It will be found that when an auditor obtains a floating needle (F/N) on locks without erasing the basic on the chain that the manifestation or somatics may recur in minutes, days or years. For they have only keyed out.

The reason why Dianetics and Scientology were abused or even fought has to do with what is called a “cultural lag”.

It is sometimes risky to audit past an F/N on the same chain. A Scientology auditor never would audit past an F/N. A Dianetic auditor has to recognize that the pc has only run a lock and ask for an earlier incident.

This has often occurred in the history of technical developments.

A floating needle is also obtained by erasure of the basic on a chain. That is the F/N one wants in Dianetics.

An example is Dr. Semmelweis’s discovery of the cause and cure of childbed fever. For over half a century after that women still died in agony after child-bearing. Eventually the culture caught up to it and the illness which had accounted for a huge percentage of female deaths ceased to exist. Dr. Semmelweis’s discovery of its prevention was “ahead of its time”. Pathetically, scoffed and disbelieved, he even died to prove he was right.

The atomic bomb was wholly feasible more than a decade before it was “developed”. No one credited it and no one put up the cash.

A floating needle is valid only between 2.0 and 3.0 Tone Arm position on a meter. Above or below that Tone Arm reading, the F/N is called an "ARC Break" needle.

The radio telephone was invented and demonstrated half a century before it was generally used.

A real F/N also carries with it GOOD INDICATORS. A cheerful happy pc.

Cultural lag occurs for many reasons.

When the Tone Arm is below 2.0, the incident chain has not been erased.

In any field as retarded as the human sciences the emergence of Dianetics and Scientology, full and workable and complete, is startling. And thereby subject to disbelief.

When the Tone Arm is above 3.0, erasure has not occurred.

This does not mean they aren’t used and useful.

When the Tone Arm is up at 4.4 the pc has made it more solid and has not erased the basic on the chain.

It is significant that hundreds of aerospace technicians, working with satellites and rocketry, broadly used Scientology first. At the same time parliaments in some socially backward countries were busy passing laws against Scientology to protect their psychiatrists whose medieval approach was to seize people without any process of law and castrate them and saw out brains as a “cure” for mental illness.

On the second time through, if the TA rises, you know there is an earlier incident.

In a world where governments are fighting to dominate men’s minds, mental technology is needed to protect the individual and to prevent the enslavement of all.

So Dianetics and Scientology may be a century ahead of their times but still they are just in time before we all go up in smoke.

The Dianetic Auditor is not concerned with "rehabilitation" of the overrun. In Dianetics it only means the engram chain is in restimulation and has not been erased.

Dianetics was the first practical workable easily taught science of the mind. It has endured already 19 years and is better and more used than ever before.

When the basic erases, the TA will fall or rise to the area between 2.0 and 3.0 and the needle will F/N. One then stops promptly on that chain. He can reassess and run another chain now.

COGNITION means a pc origination indicating he has "Come to realize". It's a "What do you know. I …" statement.

Cognitions usually occur immediately after an erasure. They sometimes occur while running the chain. But when they occur with very good indicators the chain is almost always gone.

You can expect the rapid end sequence of (1) Erasure (2) F/N (3) Cognition in a well run Standard Dianetic session.

That's all you really need to know about it in Dianetics.

[This HCO B was replaced by HCO B 1 August 1970, which was cancelled and revised by BTB I August 1970R which was cancelled by HCO B 1 August 1970RA, Revised 21 October 1974, F/N and Erasure. This latest revision is on page 117.]