cut them off from any independent thinking.

Communism today is doing exactly the same thing. It is saying to people, „You are not capable of an original thought. Dialectic materialism is the thing. Everything that's been thought has been thought of before.“ They use that for only one reason, and it's rather amusing, the reason they use it. Nobody will again think up another communism and so defeat the existing status quo. Look at it. If you put that engram on the track solidly enough, then nobody will ever think up something which will overthrow the structure which you have erected.

But look at the frailty of it. Ignore its cowardice; it's beneath contempt. But look at the frailty of that mechanism. If you taught everybody this and then somebody did come along with something which was new and fresh and individually arrived at and was not the product of two old forces, it would bash the head in of your system with great speed and suddenness. So that it was only adventurous thinkers who were originally, when they thought, burned at the stake, who destroyed the complete stranglehold of the Catholic church upon man in Europe.

They burned these boys. A fellow would come up and say, „You know, I think...“ and it would be a new thought, you know? And man, they'd start looking around for the first and nearest stake. And after a while they couldn't erect enough stakes.

In Holland, particularly, it became impossible to build enough scaffolds, hire enough torturers and find enough firewood to dispose of the heretics. What was an heretic? It was somebody who thought for himself. They said it was somebody who departed from the status quo. No, that's not true. It was an individual who thought for himself.

Listen. If the tenets which were being taught had been true, then an original, independent thinker would have achieved the same tenets. Do you understand? They would have created these things, they would have looked them all over, and in this new creation there would have been room for the old creation. Do you see that? He would have understood the old creation. What he was thinking, then, would have embraced these old creativenesses.

So only the host of lies need fear individual adventure into the field of original thought. And only that man who is already branded with trickery, deceit and treachery, and whose trademark is betrayal, need at any moment worry about individual thought. In other words, the moment that original, analytical approach was made to a subject, he would see that his house of lies would fall down. Therefore, he must beware an original thought.

Your preclear is unfortunately trained in that philosophy to a very large degree. When he comes to you newly and freshly to be processed on a subject that he's never heard of before, he is apt to think, himself, that „This must be something radically different; and then, therefore, there must be or might be something very wrong about it because it is different; and therefore, it is with trepidation that I advance upon this course.“

Why? The man is sunk to his neck in mud. Only a wrecking truck is needed to pull him out. I mean, you think you're going to hook him with one little finger under a suspender and yank him out of that mud, you're mistaken. Because that mud is deep, and it goes from there on down. But that mud is reactivity. Reactivity.

„I am no longer capable of creating energy. I am no longer capable of doing this. I am no longer capable of doing that. Therefore, I must depend upon those mechanisms which have already been erected. And I cannot adventure to think an original thought or advance in any original direction, because at once I would expend some of this hoarded, conserved energy, which would then make me liable to an inflow of further energy. And I therefore mustn't reach, and I mustn't think.“ And the more a person suppresses this and the more he goes in this direction, why, the deeper he bogs himself down. It's like a truck trying to pull itself out of the mud without any chains; it just keeps digging its hole, digging its hole, digging a deeper hole. It's quite remarkable.

Now, you might worry about your reactive mind. But I'll tell you something very interesting about the reactive mind: It has only that much life that you yourself put into it. And if you were totally capable of making your reactive mind totally effective, it could no longer worry you in any way.

It is that you are an effect of your reactive mind, not that it has any danger in it at all, which is the point.

Knowing this — knowing this — it might be totally uncensured, as far as you're concerned, to actually pitch people into a mudhole.

Say, „Oh, you didn't know about engrams? Well, now listen:“ (lick your fingers) „and when I snap my fingers, the somatic strip will go back to birth.“ And you can pull somebody out of birth today. The funny part of it is, just pushing him into birth makes him better than when he didn't know about it at all, because he was being total effect to the point of unawareness, with extreme irresponsibility concerning it.

He had a great big picture out there with tremendous teeth in it, and he was the total effect of this picture even to the degree of not even knowing that the picture had ever existed. So actually - - although we amongst ourselves might look on it as a rather sadistic action to say „The somatic strip will now go back to the beginning of birth“ — the funny part of it is, people's IQs go up when you do this. Why? You've increased their awareness, which is all that you're doing. They become more aware of it, so they're better off.

You see, the world at large has another philosophy on this, which is a totally improper one, we have discovered. They think if they keep walking around at the bottom of the pit, you see, and never noticing that it's a pit, they'll be all right. See, if they just never notice those walls, why, they'll be okay, and they'll get through it somehow. But the funny part of it is, they're still in a pit. And one day a little rock shakes loose up above and hits them on the head, and they have to explain this in the terms of spirits and devils, not that they're in a pit. You get the totally idiotic explanations and figure-figures which come out of some banks. It is. The fellow is walking around in a pit and has chosen not to know he is walking around in a pit and says, „Isn't it a big, beautiful plain in every direction? However, I am not looking out at the big, beautiful plain, because I just know it's there, you see.“

It would be even funnier if it weren't for the fact that you look at him and you say, „Well, how'd all those scrapes get on your arm? You know, your arm is all scraped.“ Oh, and he walks around a little further and bangs his head into a rock on the side of the pit, you see, and blood starts running down and so forth. And you say, „If you aren't in a pit, what are you running into?“

And the fellow says, „Nothing.“ He says, „That's a psychosomatic illness that... I mean, my grandmother had this too. I uh...“ See, boom! And he hits against the side of it. Something is worrying him and he'd better not find it out.

Well, when you realize that analytically you do energize any reactive situation... See, it requires an analytical energizing to have an engram bite. An individual who knows this stops being analytical, because every time he starts being analytical, from some mysterious force he gets a bite. He then says, „I'm not doing it; something else is biting me. I am total effect. And therefore, I better not think anymore.“

Now, look at this on the third and fourth dynamic: Here we had a huge church, 800, 900 A.D. Every time a fellow thought an independent thought, he would say, „You know, there is something around here that'll bite.“ Yes, there was; there was a church that would bite. They'd tie him on to the nearest scaffold, too. See, in other words, his thought — original thought — was too painful for the church to tolerate, and it actually did cause the church to react. But there was no reaction there until a thought was there.

The revolt which took place around Martin Luther, and so on, is quite interesting. You wouldn't think that one innocent little book penned out — not even very well penned out — would cause such a fantastic reaction within the citadels of the church itself But there is where it caused its major reaction. It caused a reaction there long before it caused a reaction anywhere else. WOW!

He energized all of the mechanisms and automaticities and engrams inside the church, and they kicked back. And it was the church which caused the debacle which followed, not Martin Luther, according to any casual view. You see?

The church went around and did all sorts of wild things. But why did it do it? Well, if that little bit of life or livingness could energize that much reaction, you must either assume that reaction is easily energized or that a little bit of life isn't a little bit of life; it's an awful lot of life.

So you get these interesting periods of man's history where he settles into a total status quo and just rides, you know, along, and he's being stupid about everything, and he isn't saying anything about anything, you know? It's all okay, you know, like Coolidge prosperity back in the twenties: „Uuuh, everything is going on all right,“ and so forth. There was only one smart man present; it was a fellow by the name of Coolidge and he said, „I do not choose to run.“

And everybody said, „Well, here we are in the middle of prosperity, and isn't it grand, and so forth.“ And they didn't realize they were taking in each other's stocks and bonds, and that was about all the activity consisted of. Because the society at large didn't have enough money to run on, and they'd manufactured their own money with the stock market. And then somebody said it was no good. About what happened. Anybody that's studying this could give us a much more sentient idea, but I'm merely using it as an illustration.

We had a reactive machine set up, and all somebody alive had to do was look at the stocks and bonds and say they weren't money, you see? And this amount of energizing would cause all this stuff to churn up.

Well now, when we consider that original ideas are not of any benefit, they become tremendously effective. Why? They themselves become an automaticity, don't they? Well, the total motto of the reactive bank is that „No extraneous ideas must enter here. No new ideas must enter here in any way.“

Every once in a while somebody asks me what I do with all of the new material and ideas which come in to my office and into organizations, and so on. What do I do with these things? I listen. I read it. It's a disappointingly small amount over the past many years. Disappointingly. There's only a very few people — very few — have really come forward and done something like this.

From time to time I'll even maintain a secretary, who does nothing but pick up all the new ideas that are around and look them all over, and so forth. Every once in a while, why, somebody has really done some thinking.

Now, at this day and time, when so little is known of the human being that people don't even know they have souls anymore (which is one of the more interesting things, because they even knew this in Catholic times), what kind of shape are people in now, see, that the amount of material which turns up is slight in comparison to the actual amount of thinking which might be done? But every now and then the thinking which is done in some quarter is brilliant, completely brilliant; somebody does something really wonderful. All right, that's fine. That's fine.

We are on the road of truth, so anything that comes up along the line becomes Scientology, you see? If it is true, if it does work, if it is functional and so forth, why, that's it! That's it!

Yet you watch a couple of research workers who have been put on a particular project and who have discovered that when you tickle a preclear's left big toe, that his left ear also twitches. They will discover this in one preclear and the phenomenon seems so formidable that they spend all their time from there on out merely telling people that this is the utter, factual end product of truth. And that is the end of it to the end of time, and they never do another thing with it. And all their energy is expended upon touting this phenomenon of tickle the left big toe and the left ear twitches. Now, you think I'm merely being sarcastic, but I've had them that stupid.

And I've had a widespread chaos result from the fact that somebody didn't do a piece of research, said that he had, and shoved it in some direction, with some evaluation on it so that a bunch of people didn't look at it, and the next thing you know, you got a lot of preclears in the soup. Why?

The only thing that's happened is a new postulate or a new lie has been introduced into the structure, and thetans aren't aware of the fact that they're totally capable of making a new postulate and making it work. Quite amusing.

Engineers in electronics work continuously to eliminate noise from receivers and steadily (understandably, of course, because many neon signs and things are being built), the noise level in the world today which interferes with radio has multiplied several factors beyond the increase of electrical equipment in the world. It's very fascinating. Where did this noise come from? It's by agreement, I suppose.

In other words, there's more noise, electronically, today than there should be, even with the tremendous increase of equipment. Well, noise is automatic. Only those engineers who worked with jamming radar and things like that were actually content to create a noisy, distorted, completely messed-up receiver, see? Now, it would really maybe take some skill to set up a radio receiver that would do nothing but receive noise and would completely obliterate a signal. Do you see this?

Who would think of building one? You're going to set up a receiver that's only going to yank people's eardrums in and out, and is going to read in a totally random fashion on every meter. Yet one of these days, you'll find some electrical company will start to build something that they will sell as a radio receiver which will receive noise but not much signal — just like science suddenly someday builds a cobalt bomb or something which in a test stage wipes out half of the population of the U.S., you know. Nobody will be responsible for it because that is an action of irresponsibility.

But for what are they taking their irresponsibility? The destructive effects of their own tests; they're being totally irresponsible with regard to this. So the engineer is being totally irresponsible on the subject of noise and radio receivers, you see? And being totally irresponsible on the created noise — what created the noise; he's not responsible for that — why, he of course has trouble with noise.

Now, the very least that some company should do is survey all modern electrical equipment and find out that equipment which does produce the most radio signal when it shouldn't, and then do something about the manufacture of that equipment, and so eliminate this tremendously high noise level which has arisen today. That would seem to be a very logical thing to do. But one would have to at least take the responsibility for that amount of noise before one could then start eliminating noise. Right? Right?

All right. So you have to take responsibility for the reactivity of your or anybody else's case before you actually can solve the case and keep it solved. It's a funny piece of machinery that is part of all this.

I've told students this for years: You have to be perfectly willing to completely ruin a preclear in order to make him well. In other words, you mustn't go around chewing your fingernails, worried that some technique is going to actually ruin your preclear.

You mustn't say „Oh dear, I processed Joe and I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm... What if I did something wrong? What if I... What if that wasn't the right technique and it just spun him into the ground and it just ruined him and so forth?“ And you go around worrying about this.

I'm afraid that isn't a state of mind of a good auditor. A good auditor is much calmer about the whole thing. He actually could say to himself, be willing to say to himself, „Well, let's rain him now for a half an hour.“ You got that? „Well, let's ruin him for half an hour.“

You would be amazed at the effectiveness of this frame of mind. Nobody had ever been able to do anything with this preclear — that's the only kind of preclear I ever get. See? And my idea of cases is tremendously exaggerated over yours, by the way, just because of that factor. For years, they would only push at me the case that can't be solved. All right.

This guy came in and I said to him, „Why should I do anything for you?“ He'd been trying to dream up some blasphemous, horrible tales about auditors in his immediate vicinity just to knock out the competition and so forth. „Why should I do anything for you?“ I said. I said, „I'm liable to just sit here and run anything completely opposite. As a matter of fact, there you sit and you believe that I will run something on you to solve your case.“ And I said, „This is probably not going to take place at all. Do you realize that you're in that state?“ I said, „In view of what you've done, that licenses me completely“ (since he would understand it best this way) „to run the worst I know on you and utterly wreck you!“

And the guy thought that over for a long time and finally said, „Go ahead.“ It was actually the direction he was trying to go casewise. We were in total agreement.

So for an hour or two I did nothing but restimulate engrams on him and leave them. Made him happy as a clam. Never even finished his case. He didn't know he had that many engrams that could be restimulated.

Now, this sounds to you — from a frame of reference of „We must heal everybody, and we must get all of them, and we mustn't leave one aberrated person anyplace,“ you see — as though I have a sadistic streak in me. No, that is what I don't have. I don't have a sadistic streak in me. See? You have a sadistic streak in you when you're only pretending to be totally kind always in all directions, and I don't. You got the idea? Then you could have a sadistic streak. Otherwise you're simply free to act. Do you see this? Do you see, there's a difference here. A difference of view.

Now, it does happen that I will help anybody! See? I will! And I am selective enough to only spin in newspaper reporters and things.

But weirdly enough, I would even help them too! You get the idea? I'm not on a stimulus-response of „This class elects itself out. Oh, these people here have nothing, so therefore, we don't want to have anything to do with them.“ That's a psychiatric weed-out, see? They weed the society out like that. They kick the guy out of the place the moment that he runs out of his last buck. You get the idea? They don't do anything for him, but the moment he runs out of his last buck he's poor. „We don't want to have anything to do with poor people,“ the psychiatrist says.

Or how about the socialist type of fellow who says, „I don't want to have anything to do with the very, very rich.“ Psychiatrist says, „Well, I only want to have something to do with the very, very rich.“ So you find a psychiatrist at every rich man's elbow almost, today. And the fellow who is operating in some social strata says, „I only want to run a clinic in the slums, and I am death on anybody who has money. Anybody who has money is a dog and a bum and he is not to be tolerated, and he should be shot.“ If you did that you would just wipe out the entire managerial- executive strata of the world.

People get money usually for doing things right. When Russia killed off all of its aristocracy, it got itself into the same mess that France got itself into when it killed its aristocracy off. They killed off all their managers. Boom! All gone now. Now they didn't have anybody left who could build bridges or mend roads or do anything else from a managerial or executive or planning level. The end product of the French Revolution was to put French capability way, way behind. Why? They've made this postulate: „Everybody is no good who has money.“ And that is not true, and it never will be true, any more than „Everyone who doesn't have money is no good.“ They're equally foolish.

People are people. I've met some of the finest people you ever wanted to meet who had so many millions of dollars they forgot how to count them. I've met some of the finest people in rags you ever wanted to meet, who had so much poverty they'd forgotten to add it up. You see? I've met some of the lousiest bums who had a million dollars you ever wanted to meet. And I've met some of the lousiest bums that didn't have a dime you ever wanted to meet. You got the idea? I mean, we can't classify it all. The moment we do, we to some degree commit suicide.

All right. Therefore, if everybody that you ever process you have to process only to make him well, and only to finish him off, and only to square him around, and so on, you can only afford the solution. And one fine day you get the stimulus-response mechanism of problems. This is transference. You say you've got to solve the guy's case, and you don't solve it. So you say to yourself, „There must have been something in that case which I couldn't confront, therefore I am not confronting it, and I've got it.“ You follow that? That is transference of one kind or another. That is getting the somatic from the preclear. „There must have been something in that case that I didn't solve.“

Why is that? Because you're not a good enough auditor to totally solve the case? No, it isn't that; it really isn't that. It's that you are obsessed with having to solve the case, and you're not going to cause this fellow any problems.

Well, there's many a preclear I've had that was no good in the auditing role, see? He's no good as an auditor, merely because he just couldn't create a single problem anywhere; he could only solve them. And I've sat there and caused enough problems with his case so that he got a level of encountering up someplace where he said, „You know, I have enough case to encounter.“ See, everybody else was trying to push it out of sight. I convinced him he had a case. He's better off for it; gave him enough to confront. „Oh! Is this what a case is?“ You know? „Golly, I'd better get to work and solve all this,“ and he found that he could sit in the middle of an awful lot of soup without solving it. He got very relaxed. What technique did I run? Technique that you know all about: Problem of Comparable Magnitude.

Now, what's this all about? What's this all about in techniques? It tells you that each and every technique that you have anything to do with has, actually, a plus and a minus side. There's something you can do wrong with it. You better know what you can do wrong with it. And you better not be terribly, desperately terrified that someday you will run it wrong, because you put the wrong side of it on total automatic. Relax! Do you see that? So that, you step into an automaticity, you're sunk.

Now, it requires two things technique-wise: It requires (1) that you one-side the whole thing, and (2) that you put your auditing on total automatic. See, you've got to do both of those things in order to be bitten by a reaction.

You have to descend into automaticity, reactivity, put it all on a machine, saw through the day, you know, somehow or other get by, and it's just a machine and so on. Then you become the victim of reaction. Only then, your constant solving of problems, you see — your constant solving of problems — with problems themselves (creation of, on total automatic) can move in on you. Why? At that day you are in the realm of reactivity.

Automaticity — reactivity.

The solution to it all is just be alive! It's no more complicated than that.

I can tell you more phenomena out of the field of reactivity than we could easily add up, and I don't know, maybe ten to the nth phenomena that we have covered one way or the other. But they are almost all of them in the field of reactivity: stimulus-response mechanisms and so forth. Do you see that?

Well, there's a way by which you are not victim of any of these phenomena, or at will, victim of all of them. And that level would simply be an analytical, alive, present-time „Here I am; I am doing it right now“ approach.

It's rather shattering to suddenly be presented, for instance, with an automobile of an entirely different kind. You've been driving an automatic transmission; this one has a gearshift. Maybe you've been driving a right-hand drive, and you all of a sudden are driving a left-hand-drive car. Everything switches around. Maybe it was a big car that you were used to; you're now driving a small car. Everything changes.

You get almost anybody who is a bad driver to begin with and put him in that thing, and he'll foul up bad enough to run up the nearest cliff. See? He'll really make a mess out of it, although in a standard type of car he was used to driving, he's doing all right. You've got that? See, he was doing all right only so far as machinery — mental machinery, stimulus-response — would take him.

Now, he didn't even come up and drive that new car. See? He didn't drive it. He tried to get the machinery which isn't fitted to it to drive it. And the machinery goes crash and so does the car. Why? No life is being added to it to amount to anything.

He's running on the total postulate „I am a good driver, and my experience will now drive this car too.“ And it won't! You see?

If he's totally alive to the situation, if he's in present time, if he's not engrossed and totally dependent upon a great deal of downscale mechanisms of one kind or another, if he's not living his life as a total parasite, he simply steps into the car, the new car, and he adds it up, and he says, „How weird. I am now driving on the right-hand side of this car, and this gearshift runs so-and-so and so-and-so.“ And he moves away from his place, and he is driving the car the whole distance. You got the idea?

But then this fellow was never doing otherwise with the other car either. He didn't consider his energy had to be conserved. He didn't consider that thought was so expensive that he couldn't afford any. He didn't consider that his present-time environment was so horrible or so boring that he couldn't face it. He was simply there and he did. And when all that occurs, you have your total response reaction cut out. See? Stimulus-response then no longer occurs. That's gone.

So the answer to any case, then, is to put him into that state. And that is the state you are trying to put cases into. You're trying to move them out of the idea that they are so totally irresponsible and incompetent and incapable of generating energy or thought that they must rely upon every automaticity which comes along — every stimulus-response mechanism — they are so cowardly and so lacking in strength that they must put in chains everyone around them.

You're moving a person out of that stimulus-response sphere and simply asking him to move upstairs into being there — being alive and being here. And that is the goal of auditing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

[End of Lecture]