Okay, this is the question period of the tenth lecture of the 20th ACC, July 25th, 1958.

Yes?

Male voice: You covered mass and space and time but didn't say much about energy.

The whole lecture concerned energy. The whole lecture concerns energy because that lecture - that lecture itself defines what energy is.

Yes?

Male voice: You say that on the guy that doesn't have any field, you have to do a patch-up procedure. This looks to me to be - it's the only thing I see to be different about the handling of it. Now, what would you do there?

No, it's not different. You're doing the same thing. You're trying to get an integration of some part of his Rock and you're just approaching this integration on a more gradient scale. You've got to get him to integrate something and get basic on something and get these particles a little bit more together, and a little bit more into their more basic form. So therefore, in exploring, „What have you had to be responsible for?“ is a covert method of asking him what he created. And you get someplace with this if you do find some stucks.

Have some of you done this on these cases that were way high now and you found out that...

Male voice: Yeah.

..you'll get some odds and ends of stucks. And then you'll find some other patch, and that'll kind of go together. Well, you're putting together the whole Rock from scratch. See? You're putting together the whole blasted Rock. And I do mean that as a pun. Do you see that now?

Male voice: Uh - yes.

Supposing you blast a blasted thing.

Male voice: Yeah.

Let's say we have a stone quarry. At one time it was the side of a hill and it was totaled. Then they took some stones out of it and carted those off someplace else. You get that as a dispersal of this original mass called a hill. Got it?

Male voice: Yeah.

All right. Now supposing the buildings which were built out of those rocks are blown up. Now supposing the rubble of brick and that sort of thing is used as an airport fill. And then supposing somebody goes in there someday after airports are no longer necessary and decides that that's a good place to get some dirt, and they cart those things off someplace, you see, and integrate them into some new types of mass. And then one day these get blown up.

Now you've got this case, which is the dispersal case, removed about that far from the Rock. It's too many blow-ups. And they've already begun a recombination of things. Now, as you scout back you'll start taking apart their own recombinations, and you do that simply on a gradient. And you're now not working, however, with such a case on the second postulate; you're working on the - you're working them from the 110th postulate back to the 109th. You see? And from the 109th perfect mass - which isn't a perfect mass, it's 109 separate operations removed - it'll work back to the 107th, and it'll work back to the 105th. And as you run these things of responsibility, and so forth, why, you'll start knocking them out.

What you're knocking out is their recombinations of resistance for the resistance of things. You're knocking apart their recombinations of fields. And you can walk one of these cases with just such a proceeding right on down. You finally are working on somebody who merely has a field which, when it integrates, turns out to be the Rock.

Male voice: I see where the misunderstanding is. In the case of the guy who doesn't have anything...

Yeah? That's not true, but go ahead.

Male voice: Well, okay, so he says there's nothing there.

Yeah, that's right, there's nothing where he is.

Male voice: Right.

All right.

Male voice: This would still apply, then you'd use the same procedure to...

No, you'd use this special procedure of: What has he had to be responsible for?

Male voice: Okay. Thank you.

Now, when you said that there was nothing there, you're under a mis-concept to some degree. There is nothing immediately where he is, apparently, but that is still space. And one of the weirder things that happens is, you start to run a „What have you had to be responsible for?“ proposition here, „What have you had to be responsible for?“ this damn thing of recombinations of recombinations of recombinations moves in on him. He's liable to find himself sitting in a torrential hurricane before you get through.

But remember he still had some space there at the time you started out, and if space is nothing then he had nothing.

Male voice: Yeah.

But in this tailored-up space this thing starts to move back. It is less tough to take apart than it sounds because he gets back to the original disintegrated particles with great swiftness if you run an exploratory or a scout of the character that I gave you yesterday of exploration on the basis of „What have you had to be responsible for?“ You start getting these things chewed off, you'll find more and more stucks on the case, which is interesting; you are more and more clearing up the case and it sticks worse and worse, but gets lower and lower on the tone arm.

And you clear up one thing, like a church, in this lifetime and the next thing you know the case has a vague idea of having to be responsible for a tremendous number of slaves. See? And then this thing kind of washes out and they're kind of vague now. They don't quite know where it came from, but it got awfully real for a moment or two and then floop, the needle washed up. And then you have to find something else, and this condenses and goes ffft. And then you'll find something else and it condenses and goes ffft. And the more times you do this, the more things you find on the dial.

And the only difficult area of search is the first five minutes of play, finding the first one. Trying to get them to assume, even vaguely, the idea of being responsible for anything. And that will sometimes just totally boggle them. And it'll boggle them so much that you sometimes can't enter the case with responsibility at all; you have to go back and pick up change. What have they had to change? Now we're processing the Rock quite directly but very fundamentally, without any thought concept coming off of the thing and it resolves less rapidly. See? But at no time is he out of contact with the Rock, or the particles of the Rock, except the particles that become smaller and smaller and more and more removed, more and more chaotic and less and less identified until at last he's just in a total not-knowingness. That explain it now?

Male voice: Yeah, that explains it very well.

All right. He is a parallel to the MEST universe, you see. He's a total parallel to the MEST universe, but that corner of the MEST universe where there's nothing but space. See? But space is all full of electronic particles, they tell me. I never run into any myself, but they tell me, that is.

Let's see what we've got here.

Male voice: Well, I could ask a question here, Ron. In reference to running „What have you had to be - well, any one of the buttons?“ - this has been run on me; I'm a preclear at this time - and I find that I do run and have a considerable number of consideration changes along the line here. And there are these periods where I have a complete, well, everything seems completely unreal to me. Even the command, it seems to have completely gone. It's not real. She has to take me through it again. And, well, I'm a little confused as to what...

You're describing right straight down the line the not-knowingness which occurs between the first and second particle. Every preclear runs through this. He doesn't know what it is. And as you run it, he even more and more doesn't know what it is for a little while. And then he starts to run - he more and more knows what it is. And then, boom, he has some cognitions, you see? Now he knows what it is, but he's going through an earlier phase immediately after that, and of course he doesn't know from nothing again. And it's all very unreal, and people have to repeat the command, and all that sort of thing. What you're talking about is standard. You have to recognize that the not-knowingness is secondary for the responsibility. He can't be responsible for something he doesn't know - even know what it is.

Well, when he starts to be responsible for it again, he begins to know what it is. But then, he's beginning to know what is now unknowable and he gets the full impact of the confusion of not-knowingness, and he go duhhh. This is this funny manifestation of the Rock, „Well, I never thought of that before. All this life I have never even thought of being an athletic director. Isn't that funny? And the whole last life I must have been one. Well how weird. And how would you help an athletic director? Oh, it's very simple, you would put him in a deep hole and cover it all up with cabbage.“ The cabbage and the deep hole and all of that sort of thing, these are possibly fragments of earlier considerations concerning some part of the Rock. And they get all mixed up in athletic directors, and that sort of thing.

You have to look at this - you have to look at this. There's a parallel of thought that parallels the formation and disintegration of the Rock. And, as I told you, it's that parallel of thought which louses the preclear up horribly, because thought isn't „is.“ He is thinking about; he is not thinking it. The considerations keep coming off of it with the answers to the command with the final result - as you go down the line - with the final result that you get an isness. And the moment you get an isness so that is the picture - you've had it; that's that. Okay, has that got it?

Male voice: Thank you, Ron.

You understand that now?

Male voice: Yes.

It's inevitable he'd not know about it. You don't know about these things before he starts processing. Isn't that right? You don't know about these things. Well, where's all that not-knowingness come from? It is itself a sort of a thing.

Well?

Male voice: I have a question on a general area that I haven't quite integrated, and that is games and no-games conditions. You haven't talked about that for quite a while, and I remember that you said a couple of years ago that effect on others and no-effect on self would be a games condition. And in terms of flow, that would be the self-outward flow, which you said yesterday could run indefinitely.

Self-outward flow will run indefinitely, that is correct, if you run a high enough a button; that's the modifier. You can't run outflow on composing music indefinitely and forever. See? Someday along the line, why, listening to music is going to get in its road something fierce. Just running the doingness of composing music, you understand, not responsibility for composing music. I'm talking about, „Now, just get the idea of composing music. Good. Get the idea of composing music. Good. Get the idea of composing music. Good. Get the idea of composing mus-,“ deuuuhh. The guy all of a sudden - E-Meter start looking funny and he's running into a stuck flow, because you haven't a basic enough consideration doing any as-ising there, don't you see? Now, that's games condition. Games is an „outflow doingness“ which always balances with an „inflow done to.“ And these two things will get locked up.

A games condition is based on individuation of self from teammates. Any games condition is a violation of the optimum solution. So all we were running with games conditions were violations of an optimum solution. And theoretically you got all the violations of an optimum solution off the case, the guy would be capable of - more capable of an optimum solution. But unfortunately he wouldn't be Clear.

Male voice: So you're processing above the level of games...

Hm?

Male voice: You're processing above.

Oh, just 89 billion light-years above it, see? I mean we were high with the Chart of Attitudes way back in 51 and 52, you see. That was pretty high. But you notice these five buttons are - just find the ghostliness in the Chart of Attitudes. The Chart of Attitudes are a splinter-down of these five buttons, you see? And we have a senior Chart of Attitudes now that resolves the old-time Chart of Attitudes.

Well, that doesn't mean the old-time Chart of Attitudes is not valid; it just means the five buttons you got now will undo the buttons on the Chart of Attitudes. And the Chart of Attitudes, to some degree, will undo the old Tone Scale. Interesting. You'll get all kinds of Tone Scale manifestations coming off if you run top-bottom Rising Scale Processing - bottom-top on the old Chart of Attitudes. You get the guy with various emotional responses, and so forth, to these things. Although ARC is still very fundamental, you are running right along with ARC all the time you're doing this.

You just have to recognize that relegating something into a new order or place does not tamper with its truth; it simply tampers with its value. Got it? You run into games conditions in processing a preclear right now; you jolly well ought to know what they are. You'll find yourself in a games condition with your preclear sometime. All you have to do is study an ARC break to know you're looking at a games condition. The second you make an ARC break you put your preclear into a games condition with you.

Individuation depends on ARC breaks, and the more ARC breaks there are the more games condition there is. Therefore US diplomatic refusal to have any conference with the Russians is about as psychotically dramatic as you can get, see? Talk them to death.

Male voice: Sure.

See, but down here at the State Department, all the pantywaists and spat-wearers that we call diplomats - I shouldn't express contempt for them; they're beneath contempt. I know these boys; they're from Georgetown, most of them. They're actually trying to avoid a summit conference with Khrushchev this morning. You see? They're just having a hell of a time: „How can we get out of this? How can - how - how can we fix it so we don't have to confront this guy?“ See? „Oh, it would be a disastrous thing if we talked to him. Oh, how horrible!“ And they think the most horrible thing in the world would be talking to somebody. That's because they get in an obsessive games condition with Russia. And the more breakdown there is of ARC, the more games condition there will be, and inevitably you will face a war. I don't say inevitably there will be a war with Russia. We got a hand in this game too. But if it comes to them or us, it's them.

Female voice: Wow!

See? A games condition results from ARC breaks. Because of the power of ARC, a games condition is then subordinate to an ARC break. A games condition is only one thing that results from an ARC break; many other things result, too. So, a games condition was pretty important at one time when we didn't know anything above it. Now, we know that just a plain old ARC break clear back to 1950, see, is more important than a games condition.

A lot of things pursue from an ARC break beyond a games condition, but you'll find yourself playing a game with the preclear the moment you get an ARC break found with him. Make a snide comment about one of his answers sometime just as an experiment, and then you'll find out he considers himself an opponent. And after that he will begin to dodge and duck; he will no longer be straightforward with you. And because he's doing this and now just dramatizing the thing, his profile will drop, see? And that's the anatomy. A games condition is an anatomy of what happens from your viewpoint, but the causation of it is old-time ARC.

Yes? Yes, Maida?

Female voice: Ron, when you speak of this business with a war with Russia, a potential war with Russia, and say that...

I can't hear you, Maida.

Female voice:... if it comes down to them or us, I'm reminded every time you talk like that of certain lectures in the past where you said you considered „Who are they?“

Uh-huh.

Female voice: Yeah, I mean, after all, who are they? I mean, who does this thing done to us?

They are that combination of pigheadedness which one must understand totally and as-is.

Female voice: Okay, so whose pigheadedness in the first place or in the long run?

Yes, this is perfectly true - this is perfectly true. Whose pigheadedness? But in view of the fact the world has experienced war after war after war because of continuous and obsessive breakdown of ARC amongst nations, then we must consider that a person who considers himself to be the spokesman of a nation must consider himself a person who breaks ARC. Therefore, they become a „they.“ They have identified themselves with the policies and habit track of a country.

Now there's two things that can happen from there on: their considerations can be as-ised, you see, or their ability to so identify themselves with the people can be put back into its proper order. And when I say „they,“ I mean those people who have identified themselves with national policy to such an extent that they think of themselves as the nation. We are the nation; they are not the nation. So this concept all by itself, if remedied, would result in a world of peace.

Female voice: It's like looking at the aberration of the nation instead of at the being.

That is correct, that is correct. To as-is it - you're speaking now of the mechanics of as-ising it?

Female voice: No, I'm speaking of one way out is not to look at the aberration but to look at the thing. I mean, you recognize the oneness rather than saying that „they“ are something out here that I don't like to be and therefore I'll say that they've got it.

Well, they'll disappear if you do that.

Female voice: Yeah, I know. But what will they disappear into? I mean...

Hm?

Female voice: What will they disappear into, I mean, you know, lose the game?

Oh, they'll disappear into the clerk and the shoe clerk, and the guy that serves you your chow in the restaurant and just become somebody else and...

Female voice: ... you can confront, isn't that right?

Huh?

Female voice: Eventually they'll all become something you can confront, instead of having to destroy.

That is so correct; that's right. I expect that we are looking at this moment - if you speak of this particular thing - I think we're looking at the end of nationalism. I think nationalism is the next thing on schedule to disintegrate. And I don't want to see it disintegrate, see? I don't want to see those people who believe in nationalism and believe that they themselves are national policy, and so forth - I don't want to see these people disintegrate and spatter again.

Female voice: Well, but that would be like saying you didn't want to see your preclear get Clear. I mean, after all, you're looking at the beingness...

No, I said I don't want to see these people disintegrate.

Female voice: No, but you don't want your preclear to disintegrate in the chair either when you're clearing people. To see him as he is rather than this Rock and stuff that he's presenting to you...

You know you and I are talking about the same thing?

Female voice: I know we are.

One minute here. There are some people here that have been too quiet.

Female voice: The question is: will the pc be aware of the field resolving when you hit the lock, or does the field resolve only when you hit the Rock? Will he be aware of the field resolving...

Female voice: Yeah, if you hit a lock...

If you hit a lock...

Female voice: ... on the case, rather than the Rock.

Oh, if you hit a lock rather than the Rock, does he become aware of the field dissolving? On a very high tone arm case, he does not. He merely knows that he feels a little better and a little easier as you're going in „What has he had to be responsible for?“ And it takes him some little time to find out something is happening. What he will believe, when you've hit the first long series of locks on the Rock, is that a mass is accumulating in his vicinity he doesn't particularly want. In other words, the first integration of the Rock is a new chaos that he wasn't aware of. And he thinks he's making a chaos, which he isn't; he's just looking at the old chaos which has become his eventual apathy and „it's all over and there's no reason to do anything about it and let's burn incense and hope for the worst.“ You see?

Female voice: Thank you.

And, what you say there is very pertinent and is a valuable datum that your pc will undoubtedly have a mass move in on him - you bust a few Rocks and he'll have some kind of a mass move in on him. He's liable to become worried; he's liable to feel his field is becoming much more pronounced. He never had a field before. He just never looked at anything. Now, all of a sudden, he's got a field.

Very often, a wide-open case will pass through a field before it gets to a mock-up they themselves are making - he himself is making, you see? That's an interesting phenomenon to observe. The guy, in some cases, undoubtedly would believe he was getting worse, I suppose, but I've never had them believe they were getting worse. I've just had them believe that they were getting more in trouble.

I can always make one of these masses reintegrate and move in on a pc, and I've already told you how to make one move out again. Find out what part of that he can be responsible for. Let me give you that more solidly: „What part of that could you be responsible for?“ Not, „What part of that mass,“ or „What part of that field,“ - no noun. The reason why is, is because he doesn't know what it is and you have assigned a value to it saying „mass“ and therefore you are evaluating for the preclear.

He says, „You know, there's a great big cloud forming out in front of my face.“ And you're going to end session or something like that. Understand you don't have to make it move out. You couldn't care less as an auditor. It won't do any harm at all if it stays right there. He's better off than he was, even if he hurts. You understand this? And you don't have to do a single thing about it.

But if in the interest of impressing the preclear, or keeping a session going, or you're not going to audit him for two or three weeks again, or something of this sort, to make it move out and to make him move out of it or to make it re-disintegrate or something of the sort, you just have him look at that and find what part of it he could be responsible for and he'll tell you a lot of thoughts he could be responsible for; he'll never tell you any part of the mass itself. Therefore, you mustn't say, „What part of that mass could you be responsible for?“ because his responses are all going to be in terms of thought, and your auditing command would be incorrect.

Now, I've got some more names here. Let's see, Oswald.

Male voice: Yes. I have a question on Connectedness.

Mm-hm?

Male voice: As I understand it, the process is run, „You get the idea of making that connect with you.“ Well, each time that I've done this process, I find that - I seem to come to the consideration that I benefit more if I actually do it. And I found in preclears that I previously had, that they perk up very quickly when they actually do it and make it connect. There seems to be either some irregularity or it's a special case or something of that sort, or that I'm in conflict with the full understanding of how that should be run.

You are so right. You are absolutely right. However, let me say first and foremost that - can I take up clearing a command?

Male voice: Yes.

Yeah, that seems to be a little astray here, but it isn't at all. Practically every single one of you is improperly clearing the auditing command with the preclear. You are throwing in new phrases and new statements which depart from the original, way-back-when questions and purpose of clearing a command.

You clear the command to make sure that your words convey the idea you want conveyed. That was the original purpose of it, so that you aren't talking uphill. Now, in view of the fact that many of your commands now are apparently quite abstract, you are up against the fact of saddling the pc with things that have nothing to do with clearing the command. And I have found this as a walk-about complication that is going on further and further and if left unremarked, will eventually wind up in a no-Clear.

Just because clearing a command is not a process - there is a process similar to it and the basic process of that is „How does it seem to you now?“ You could say, „Now what is a problem to you? Now what is a problem to you? Thank you. Now what is a problem to you? Thank you. Now what is...“ It's not a good process, but clearing a command, which contains this phraseology, is totally incorrect. I don't care even if it occurred in a lecture; totally incorrect, because I've just done a re-inspection of this thing. Looked at it very closely, wondering why people would make it more complicated. There must be something wrong with the basic command to make it go wrong. Must be something wrong with it to make it go wrong. And I have found it's true; there is something wrong with it.

Now, you are hitting, when you speak of Connectedness - there's something basically wrong with the process and the command. And that's because it apparently invites doingness. I said just a moment ago that anything which just said, „Compose something. Compose something. Compose something. Compose something. Compose something,“ on an outflow basis as a doingness, gets an immediate collapse. You run into too doggone many ridges. You see? Now, you ask a preclear to merely get the idea of making it connect with him, you're trying, really, not to add to his mass, but to as-is ideas of making things connect with him which he later no longer wanted. And you're really trying to do an as-is process here, but the same time you're trying to remedy his havingness. And I will startle you now by saying I know of no perfect command which accomplishes everything you want accomplished with Connectedness.

Now, we're running into the frailty of language; the frailty of communication. And we are being diffident about it simply because we don't particularly care to become involved with all of the factors, or even knowing all of the factors, that could occur as a result of remedying havingness. If I said all of these factors were known at this time - I would be telling you an untruth. I have - still continue to find therapeutic factors in the process 8-C which I didn't know existed six months ago. And every six months I can review 8-C and find a bunch of new factors that are therapeutic.

Now the original version of Connectedness was awfully simple: it said, „You make that wall connect with you.“ That was the research version. „You make that wall connect with you. You make that ceiling connect with you. You make that floor connect with you. And you make it connect with you.“ And that was its first earliest version.

Then, because people had trouble with it, we varied it, but there was something wrong with the process in the first place because that was a doingness and it wouldn't run unlimitedly. So, to patch up the process and make it more workable, this new auditing command was evolved. „You get the idea of making that connect with you.“ Now, whether or not that does all that should be done by the process, as intended or all you intend to have happen to the preclear, could, by imperfection of command, make it almost a matter of chance.

Now, to nail this thing down with a thud and put spikes all around it - to get a therapeutic process, you'd better run Trio. You know how many versions there are of the Connectedness Process? They just go on and on and on and on and on. „Mock up something and push it into that body,“ you know? That's one of them. „Look around the room and find something that has an effect on something else.“ That's a terrifically valuable process, by the way, it turns on prediction, ability to predict.

Been awfully forgotten about; we haven't even mentioned it, I think, since about the 8th ACC, but it's one of those lost in the limbo. But that's a Connectedness Process, obviously, but it's a connectedness on another person versus another person side of the bracket. You see? Now, one of these days, we'll come up with a better, more inclusive Connectedness command. But we're actually trying to avoid getting involved with havingness, as such. We're actually trying to avoid getting involved with doingness, as such. And it sort of works out that when the command itself clears itself by reason of the process, you've got an improvement in the preclear. So it's almost there's no sense in trying to alter it in the first place, because it's going to alter.

Do you know that the commands of Trio are incorrect? They are dependent totally upon the aberration of the preclear. This is what he thinks he means by havingness when you first start auditing him. It's the most fabulous thing you ever inspected. „Look around here and find something you could have.“ There is the exact wording of the first leg of Trio. „Look around here and find something you could have.“ And do you know after a while it becomes unrunnable? I was having it run on me one day. I got a big subjective reality on this. I was sitting in the auditing chair nice as you please; everything was going along beautifully. And the auditor was saying - I don't know, I was tired or something, and the auditor decided to give me just a little run of Havingness. It was all going along fine - some little time ago. And the auditor was saying, „Look around here and find something you could have. Fine. Look around here and find something you could have.“ And I was going along just as happy as a clam. And all of a sudden says, „I can't do it.“ And the auditor says, „Huh? You mean you can't have anything?“ „No, that isn't what I said at all. I said I cannot do that auditing command. We've got to clear the command again because I cannot execute it.“ And the pc said, „Well, are you willing to execute it?“ And I said, „Yes.“ Pc thought he was up against an ARC break or something, see. And I said, „Yes, I'm willing to execute it.“ And he says, „Well, do something about it.“ And I said, „I can't. I cannot answer the auditing command.“ And that was the living truth of the matter. I had everything in the environment. What do you mean, „I could have?“ If she had begun to say, „Look around here and find something you have,“ I could run it like a startled gazelle. I had everything everyplace by that time.

My havingness was totally restored; the individuation factors had all dropped out. And looking at the wall, well, I had the wall; „could have“ the wall was a conditional which didn't exist. „Look at some future date when you will be able to have the wall,“ the command was saying to me. It was an invalidative process and it couldn't be answered for the excellent reason that I had to work at the future now, and I'd found that the last few commands I'd been busily chipping away at the future, trying to spot some time in the future when I would be able to possess the wall. And it suddenly dawned on me that what the hell was I doing this for in the first place because I had the wall now and would have the wall in the future. See? And „could have it“ would never exist. Because I'd have to look across a span when I didn't have it in order to acquire it. But you can't acquire something you've got. This isn't just Korzybski general semantics coming off, you see. It's just - just - it is. You know? You have a wall. „Look around here and find something you have.“ Well, I could go on spotting things like that and would have been very happy to.

Similarly, Connectedness as it runs, works out into some kind of a deal like this too. But how you'd say it in the first place to make the preclear do anything about it in the first place, that has not been totally developed. But that it will change, and that it is necessary to re-clear the command at some time in the future is definitely established.

Now, you've got to make up your mind what you want him to be doing, but he's the one who will normally tell you.

Now, I'm sorry, that doesn't sound like much of an answer, but it is saying, „You get the idea of making that wall connect with you,“ leads into clearing up his obsessive connectedness with the wall and when that connects up, he has to newly get the idea and he's starting not to as-is connectednesses, but he's starting to add new ones. In other words, this process crosses into an area where we don't want it. See?

Male voice: Yes.

How are you going to modify it? Well, I'd say old Trio was a better process, but then you get stuck with running the guy on Havingness and you may be seventy-five hours on it before it's flat. It's a patch-up, that's what it is, just like every mind we've got is.

Male voice: Thanks very much.

You bet.

I've got to say some more about clearing an auditing command. I see I've left you in a hump that way. Is there another question before I do? Yes?

Male voice: Well, this I think, ties in, Ron. You get the idea it ties in with what you've been talking about in the lectures this week of an idea - two kinds of idea. The idea of a thought before an object and a whoomp! idea.

That's right.

Male voice: So, this preclear, as you run Connectedness, is going to flip back and forth across this line alternately.

Yeah.

Male voice: And I found it both subjectively and objectively.

Sure. So how do you make a perfect command that embraces the both?

Male voice: Just keep clearing the command.

Yeah, that's what you have to do. What you have to do.

Let me say something about clearing a command, because I left you hung in the air and told you you were all doing it all wrong. Right?

Female voice: Yes.

Male voice: Yeah.

This is incorrect; absolutely, flagrantly incorrect. It violates every principle of semantics and everything else: „What do you understand by the word 'help'? Do you understand the word 'help'? What does 'help' mean to you?“ Those are all incorrect; they're nuts, because they're a process. They're not clearing a command at all; they're a process. And they're charging the preclear with a fantastic responsibility he has no business bearing. You say, „What does it mean to you?“ to the preclear, you are asking the preclear to answer this question, „Give meaning to the word 'help.'” And you are running putting him at cause over language. Well, that's a process, and it's going to stir up the whole bank.

Now, „Do you understand what 'help' means? Do you know what the exact answer to that is, the absolutely correct answer to that question is? Do you understand what 'help' means?“

Male voice: Yes or no?

The answer is no! And I never will, I never have, and you have announced a total impossibility, because I cannot tell you what „help“ means to every individual on earth. And that's what you've just asked me to do. You've asked me to totally undercut all aberrated and sane conceptions, all uses of it, and so forth. Boy, that's pretty wild! That's the way it comes home to the preclear.

Do you know that nobody has ever before asked him to understand a word? And it'd be perfectly in order for him to say, „I can give you - I can give you what is understood by it in the dictionary. But even that is not an understanding of the word. The understanding of that word is that it is a communication particle contained in a sound syllable, which relays from a mind to a voice box to my ears to me. And it's a communication particle which has a dictionary significance in the English language. And that is 'help.'” And that's all it is. It isn't anything else.

Now, we get into another thing entirely when we run this as a command and the command is supposed to be doing what the clearing of the command tried to do. Now, the dictionary definition is all you want when you are clearing a command. That's all you want. It isn't what he understands by it, what it means to him - nothing. „Can you give me the English dictionary definition of the word 'help,' or some vague approximation thereof?“ Preclear says, „Yeah, it means succor, assistance.“ You say, „Fine. Thank you.“ You've cleared it.

Now, get this as a fundamental difference: in the process he is weighing the acceptance or the rejectance of the action of assistance as it is contained reactively in various individuals and minds with whom he has been in communication. But you are understanding a doingness and a reaction to an action. And all the word is, is a description of this in the language. But how people react to, not the word, but the action of help is what you are running when you run the process. You are not at any moment rewriting the English language. And if you think you are, read Science and Sanity.

Now the point - I'm not making a semantic point here, it's a preclear point. And when people go wrong on clearing the command and try to make more and more out of clearing the command because it wasn't right in the first place - and so I'm going to make it right, right now.

And the right command is somewhere in this vicinity - and this exact wording is something that you could not go very wrong in using: „What is the generally understood English significance of the word - significance or meaning - of the word (blank)?“ „What is the generally understood ______” or „What is some approximation of the dictionary definition of the English word ______?“ Not „What do I mean by it?“ That gets into a process. Not „What do you mean by it?“ Not „What do I understand by it?“ or „What do you understand by it?“ or „... anybody else understands by it?“ Just „Did you ever learn to speak English?“ The fellow says, „Yep.“ And you say, „All right, when somebody says 'help,' why, how does that compare to the dictionary?“ „Well,“ he says, „that would be assistance or succor or something of that sort.“ Now if you said, „What do you understand by it?“ you have asked him to give you the answer to the auditing command, „How could you help Joe?“ And you've already given your first command in clearing the command, and so the invitation is wide-open to make a process to it. But it's not a process; it is simply, do we understand the English or the Chinese or the Japanese that we are processing in? Now, I'll give you an example of this: A pc was so confused for twelve consecutive hours of processing which involved six separate sessions with, „What is your understanding of the word 'how'?“ That was the auditing question, „What is your understanding of the word 'how'?“ „What does that mean to you?“ See, that was the question, and it was usually put that way. And the pc would say, „Well, it's 'hello' in Indian.“ That was his reactive answer. He apparently thought, that was his 'hello' in Indian. And a couple of more times he said, „Well, that's in another language, 'how'; another language“ and he gave the definition in another language.

He was giving the definitions quite honestly of the syllable „how,“ but he had been left totally adrift because he hadn't been asked an exact question.

And at the sixth session, he blew up. And he says, „What language do you want it in?“ And the auditor said, „Well, we're talking and processing in English.“ And the pc, who was a fairly good Scientologist, said, „Oh. I'm supposed to take responsibility for the moments past in this session, and the future moments of this session, and this session is then subject to a bunch of unspoken considerations of which I am totally unaware, and I cannot answer you bluntly and directly to the best of my possible ability; I have to modify my answer and be responsible much more widely in this session and spread my answer across hours and hours of auditing and years and years of life. What are you trying to do, group me on the track?“ Because as a Scientologist and as a being, he knew perfectly well that if anybody was taking responsibility for the session, and he was supposed to be answering to the best of his knowledge and belief, he was answering in a single unit of time, and that unit of time was just as long as it took the preclear to answer the spoken command of the auditor. And it started this way, „Now, we're going to clear the command.“ Now from that moment of time, until the first command and acknowledgment, was the zone of responsibility for which the preclear was responsible. And there was no further zone of responsibility at all. There couldn't be and still be communication compartmented into units of time. Otherwise it was all going to be a total blur. You see what I'm talking about? And when the auditor's - when he was responsible for this „how“ - „What do you understand by the word 'how'? What do you mean by the word 'how'?“ the auditor would say „What do I mean by the word 'how'?“ We just dislocated him in time; what did he mean by the word „how.“ We're asking him to give meaning to this word „how.“ And the next thing you know he's starting to run locks off of language. And, my god, this syllable „how,“ if you will pardon my French, goes clear back to the beginning of time as one of the easiest syllables you can mouth. „What do I mean by 'how,' let's see. If I meant something by 'how'...“ This pc finally said, „I did not invent the English language. I had some responsibility of course in its formation, I'm sure. But I am not sole proprietor in the English language. If I am, then you don't know what I'm talking about. And unless we share this thing called 'English,' and unless the dictionary is also a part of this session, we have circumscribed the zone of the session and have left out some parts of the real world, including all of the English-speaking peoples there are.“ This was a real blowup and the auditor was left rocked totally on his heels, because there was no valid answer to it. The auditor was wrong because the command was wrong.

And finally, it got down to this; it finally got down to this: The command could be cleared only if you asked what's its meaning in English, as a simple communication particle, not as an action, or a counter-consideration, you see? So you simply ask - you could ask simply, „What is generally meant by the word 'how' in English?“ Please, „in English.“ Otherwise, you've saddled him for a tremendous amount of automatic associations, and he'll start to run a process at once, and then the next thing you know, the auditor conceiving the preclear is running a process and conceiving instinctively that it is a process, will begin to fancy up clearing a command. The next thing you know you got a whole process known as „Clearing a Command,“ and you never get anybody Clear because all you've ever cleared is the command. And we're trying to clear the pc. Get the idea? Well, now, if you get this idea very firmly, clearing a command will never get in your road or the pc's road at all. This is a very worthwhile blowup, the one that I'm talking about that took place. The person that blew up was not a general semanticist.

The auditor, on the other hand, kind of was. And he was really flabbergasted, and after a while he said to the pc, „Did you ever read Korzybski?“ And the pc said, „No, I know something about it but I - certainly has nothing to do with Korzybski; has to do with this auditing session. And I've been sitting here for twelve hours and I'm getting awful tired of being saddled with the total sole proprietor responsibility of the entire flam-damn English language. I don't understand anything on the word 'help.' But maybe after you've run it, I can weigh the various considerations that everything and everybody has on it, and I can come up with some generalized understanding of the word which will then permit me to assist or not to assist as I care to do so!“ You got it?

Audience: Yes.

So. When you see yourself being very prone to shift and alter, take a look first to find out whether or not you're adding anything into it that makes it unworkable, and so on.

By the way, I run into this once in a while, as a pc, because I have a golden rule, which isn't a persistent rule; it happens to be the thing a thetan runs on best, which is: you do what you're supposed to do when you are supposed to do it. And when I do that, why, sessions run beautifully.

But every time I start to get in there and make a session and alter the auditing command in my meaning in some way, or alter the auditor's meaning in some way so as to answer something that'll make it all workable, then the whole session goes to pieces because the pc is not in-session. You get the idea? I may be in some other kind of a state but I am certainly not sitting there comfortably and relaxed simply answering the auditor's questions, which is the behavior of a good pc.

So a complicated or miscomprehending command which I then can't answer tends to immediately throw me out of session. Now, I realize I'm out of session and I tell the auditor about it. I tell him about it very directly, too. Because I'm not being arbitrary, I'm simply trying to be in-session; I'm trying to be a good pc and everything is going along swimmingly, and the auditor says, „Can you get the idea of the ceiling being twice as big or twice as heavy or more solid or something like that?“ And I say, „Yes.“ And the auditor says, „Well, can you get the idea of the floor being more solid?“ And I'll say, „Yes.“ „Can you get the idea of getting the door being more empty?“ And I say, „Yes.“ „Can you get the idea of outdoors being happier?“ And I say, „Yes.“ And so on.

The auditor says finally - being an old ACC auditor or something of the sort, they would eventually find out what the pc was doing; you always find out what the pc is doing somewhere along the line. The auditor asked me - the auditor asked me, „Now, how are you doing that?“ „Doing what?“ „Well, how are you making things more solid?“ „I'm not.“ „Well, you're supposed to be.“ „Oh, I am? I am? Where did this come in?“ And I'm actually not being smart; I'm merely being factual. And I'm actually a little bit non compos mentis, you know, at the moment and I say, „What-what-what's going wrong here? What-what-where'd this come in? You simply asked me if I could get the idea and I can. I've always been able to and I hope I always will be. But I'm not doing anything. Nobody said a thing about doing anything.“ Now, I remember way, way back when, when I was young and foolish on the subject of being a pc, I would try to make a session out of it occasionally in exasperation. And then I'd find myself going off on a circuit and doing nothing but self-auditing. You see? I'd be sitting there in session self-auditing, and then I'd finally call this to the auditor's attention, something of the sort, and he'd try to get it back on the road and we'd eventually square it around.

But I noticed that pcs then, that I was auditing, would tend to go out of the session to the degree that they were trying to do something else than the auditing command. You get the first requisite of an auditing command, it was: specify a finite action in a finite period of time, which doesn't include all other time periods. Naturally, there is always some understanding on the subject of what the English is, and we understand that the session is being conducted in English, of course. But hell, I can audit in two or three languages. Why the devil should we limit it to English? The next command might as well be in Spanish. And it wouldn't surprise me a bit except I'd think it was an awfully fast bridge for the auditor. You get the idea? Now, the auditor who insists on the pc answering the first auditing command given in the session, and then this is a sort of a blurred continuance for the remainder of the hours of auditing, is in trouble - and I do mean in trouble - because he himself has never understood acknowledgment - never understood that TR that has to do with acknowledgment.

Acknowledgment ends a period of time. If you don't get time periods ending, you never get any cycle of action into auditing and so you must always ask an auditing question which can be answered. And if the pc tells you he can't answer it, don't always think he's simply being unwilling and a boob and no good and so forth. Inspect it. Is it answerable? And it will sometimes occur that the phrases that you are using appear funny even to you because they are not answerable.

You've been saying, „You get the idea of doing flip-flops on the front lawn,“ when you meant him to be mocking up a body flip-flopping on the front lawn. „Can you get the idea of your father doing flip-flopping on the front lawn?“ certainly is answered with either „Yes“ or „No.“ It's not answered by making papa flip-flop on the front lawn, you get the idea? And if you're clearing a command, you're not running a command. You want to know what is generally meant by the English word „help,“ or „how,“ or „could,“ at least in his county or city if it gets that modified. But be perfectly willing to narrow it down, because he'll always try to give you at first his reactive definitions - you don't want them; you want him to stabilize from the actual definition of the word „intellectual“ - and a word is simply a word, please, it isn't the action or the thing; it's a substitute. And if he doesn't understand the substitute, for the action, as a dictionary thing, then we'd have to assume he can't speak English and we have no business auditing him in English. Audit him in the other language - if you have to learn Chinese, learn Chinese and audit him.

But you could even move - and I have already moved, a person's language I didn't speak into an understanding by showing him the action of it until he finally got the word. And then we wrote down the sequence of syllables which represented that auditing command, and then I uttered that sequence of syllables and he executed the auditing command. I didn't even have to learn Chinese. You see that? But you are letting the preclear examine the actions and reactions, the acceptance and rejectance, reactive or otherwise, in the minds and conduct of people all the way around the bracket.

And there is one other thing I want to mention here before we close this down - there are not going to be any more questions because we're running right straight out of time - there's one more thing I want to mention, is, you understand that a bracket can be of many shapes and sizes. There can be many, many, many, many legs to a bracket. Now, when you're running an object and you want to keep the preclear more accurately in-session, you had better pay attention to the mechanics of a bracket. Those which get too free and are nonsignificant, you might as well drop. That's the general rule. But if you're missing one, it'll stiffen up and eventually stick.

Now, when you mishandle a bracket, the part of it you're mishandling is either inconsequential; becomes totally inconsequential - you're just wasting auditing time by asking it - it's always free, I mean, it's a cleared point on the bracket, you know? But sooner or later, somewhere down along the line, you'd better reintroduce it just to make sure that it's still free and not stuck if you're going to admit it, you know? „How could another person help another person?“ You know? And eventually, this is just free as a bird; it's just flop, flop, you know. You can drop it out of the bracket without - just informing the preclear you're going to - you can drop it out of the bracket just as nice as you please. But let's introduce it in some future session if we mean to use it. „How could another person help another person?“ And, if it's still free, just drop it right back out again.

But how about omitting one while running an object? Let's say, „How could I help this cup?“ the auditor says, „How could you help this cup? How could this cup help itself? How could you help yourself?“ Get it? „How could another person help this cup? How could this cup help another person?“ Now, there's a fairly short bracket.

You're liable to run that just so long and find all of a sudden, „How could I help you?“ and „How could you help me?“ has stuck. Jammed tight. See, you've been talking about this cup, talking about this cup, talking about this cup. Everything's been going along swimmingly, and you've been talking about the cup.

But you start to sense there's something wrong around here; well, you better go out on a little scout, see? You better find out if there's anything wrong with the auditing command, that's the first thing. You'd better find out if there's a bracket missing, is the other thing, and I've never mentioned to you before, a missing bracket. You could include all the brackets you want to and all you're going to do is waste time. That's the total cataclysm; you just waste a little time by a bracket that isn't operative and wasn't aberrated and seems to be all right. If you check a bracket out, though, check it in again some time in the future and then throw it away once more if you find it's still clear. See? You just make sure.

But you can run an object, like a body part, and you're running Rocks, so therefore you're running lots of objects, and I want you to be aware of this auditing rule - you've never been told this rule before, so you're taken totally by surprise now, that I haven't talked about brackets, for God's sakes, for five or six years, see. Way back there; they're old.

First one was at Ross Lamoreaux's place down there. Gave a little series of lectures to his students when I first went down to Phoenix, Lord knows how long ago. I think that was the only lecture there was on brackets right up until these lectures I'm giving you right now. I think they've been mentioned, but they've never been described in any way.

You will find that a significant bracket, like, „How is the auditor helping the preclear?“ and „How is the preclear helping the auditor?“ can actually throw the session appetite over tin cup; could be neglected for a long time, maybe. But that pair - you see, you don't have a list of commands for an object, you have a list of commands for persons. See? Well, a list of commands for objects would contain at least a five-way bracket on objects plus „How could I help you?“ and „How could you help me?“ You see? Got the idea? Now, in doubt, add commands because the most you'll ever do is lose time. See that? Add commands. It's always safer than dropping them out. So when you run „How could you help a head?“ „How could I help a head?“ „How could a head help itself?“ „How could another person help a head?“ „How could a head help another person?“ You get the idea? „How could you help yourself?“ You've got that that far and you're liable to start just repeating the same bracket I've just said, see? Around and around and around. And then don't be surprised if it stops running somewhere along the line because you're omitting the auditing session, and the auditing session perforce includes „How could I help you?“ „How could you help me?“ „How could you help yourself?“ and „How could I help myself?“

[Please note: this tape ends abruptly as did the original master recording.]

[End of tape.]