The first thing one should know about communication is its formula. The formula of one-way communication is Cause, Distance, Effect, with Intention and Attention, where that which occurs at Effect Duplicates what emanated from Cause. The elements of communication, then, are Intention, Attention, Cause, Effect, Distance and Duplication. Meaning, Significance, are secondary phenomena.

Communication is part of the triangle of Affinity, Reality and Communication. Reality is composed of the degree of duplication possible, and this is also describable under the heading of Agreement. Reality is a quality which depends upon duplication, and in the action of duplication expertly or poorly done we find agreement and disagreement. The basic definition of Affinity is “co-existence” and as we drift away from actual co-existence, we drift into the ARC triangle and the communication formula. Co-existence is superior to the ARC triangle and the mechanics of living. Here we would find two things occupying the same space. This would be at the top of the scale. Two things with no space, no mass, and no energy. At the bottom of the scale we would find two things compulsively or obsessively almost occupying the same space. As Affinity enters into the state of not-quite co-existence, we get the manifestations of particles and significances, symbols, and, of course, much more intimately, Affinity embraces the distance part of the communication formula. It begins with the no distance of co-existence and then, as Affinity drops, the distance factor is more and more important (regardless of whether the distance is far or close) until we have at last a complete and positive objection to proximity, or a complete and positive objection to any distance, and in this “state of mind” we find material objects or the particles which compose them. Under Affinity, of course, we have the emotional scale: Effort, as found in Science of Survival, and the Know down to Mystery Scale as discussed in the Advanced Clinical Course Tapes.

The entirety of ARC is the subject of understanding. Knowingness is highest on the scale, and this exceeds ARC and is in the realm of considerations and ideas. The moment we enter into understanding we get into the communication formula and the ARC triangle. Understanding is a highly superior commodity, but still lower than knowing. Understanding itself produces a column of the Chart of Human Evaluation which could be added to it. At the top we would have a complete understanding of all things, and it would be complete knowingness, but this would require no communication to effect. From this knowingness we would drop downscale into understanding, and then into varying but dwindling degrees of understanding until we arrived at 2.0 on the scale, where we would find that understanding had become commixed with incomprehensibilities to such a degree that the entire vectors of life are reversed and become the vectors of physical objects. From 2.0 down we specialize in greater and greater degrees of incomprehensibility.

The subject of incomprehensibility is difficult to comprehend. If we examine the communication formula we discover that a duplication at effect must take place if a communication is to be received from the cause point of the line. Similarly, the cause point of the line has to take into account the fact that effect must be able to duplicate. Thus, the cause point of the line, if it wishes to communicate, must communicate in a fashion or in a guise which can be duplicated at the effect point of the line. This is not a question of being so stupid or incomprehensible as to cause an effect on any incomprehensibility, but it is a willingness to self-determinedly emanate in such a manner as to allow a duplication to take place at effect.

The basic stuff of the physical universe, to a thetan, is an incomprehensibility, but he is entirely devoted to trying to understand it. A thetan himself, the awareness of awareness unit, is understanding. Thus, we have this unit attempting to understand the incomprehensible. A thetan can, with perfect ease, understand incomprehensibility, but sometimes until it is called to his attention, he is continually on the track of trying to find some comprehensibility in the incomprehensible. The very fact that a thing is in a mass form is a puzzle to a thetan, since he, himself, has no mass, no wave length, and no actual position in space other than his own declaration of it. He can easily understand a form, since he is generally “experienced” in forms, but he can’t understand the stuff of which the form is made because that stuff is incomprehensibility. Thus we find the thetan very easily “as-ising” forms and altering them, and we find him considering that he is incapable of altering in its actual substance, creating or destroying the stuff of which the physical universe is made.

A thetan looking at the incomprehensibility of the physical universe is, of course, doing a no-duplicate. He is mocking himself up in the role of having to understand the incomprehensible. Thus we get him fixated on the idea of the physical sciences and eventually degenerating down to a point where he behaves like MEST, and here we have the luckless nuclear physicist who can cause MEST to vanish only by blowing it up, physically — a game which will never win. Here we find science in general, and here we find scientists, and their utter incapability of understanding any slightest particle of human behavior or conduct, and without any beliefs to speak of in humanity, and with a perfect and gruesome willingness to destroy it. These, as awareness of awareness units, have agreed so thoroughly with the physical universe that they have no agreement with actual understanding. They write their books with many communication lags, hemming and hawing, and without any decisions, and thoroughly object to anybody’s writing as though he knows what he is doing. The one thing that the scientist knows is that nobody knows, and this does not happen to be true. Thus, his science is based on a false datum. He originates a theory that man rises from mud because he, himself, is so close to it. When he does go into the field of the human spirit, the spirit itself, and indeed his own beingness, is an other-determinism to him. He sees no virtue in human fellowship or decency and advises in his books the necessity to turn to higher force. Once a scientist has broken through, in a revulsion against himself, his feelings of non-understandingness about people, it is generally on the downward side and it is in the realm where he must obsessively turn to God.

I give you this as an idea of what happens to preclears as they go down the tone scale. When they get close to the bottom they become scientific and pretend they know nothing and fight anything else which might know. When they get a little further down they become more violently neurotic and a little more south they become psychotic and forget even their science. And this is of considerable interest to the auditor, for the auditor is interested in human reactions and actions, and all he has to do is understand that he is looking at an incomprehensibility when he looks at anyone who is that neurotic or psychotic. There is no other causation in psychotic behavior than that everything is incomprehensible. There is no private, secret button which can be hit in a case, magically turning the individual into sanity, unless, of course, we utilize successfully “Be three feet back of your head” with some basic preparatory work. But this, of course, returns the person upscale toward understanding since it takes him from such close proximity to mass.

The auditor, then, who is looking at a psychotic, is trying to understand an incomprehensible, and if we were to cease using the word “psychotic” and began to use the word “incomprehensetic,” we would have a word which would serve us extremely well.

Thus, an auditor processes the psychotic with considerable difficulty in the absence of this understanding of incomprehensibility. For the auditor, to get any communication across, has to mock himself up, at least to some degree, as psychotic before he can communicate. The auditor’s fight to keep from being psychotic, or even seeming psychotic, is such that this conflict within himself (not because of any emanation from the psychotic, since these people do not emanate) restimulates him. The best way to handle a psychotic is with physical form, making the psychotic mimic the physical form by mimicking, with the physical form, the psychotic. Thus we have our basic level of mimicry, and thus we have the entering wedge of communication.

One-way communication is a first-dynamic operation. Two-way communication is a third-dynamic operation. An auditor who is playing “the only one” does not engage in third-dynamic activities, much less communication, and so he withdraws into one- way communication, and thus never lets the preclear emanate any communications, and will not listen to anything the preclear has to say. To this one fact alone we attribute the breakdown and lack of forward progress of many cases. The auditor did not pay any attention when the preclear had some vital information he desired to impart.

The process involved with running a two-way communication is best entered in the field of mimicry, and the best two-way process is then, of course, mimicry. Such a process will be given in the next PAB.

On the subject of communication itself, the auditor must realize that two-way communication is part and parcel of every process known in Dianetics and Scientology, and if it is not established, and if it is not continued, and if no attention is paid to two- way communication, only a small amount of benefit will occur. If two-way communication is understood as a process, many cases which previously seemed utterly unsolvable can be resolved with considerable ease.