This is a lecture on two-way communication. Two-way communication is the most important step we have. Just because it is very simple, just because it can be easily stated, just because it is easily done, is no reason why it's not important. Now, a great many things that make an auditing session halt, and so forth, are attributed simply to two-way communication. I want you to get this idea very thoroughly — that once you see an auditing session bogging down, the first thing you consult is two-way communication.

Now, the formula of communication is cause, distance, effect — that's the formula of it — with an intention to communicate at cause with attention to-ward the effect, and with attention from effect to cause, and with a duplication at effect of what emanates from cause. See that? If only attention is used, if there's only attention used, you will find the particle flow developing, heavy. You will find attention giving a heavy particle flow — get the idea? — if only attention is there. Because attention is not close enough to consideration. Attention belongs in the field of mechanics. It is the field of mechanics.

We have to go, if we go into considerations, a little closer up to the thetan, and that is accomplished by interest. Do you see that the bridge between consideration and mechanics is interest? And when we are into attention, we are into mechanics.

Now, that is an interesting thing there because it means that a communication line can be pepped up, speeded up and everything else, simply by injecting interest. But if you're only going to inject attention into it, nothing but attention, this is going to be a little bit difficult in the auditing session.

So an auditor had better get out of the field of sitting there with rather solid, but nevertheless alert, you know, attention — looking at the preclear; he's listening to him — and get up into the field of interest if he expects that communication line to flow. See that?

See, there's a difference between these two things, and the difference is simply that: it's particles, particle flow. Attention is much more solid and much less fluid than interest.

You can do anything with interest. You can look at something and sit back, and you're still interested in it. You see? You can communicate much more broadly about it because you're closer to consideration, you see, and less out of.

This is so much the case that a process which processes interest, and called "Disinterest Processing" (as included in Intensive Procedure), is one of the most savage processes that we have. It's a terrifically savage process. You merely ask the preclear to sit out in the park or something like that, and you have him place or spot or assume disinterest in everyone and everything he sees, one right after the other, you see? And it practically tears him to pieces, because you're making him give attention without interest, and even worse than that, you're actually discharging all the accumulated attention particles which have been given without interest. If the interest is missing, an impaction or a ridge will result.

Now, you want to know how to get out of this universe? You better get out of this universe by being interested in the smallest particle in the universe — the whole universe simultaneously. Interested in it — not give attention to all the particles. Get the difference? See, you don't have to give attention to every individual particle in the universe, but you certainly have to be in a frame of mind which permits you to be interested in every part of the universe.

Now, let's take another little factor in this and discover the dilettante. You know what a dilettante is: He's somebody who starts in — oh, he gives a savage run at this thing, you know, very enthusiastic at first, and he's going to learn how to be a jet pilot. You know, "Oh-oo, hmm!" Great enthusiasm. Of course, dilettante's an item that comes into the field of the arts mainly, but we will just extend it to all of man's activities, and we will discover that he goes, oh, boy, is he going to be a jet pilot! Oh man, is he going to be a jet pilot! Yeah, and dhuh-dhuh-dhuh. And then the instructor says, "Ah, well, us boys here, we have to learn to do this and do that. And you have to learn how to . . . the army regulations. And you have to learn how to make a bed." And this fellow — he's not quite as enthusiastic as he was before. And he gets a lesson or two. And then the next thing you know, why, he's out there at the commandant's office asking to resign.

Why is he asking to resign? What is the highest denominator — common denominator — to his activity or to the activities which cause these withdrawals from life, activities, goals and enthusiasms? He has as-ised all the interest in the whole subject of jet pilots. See, he didn't have very much interest. He couldn't mock it up. He suddenly had come on to a deposit of interest — he got sold by a poster or something of the sort, you see — and this interest was very slight. And he himself cannot create interest. And so, he simply goes into something and he as-ises — in other words, erases — all the interest he has on the subject, which leaves him with nothing but some attention which he had given to it before. He's kind of stuck with it and he feels rather soggy about the whole thing. But he's not interested in it anymore.

All right. Well, he gets out of that. And he decides he's going to be a piano player. That's the thing to be — be a piano player. Oh yeah, he's very interested in being a piano player. And he takes one lesson, two lessons, three lessons, and he meets a couple of other piano players. And the next thing you know, he's not even interested in the piano anymore. He quits; he's through. He doesn't take up any further . . . Well, he decides, well, he's not so successful in that particular field. The best thing for him to do is to become something completely out of this world, something he's tremendously enthusiastic about — he's going to be a painter.

And he gets to the point where he learns how to clean a brush and he quits. What's he quit for? Now, that's a very important thing to an auditor, because every preclear that's sitting there in the chair or in the group, and so forth, has quit just like this in various parts of life. He's quit time after time. And he's only sitting there because he's quit.

He is just as good, actually, as he ever was in seventy-four trillion years, and yet his considerations have turned over so that he quits. The consideration is this: he can no longer create interest; he no longer runs on the interest which he himself generates.

You see that? He just takes somebody else's interest or a little bit of interest and he as-ises it or erases it before he gets into anything like hard work.

Well, believe me, it takes a lot of interest to get you through the task of digging half a mountain away to find some gold, or sawing down a redwood tree. And they didn't used to have saws when they first cut those things down, you know; they had very bad axes. And it takes a lot of interest to keep a fellow at a job all the way through.

Interest is not at fault. It isn't because you have become interested in things and then have been disabused and betrayed so you had to withdraw from them. That is not what is wrong with the preclear. It is simply that he failed to keep on generating interest in what he was doing. There's an awful lot of people out here that tell you they're looking for happiness. And a lot of your preclears are going to sit there, and they're going to sit there, and they're going to be still looking for happiness. And they'll ransack their whole banks looking for happiness.

Well, the clue to happiness is being interested in life. And their happiness is as great as they can create it. And they will not experience happiness from any other quarter than their own generation. That's all. They'll get the amount of happiness that they can generate. But this happiness is not itself an emotion. It is a word which states a condition and the anatomy of that condition is interest. Happiness, you could say, is the overcoming of not unknowable obstacles toward a known goal. (Dianetics Book One; definition of happiness.) The anatomy back of it is simply this (no more, no less than this): It's how much interest can he generate, and can he generate enough interest to get him over all those heavy-energy particles which have to be invested along the line. It's how much interest can he generate himself, how much can he himself keep interested in, in life, that makes him happy. Because happiness is application of self to existence. And that's all there is to happiness.

So what happens to this dilettante? He doesn't create interest anymore, and you will find this individual looking for happiness. Oh, no! He's looking for happiness. Nobody else's happiness is going to be of any use to him whatsoever. The only happiness he will ever get is from being able to create his own interest in things. See that?

Now, a thetan who is in good shape and who's exteriorized can get some of the darnedest levels of interest. Did you ever have anybody exteriorize and then go prowling around the beach, or something like that, and find a grain of sand and just sit there and look at it? Just as interested! And you say, "What's this fellow doing? Here he is, a half an hour in this chair and he hasn't said a thing. And I thought I was working with a comm lag here or something. But I'm not working with a comm lag, something else has occurred here." And you kind of quietly ask him, "What are you doing?"

"Oh," he says, "that's the most interesting thing!"

"What's the most int ..."

"All of these little electrons, you know, they keep going around in this grain of sand and it's . . . Oh, it's fascinating. It's very, very interesting." There's nothing wrong with him. That's the natural state of affairs. An individual should be able to get interested in anything.

Little boy is a kick. My little girl requires interest to be kind of generated by the vicinity. You know? It's got to be heavy matter and that sort of thing. She'd get interested. Yes, she's very alert and very interested. But this little boy, her brother, is practically an Operating Thetan. And he is a fabulous little character — not just because he's my son, of course — but he's a fabulous character in that he's always exteriorized. You walk past his room — his door is closed, you see — in the middle of the night and he'll do a flip-flop on his bunk, bang! and he'll be right up there scratching on the door saying, "Hey, say hello," you know, that sort of thing. You open the door and say, "Hello, Quentin," and he's real happy.

He'll go around, he'll crawl around, and he'll find a scrap of wool on the floor, you know, from the dust sweepings or something. "Hey, what do you know about that," you know? He isn't just grabbing pieces of heavy MEST, and scrambling this and tearing up this. He'll just look at this piece of wool, and he'll turn it over and look at it and feel it. And you come in; he's perfectly willing to break it off. He's not fixated in his attention. He is simply interested in everything you can think of, which is an interesting state of affairs, isn't it — such a high level of interest.

Well, it's almost impossible to make him unhappy. Little girl — it's rather easy to make her unhappy. She doesn't have this same level of interest in the environment. He can get sick because his body kicks back on him. He tries to make it do everything, you see, and it won't do everything it's supposed to do. Right now it wouldn't fly a plane or anything — he's still crawling.

But get the difference here. Nobody can make him unhappy; he has tremendous interest. Those are just a couple of kids that I see every day. But I see a lot of preclears, an awful lot of preclears. And interest is a beautiful index, beautiful index. In the first place, they are interested and interesting. Get the difference? Interested, interesting.

A fellow who is interesting is pulling everything in on him. He's trying to get interest from other people. He never will, really, to a satisfactory amount. His only salvation is to be interested. And he's as alive as he is interested. And if you'd processed as many movie stars as I've processed, you would get the idea after a while that people who are walking around trying to be interesting get into a remarkable state of nervous breakdown. They are expecting everybody to be interested in them, and they themselves forget how to be interested, and they can only be interesting. And this is the most ghastly state of affairs you ever saw. So they're unhappy, so they don't know what they're doing, and so on.

What's this got to do with two-way communication? Well, a two-way communication is between the auditor, who should be interested (and it's a very interesting thing to watch the workings of a mind, believe me) — he should be interested; not just sitting there doing a job, giving attention to something, but he should be interested in what is happening — and a preclear, who is being interesting. And the way the preclear is being interesting is to dream up more problems than the auditor can ever solve.

Now, a real two-way communication is where people are alternately interested and interesting — fellows can swap, you see. Here a fellow is at cause on the communication line — cause, distance, effect — cause on a communication line. He's being interested. And the effect is over here, you see. And the effect is momentarily interesting, see, to the person who is interested.

Now, when we get a reply on this communication line it swaps. And the person who was interesting is now interested and is now cause. And it goes back across the distance to "E," and the person who is there at "E" is now momentarily being interesting.

The two-way communication goes sort of like this: The fellow who is at cause is being cause then effect, cause then effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. See? He's being interested, interesting, interested, interesting. Cause is interested. Effect is interesting. So he's perfectly able to shift between being interested and interesting, interested, interesting.

And if he's unable to shift, if he's not unable to change his gears on this, he can't go into an adequate two-way communication. And there sits your preclear only being interesting. Well, does interesting ever assume cause? No, it's effect. It's trying to be the effect of interest. There he sits.

Why is he sitting there? It's because he's lost his interest in life. Oh, but he's being interesting, isn't he? He's trying to get some interest from life in-stead of trying to generate some interest. You want to know what's wrong with the preclear? Just sum it up in that category and you've got it.

He's going to be an effect as long as he's being interesting. And believe me, more preclears can dream up more things to become interesting than any auditor has ever been able to log. You can cure their sinus itch, you can cure their ingrown toenails, and all you've done is take something away from them which made them less interesting. Because they know how to be interesting. Their mothers and their father taught them how to be interesting: Be sick! That's the way to be interesting. Everybody comes running around saying, "Dear, what can we do for you now?" See, they've learned a good, heavy lesson. The thing to be is unhealthy, kind of nutty.

They got attention from the . . . "Attention" is a misnomer here. They got interest from the teacher, you see, by being stupid, see. "I don't know how to do this arithmetic problem." And the teacher said, "Well now, dear, it's very simple. You do it this way and do it that way." What's he doing being this stupid on this subject of arithmetic? What's he doing in school for anyhow? He had a full college, Oxford-ending education in his last life. Where's it gone? Well, it's gone right where he means it to go, out and away, because he wants it all to be fresh and interesting again. So, you see, he wouldn't be able to do it twice, so he doesn't remember. He is as-ising interest when he begins to lose all of his past experience and so forth.

Well now, if you just take interested and realize that that's cause, and interesting and you realize that's effect, you have, actually, the theta — MEST theory.

What is this theta — MEST theory? What are we doing throwing that at you all of a sudden? Well, it was a theory generated by myself in the fall of 1950 as an effort to explain — it was just a theory, you understand; it wasn't any-thing else; it was just thrown in there to fill some holes — to explain this phenomena which had been observed of an analyzer working in one direction and a reactive mind working in quite another: the reactive mind being desperately interesting, we can say now, and the analyzer being interested.

Theta — MEST theory: Theta is a static. A thetan is a static. The definition of a static would be the definition of a true zero. A spot out here in space is not a true zero. See, there's still space. A true zero, an absolute zero, can be stated in this fashion. This is one of the things the world at large did not have as part of its technology. It did not have a definition of true zero.

A zero is a variable. You would have to have qualified every zero in a mathematical formula perfectly before you could have used zero as a constant. And yet mathematics use zero as a variable. See? All right. If it were used as a constant and it was a variable, why, they would have had a picnic.

Anytime they reached up into upper ranges, such as quantum mechanics and that sort of thing, they would have come a cropper, wouldn't they. And so they did, because they had zeros in the line, and these zeros do not happen to be absolutes at all. They are qualified zeros. They're a zero of something in the first place, at a position, in a time. And that's what mathematics has never done with a zero, and why mathematics has never really advanced beyond a kindergarten stage on this planet. They just don't have a definition of zero. Well, they do now.

All right. There's zero. And the definition of a static runs just this way: A static is not something in an equilibrium of forces, the way you were taught in your high-school text or your college text. It is not something in an equilibrium of forces, by its own definition. Because something cannot be in an equilibrium of forces in this universe and still exist. An engineer is liable to point out to you when you're trying to explain things to him — he's liable to point out to you, "Now, look, if you put a brick right there on that flat surface it is being held up by Earth, you see, on the flat surface, and is being pulled down by gravity, and it's therefore in an equilibrium of forces."

"Oh, no," you say, "didn't you ever study astronomy?" And the fellow says, "What's astronomy got to do with it?"

"Well, nothing, except that brick that is sitting there on the table is moving in eight different directions at enormous velocities." Any object on the face of Earth is moving in eight separate, different directions to take the main vectors of motion of this planet. The precession of the planet, its orbital course and its turnaround every day so the sun can come up and go down — that's the main one. And just with that one, this brick that he said was a static is traveling at a thousand miles an hour. Well, that doesn't look very static to me or thee, does it?

So what is a static? A static is something without mass ... Boy, you know this definition, will you? It will really help you sometime when you exteriorize somebody, and you don't know quite what's happening. Just think of this definition. Remember he is a static, and a static is Something without mass, without wavelength, without time and actually without position. That's a static. And that is the definition of zero.

An absolute zero would be something which would fulfill all these categories: no mass, no wavelength, no time, no position. Let's just wipe that out, and we have a static.

So if you find somebody having an awfully hard time, and he keeps exteriorizing into 1812, don't be too upset. If he were a true static, he would not only not be in 1812, he wouldn't be here either. But he'd still be able to communicate with his body and do other things. Because the static which we call a thetan and call life is something which can make considerations and generate a sufficient quantity of energy just by changing its mind.

How far off physics was. It thought that there was such a thing as a conservation of energy, that you couldn't create new energy; it was all old energy. I don't know where they got this idea that it was all old energy, but they've had this idea. By changing its mind, it can create energy — and this being a physical impossibility by the current textbooks, it has a tendency to be completely overlooked and was never viewed even vaguely.

A thetan can create energy. He can create energy so markedly and so definitely that you can test it on a meter as good as a spectrometer, as good as butcher scales. It's a meter in here that has a "bop" characteristic. And wherever a person has a sensitive place on his body — a pain or a razor nick or an old break on his arm or something like that — you can put this electrode. You put this electrode down on that break or that abrasion and it will howl. See, it won't howl over the rest of the face, but you put it on that abrasion and it goes "beep" every time it touches any sensitive spot on the body.

What is the characteristic of this? There's enough energy being generated by that sensitive spot on the body — enough energy being generated, zoom-zoom-zoom — to cause a current to go through the meter and measure. Well, that's curious, isn't it? It requires current. There actually is current because of the pain. The cells are producing or converting enough energy in that particular area to cause a current to circulate through the meter. All right.

We take some individual and we put it on a dead spot. We have this individual here as the monitor and we have the patient, and we put it on the patient's dead spots. You know, it never howls. This meter just never howls when put on various areas of this fellow's face. And the monitor over there looks clear across the room and sort of gets the idea of connecting the meter electrode with the individual. And the meter will go "beep." Oh, now, wait a minute! There's no electrical lines or anything else going between these two people.

In other words, we have somebody set up there, and simply determine that there's going to be a connection, now, between the electrode and the per-son. And he will sort of get a vision. He gets a sort of a little picture of the electrode. And a meter (as good a meter as is used in anything; a butcher scales or so forth; it's that accurate; it's just a meter; it reads on dials, and so forth; a physicist's dream) all of a sudden says, "This individual has thrown some energy over there and made it light up." Now, the difference between a good healer and a bad one is that a good healer, when that electrode is put on somebody's face or scar tissue or any-thing else, can make it just go instantly bing, and predict the moment he's going to do it. He can put his fingers behind him like this so that some other observer can watch it. And at the moment he makes it connect, he'll snap his fingers. And at that instant you will hear the meter go "beep!" See, he has no contact with this. There's no wires on the fellow doing this. The whole apparatus is on another human being, and yet he can throw an electrical current in there.

Can a thetan create energy? Well, he can certainly monitor its creation, at least. We can test it very positively and absolutely. We can make meters sag all around on a dial with this. Yes, a static, a thetan, can create energy. Energy can be created. And what energy is it? Is it an energy of the mind as different from energy of the physical universe? I am afraid not. It's that the energy of the mind is thinner when created by most thetans — before they're in good shape — it's much thinner than this old stuff. That's about the only difference. That's curious; it's about the only difference.

Now, that maybe stretches your credulity. We don't ask you to stretch your credulity. The old theta — MEST theory was just a theory. It was thrown in there to test things. And it was stated that a thetan was something that was motionless — a static — or theta, was something motionless (a static). We didn't have the term thetan at that time. And MEST was simply a solid — you know, it was an all-motion thing which had become solid. In other words, here we had a no-motion thing against an all-motion thing, and this was the theta — MEST theory and that is the theta — MEST theory.

Let's go a little bit further and talk about communication. A communication is as good as it is a straight wire, strung between cause to effect, isn't it? And it's as bad off as it has to go through relay points. This you will get in Intensive Procedure under Via — a process known as Via. It's as bad off as it has to go through a lot of relay points. Okay? You see this clearly? All right.

It's as good as it's just one cause to effect. And it's bad as it is one cause to subcause, subcause, subcause, subeffect, subeffect, subeffect, subeffect, subeffect, effect. That gets complicated.

You have to use old energy to do it, and you have to do all sorts of weird things. But when you've got enough subcauses and subeffects intervening between a cause and effect, you have a solid. And you get such a tangled ball of energy that everybody has lost track of where the cause was in the first place and where the effect was, and it's like some kitten sitting down trying to untangle a ball of string. He'll just wind up by batting it around. He'll give up trying to untangle it and he'll just bat it. The dickens with it, you know? It'll get in his claws and he will try to separate it out of his claws and it'll get all over the floor. You get the idea?

The solid is simply made up out of these vias. It's no longer a straight line, and that's what a ridge is. People get these heavy-energy masses on their faces; they'll tell you about them. And they get all sorts of deposits in their body and, you know, they get arthritis. What are all these things? What's this stuff? It's just simply too many vias. It's a case of too many vias. And that, of course, makes a problem. And the problem is simply this: what's cause and what's effect? And you get a solid. A solid is not a straight, understandable, locatable communication line from cause to effect.

People always, in this universe, are looking around to find God, who allegedly created this universe. They've just given up, that's all. There's a primary cause in this universe. Someplace or another somebody put in the first impulse. But your preclear, if he's a Black Five, will sit there trying to find the primary cause-point, primary cause-point, primary cause-point, primary cause-point. No doubt in his mind about effect — he is. He's the effect. But where's this primary cause-point, primary cause-point, primary cause-point? He is, really, no longer even interested in doing this. He's doing this to be interesting when he sits down there in front of you as an auditor.

He's a ball of energy which has a lot of subcauses and subeffects so twisted up and so jammed in together, so many vias in this communication line, that he can no longer find the beginning and end of it. And so he gets lost.

What's this got to do with two-way communication? Well, it has a lot to do with two-way communication, because you're talking to somebody who has gotten onto the MEST side of the theta — MEST theory when you're talking to a tough preclear. He's on the MEST side.

Now, theta could be said to be the solver of problems, and a perfect solution is a static. You can read all about that in the Auditor's Handbook. Also, a perfect truth is a static.

Theta is classified, qualified and defined as a static. You get a thetan close to being a static in that he has location, you see, and is in present time. And you get what we call a thetan. He's not quite a pure static. See that? He does have location and he does have a position in time. And if he gets this adjusted so that he is in present time, and so forth, why, he feels pretty alert and pretty confident. Normally, they count on bodies to keep them into present time and to keep them into contact with the various aspects of existence.

MEST simply means matter, energy, space and time, which is the material universe. It is composed of a bunch of communication lines of various kinds and a bunch of spaces, which consist of anchor points which are fairly solid, and from which has been lost — so it will persist — the cause-point. The cause of the line is lost, so therefore it persists.

All right. Theta — MEST theory, 1950, fall, can be reinterpreted today for an auditor, for the purposes of a two-way communication, this way: A thetan is the solver of problems and MEST is the problem. Now, if we classify it in this way, we will understand very clearly what our preclear is all about. The auditor is being theta and the preclear is being MEST. Interesting, isn't it?

And only because we are making it possible for this preclear to straighten out communication lines, do we have any business auditing at all. Because we will be cause for a long time, you see, in auditing, and he will be effect. But that effect is in the direction of making him cause. See that? So, he becomes more and more cause.

So, as he gets his communication lines straighter and straighter and straighter, he becomes more the solver of problems and less the problem, and so himself ceases to be a problem to himself, to his environment and to his auditor. See that? And he ceases to go around, gimping around on crutches or some such thing, being interesting. Well, that's the whole trick of auditing.

It is contained right there in — and nowhere else — the theta — MEST theory, the theory of communication, cause-distance-effect in a two-way communication system.

Now, do you suppose you're going to get much communication out of a problem at first? Huh? Well, he can't, because he's not cause. He's sitting there being an effect, isn't he? So he's not going to communicate out. Your first task is to get him — on whatever grounds or in whatever ability you have or anything you could do — to make that person emanate a communication line in some direction. And that is your first step in auditing. Make him talk. Make him reach. Make him outflow in some fashion, because this individual is doing nothing but inflowing. He's being the problem, therefore he is being MEST. Therefore he is the effect.

When you first start auditing, in a two-way communication system — and that's why we say "two-way" communication system — you're engaged in the simple communication formula of cause-distance-effect, with you at cause and the preclear at effect, and that's not a two-way communication. A two-way communication is cause-distance-effect, and then where effect is, reverting to cause-distance-effect where the cause was before, you see, back and forth. And that makes a communication. Got the idea?

So that's what you're trying to do with this preclear: trying to make him reach a little bit. Well, the funny part of it is, you can take a sick cat, and you can go over and tickle his front paw or something of the sort, or swat at it — and you must be gentle if it's a sick cat — and you eventually get him to a point of where very groggily and very stupidly he will sort of reach out, you know, experimentally toward your finger. And at that moment — being very careful not to withdraw too fast, not to make a startling motion — simply withdraw your fingers a quarter of an inch so that he has to reach a little further with his paw. And then withdraw your fingers another quarter of an inch. And he'll give up about there; two quarters of an inch is too far. So, he will kind of relapse, and you'll have to go through it again. You'll find the next time he'll reach an inch. And the next time he'll reach a couple of inches. And the next thing you know, wonder of wonders, you've processed a cat and he's a well cat. He doesn't have gallstones anymore. By doing what? Making him swat at you.

Now, you could take a little baby, a very, very little baby who can't talk, who as a thetan is still completely discombobulated and isn't well in control of the body or anything else, and you can take this little baby and you can make him swat at you. And if you are gentle enough and if you don't make any fast motions — if this little baby is sick, if he's got a stomachache or some-thing like that — if you just do this (make him reach a little bit towards you, just like you did the cat), he'll get well. You've made him cause haven't you? You've started a two-way communication in progress.

So don't forget it when you're processing psychotics. Same process works.

What is the process? He's a little less MEST, a little less a problem, being just a little less interesting, and is being a little more interested. That, in essence, is the fundamental entrance-point of a two-way communication.

Now, we come to the question, "How long is it going to take this cat or this baby to make up his mind to swat at you?" And we get into communication lag. Now, communication lag is established by the number of vias the fellow has on a communication line. That's everything it is. The number of vias on the communication line brings about the phenomenon we call a communication lag. You ask the fellow how he is today, and he tells you tomorrow. We ask him to give us a cigarette, and after we've got out one of our own and have lit it, he suddenly extends a cigarette toward us. He was alert all this time, actually, but the information — the incoming question and the outgoing question into his communication ballup — took so long, because there were so many vias for it to go through, so many relay points to hit, that a time en-sued.

This is not quite correct, but is a rough approximation — what I'm giving you right this instant: approximately half the time of a communication lag is taken up by an inflow to the preclear. You said something, and it takes approximately half the communication lag for him to receive it, and the other half of the communication lag for him to state the answer and get it back out through the vias, and expressed. You see that? You're not looking at something which is simply a slow income. You're looking at a slow income and outgo, too.

So we get all sorts of funny variations. Watch what I said: This is approximate, not correct, just because we get so many variations on it. You say, "Hello" to this fellow and he instantly starts to outflow at you. Well, it took maybe one-tenth of the communication lag for it to hit him, and then instead of answering the question all he did was obsessively outflow at you. And nine-tenths of the communication lag is expressed in idle chatter which is apparently some kind of an outflow, but has no direction or intention and is not oriented.

You say, "How are you?"

"Oh, I certainly like that hat of yours. Yes, I've been thinking for some time of getting me a hat like that. Uh ... where did you ... where did you get the hat? I uh ... I uh ... have trouble with my hats — you know, driving around in the car, they blow off every once in a while. I feel pretty good." All you did was key some kind of a machine which would reply. And sooner or later he'll answer you. Now, do you know this can be so bad as an outflow — which is a communication lag, see ... The length of time between the asking of the question by the auditor and the answering of that exact question by the preclear is the communication lag.

Another communication lag is simply a processing lag. It's the length of time that it takes a process to be effective on the preclear. This is another kind of communication lag, you see. And there's another lag which is not a communication lag, but a betterment lag. It's how many hours do you have to process him before he can become cause. You see that as just another lag? Well, we see this first lag expressed in everyday life, and so on, by you saying something to the person and then they answer something else or they are silent. We don't care what they do. If they stood on their heads or ran around the block between your asking and their answering the question, that time is the communication lag. And it simply is expressing the number of vias and relay points through which this communication has to go in their bank before they can disentangle it and get it back out to you again. That's all it ex-presses.

It doesn't matter what happened in the middle. Remember: the distance, in terms of time, between the moment you ask the question and the moment when the preclear answers that specific question. If he never answers that specific question, as far as you can determine, you can just assume that he was out of communication — you know, it never arrived. And there's where you find most people on most subjects. They're out of communication on the subject. They don't answer the question ever, see. It just wound up in the vias and went in small, spinning circles.

Now, the length of time between asking the question and getting an answer is communication lag. And you, in using this in a two-way communication, discover the state of sanity of your preclear, and that the length of lag he has on any subject is his state of sanity on it: The more lag he has the less sane he is. That's all there is to it.

When we say sane, we mean how far away is he from truth. Truth is, of course, a static. And so he's just that involved in being a problem — MEST — having lots of vias, so forth. You get the idea?

It's a very easy thing to remember. But if you don't know communication lag, you'll never know how long to run a process.

An auditor wants to know who is the most aberrative person in this per-son's life. He simply says to him, "Name all the persons you've been associated with since birth." The fellow gives him some lag on the question itself — you know, says, "What do you mean 'birth'? Well, birth, uh ... You mean uh ... uh ... Oh, birth. Uh . . . well, uh ... what do you mean by people? Do you mean relatives or other people?" This is all lag stuff, see; this is just junk.

A general semanticist will sit and argue, "What do you mean by 'known'? Do you mean closely in acquaintance with, or people you've known intimately? Or do you mean casual acquaintances?" You see, he has to get that word clarified. You're getting a symbol lag there, you see. It's a communication lag. It's just hung up on a symbol of some word you uttered. And he'll start playing this symbol instead of answering the question. See, it's really hung up, it never got to him at all. The symbol lit up and he started looking at the symbol.

So you finally get it through to him, and you say, "How many people have you been associated with since birth?" And "Oh!" he says — he finally gets this, you know; ten minutes, some-thing like that — "You mean how many people have I been associated with since birth? Well, let me see. Ah, well, there's my mother, my father, my grandfather . . ." And remember, Mother — Father stated in this fashion is a social statement. Everybody knows socially that we have mothers and fathers. So that's the first thing he'll give you, normally. He won't even think about it, you see. It's just a social-machine response.

He'll say, "Mother and Father, and there's my grandfather and my grandmother and my Aunt Tilly, and uh ... my Aunt Swilly, and uh ... Oh yes, now wait a minute uh ... Yes, uhm ... mmm ... Oh yes, my great-grandfather. Yes, my great-grandfather. And uh ... there was a teacher I knew, uh ... Miss Ink, and uh ... uh ... Let's see. Well, let's see now, there must be some more. Well, uh ... let's see. What were you talking about? Oh yes, people since birth. Yeah. Uhm ... um ... Let's see, what were you saying? Oh . . . , oh-oh yes, people since ... Well, there was . . . there was uh .. . uh ... uh . . . Uncle Bill." Heh, put it down in your little notebook. His great-grandfather and Uncle Bill are hot buttons on this bank. See that? He just lagged like mad before he hit him. And then he runs the whole length, and he tells you and describes these people for forty-five minutes — and all of a sudden, then says, "Of course, there was my mother." He named her first, but he never named her at all.

The last person he gave you is information that would never show up on an E-Meter. But you would have gotten dives on Great-Grandfather and Uncle Bill. You would have gotten mad dives. Any time you get a lag, on an E-Meter you would have gotten a dive as severe as the lag is long. It's just like reading a meter. See, the longer the lag, the more dive you would have gotten on a meter. In other words, the more charge there is on that — which is to say, the more vias there are on that line. Now, you see that clearly?

Okay. Now, right along with this whole subject of communication lag, we discover something fascinating. We discover something that's really very interesting: The person who is being processed is normally such a problem to himself, you see — too many vias — that his interest has obsessively centered on himself. People have told him all of his life, "You mustn't be interested in yourself," and finally ... This is horrible. I mean, if you can't be interested in yourself, you'll scale off on the rest of the dynamics, you see; you get no balance of dynamics.

And, by the way, in this particular subject belong, really, the Axioms of Dianetics — in two-way communication lag. They have a lot to do with this. Also in favor of communication, there belongs in here the Code of a Scientologist. That is just what kind of a communication line we've got to the society; the Code of a Scientologist keeps it a clean line. That's the only thing it's there for. And it should be known and followed just because we're trying to keep a clean lineup with the society.

But this preclear — let's get her back to this subject — he's being a problem. Now, Dianetics and Scientology don't want to be a problem to them-selves, but as many cockeyed vias and impactions, and so forth, as are on the line will make the people of the organization introvert — that is, look back into the organization instead of outflow, you see. So you could view it as a whole preclear — all the organizations. The amount they outflow into society would determine the sanity of the organization itself, you see.

Well, that would be the number of problems they had inside the organization. The Code of a Scientologist tries to smooth these problems out. There are various organizational minds working all the time, trying to keep these problems from accumulating and smoothing out the old problems. But here's a problem: we get an introversion into the organization, you see, when there are too many problems inside the organization. And people don't look outside the organization to find actual problems.

This is your preclear. He's not looking outside at all. All he's doing is communicating inside himself, see, back and forth inside himself. Well, you get him to talk to you and he's in much better shape. Well, what is he mainly involved with? You'll find out the worse off he gets, the more problems he has. Follow me? The more problems he has.

Problem is that consideration which, in the field of consideration, represents MEST. See, problem — MEST. There's a lot more technology you can get out on this, but you just look MEST over and you'll find out it's always a problem, one way or the other. And the consideration level of MEST is problem. And the considerations of problem are simply how many vias are there in this problem, how many connections are there which can't be traced? How many unknown hookers, vias, short circuits, and so forth, are there in this problem? You get those shaken out and you no longer have a problem; you have some kind of an organism. It can still be a problem because it's got a lot of vias; but boy, it's a known problem, you see.

All right. Let's look at this preclear and realize that when we're processing him we are looking at an enormous accumulation of problems. Now, at one time or another he put up a big screen out here and he said, "There are going to be no problems hit me. See, I'm going to proof myself against problems — you know, 'cause I don't have to have any problems. I can have actual MEST and I can have space. And I don't have any problems, and I don't need any problems. And their problems are theirs and I don't need them." And then the screen came closer and closer, and got more and more pressure on it — actually and literally true — until one day he practically was the screen. And now he develops a tremendous appetite for problems.

Has your preclear got an appetite for problems? He's got such an appetite for problems that if you solved one for him, he'd find another one, and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one. So, we get the most potent process which goes along with two-way communications. There are several, by the way. Description Processing is a two-way communication process. But this is a more potent one, and this is where we'd better start out with some preclear we're having difficulty with. We'd better address the present time problem: "Do you have any problems in the present time?" And you know, I start every session with that sort of a thing. I don't care if I processed the guy yesterday. I want to know if he's got any problems today. His wife might have left him this morning. You see?

Present time problem will often keep an auditor from progressing into the case even vaguely. The guy's so tied up with this problem, he is so con-fronted with the problem, that he has no chance to communicate outward. You hit a guy in the belly with a .45 bullet and you will see that he introverts. He is so involved with this sudden, inexplicable, very complicated set of communication lines that he can only look at that set of communication lines. He can't look out at the environment and even see who shot him. You see that?

Well, get your preclear hit in everyday life by some tremendous problem in the range of thought — you know, he's got to worry about it, he's got to think about it. And you're going to process him now without doing something about problems? No, you're not. So there is a pat, snap, easy process that fits right in with two-way communications.

You ask him what problems he's got in life. He'll tell you a few. You ask him what problems he's got in life some more. And then ask him what problems — here is the pat, exact phrasing of this question: "What problems in life could you be to yourself?" And "What problems in life could others be to you?" The first one comes first, "What problems in life could you be to yourself?" Now, if you want to get this fellow really involved in talking ... You can even get a psychotic on this range. He just starts opening up. Your object, however, is not to get his confidence, not to do this, not to do that and blahblah-blah-blah-blah. Your object is simply to make this man capable of creating a sufficiency of problems so that he'll have no scarcity of them and won't have to hang on to them. Unless you get him in the kind of a state so that he doesn't have to hang on to these problems, unless you get him into a state where he realizes he can create an infinity of problems concerning himself, concerning life, and so forth — and no longer has to suck up like a sponge every problem that comes his way — he'll go right on being a problem, won't he?

And every time you get rid of a problem, he'll come up with another problem. And that makes a long term of auditing, doesn't it? So with the two-way communication system you have him start out talking about the present time problem, and then ask him what kind of problems others could be to him. Or, if he's at a lower range, you use both these questions. It doesn't matter which one you use first: What kind of a problem could others be to him? What kind of a problem could he be to himself? And every time you get on one of these things, you know, I mean you just beat that doggone lag flat!

"What kind of a problem could you be to yourself? Give me another kind of problem you could be to yourself. Give me another problem you could be to yourself. Some more problems you could be to yourself. Some more problems you could be to yourself. Oh? Yeah? That's . . ." Remember, stay interested. "More problems. More problems. That's a good one. That's hot. Give me some more problems you could be to yourself. Oh, some more, some more." And you know all this time he's draining the bank, draining the bank, draining the bank. He's picking up old problems, his mother's problems, his father's problems, everybody's problems, problems, problems. He's draining the bank of problems.

He's going to come up with a "problem starvation" here shortly, so he's going to get fantastic. And after a while: "Well, let's see, I could suddenly be ninety feet tall and not be able to go through the door. I ... rruhm-rruhm." He'll get wild, you see, exaggerated, and so forth. And then finally he'll settle down and he'll maybe get serious again. And he'll get this way and he'll get that way. But sooner or later you want to ask him this question: "Well, how many problems could you be to yourself?"

"Oh, quite a few." That's not the answer you want. So, ask him — ask him a little bit more thoroughly on the subject of problems. "Give me some more problems you can be to yourself." The answer you want is, "I could be an infinity of problems to myself. I could be all the problems that there are in existence to myself." Because you've gotten into doing what? You've gotten into creating problems. And as long as a man believes he cannot create, he will suffer a scarcity which he will then try to pick up secondhand.

And the last rung where you find these boys is problems. So there it goes with a two-way communication. And that is the substance of this process: "How many problems could you be to yourself?" "How many problems could you be to yourself?" — that's the central question. You could also say, "How many problems could others be to you?" — that's a secondary question. "How many problems could others be to you? Give me some problems others could be to you. Some more problems other people could be to you. Give me some more problems others could be to you. Give me some more problems. Some more. Some more. Some more. Some more."

"Uth-thuh-thuth! Hu-hraa-rrra!"

And finally, you know, watching communication lag, you'll find this take place (you want to swap back and forth on this): "Give me a problem you could be to yourself." You see? And he says, "Oh ..." And you know what you're liable to find sometimes? Brdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrr! You're just looking at a machine manufacturing problems. He'll get so many problems he could be to himself that he can't enunciate all of those problems to you, they're just going through so fast. You've just taken the dams down on a problem-manufacturing machine. See?

And then he'll flatten out. That's an obsessive sort of a communication. He actually hasn't answered the question at all. He's trying to stop the dam on this thing. Then finally he'll say, "Yes, well, the kind of problem I could be to me is to be sitting here talking to you. The kind of problem I could be to me is to be sitting here talking to you, and that is the kind of problem I could be. Now, let's see, I could be another kind of a problem. I could have a head-ache. Yes, I could uh ... I could have a headache because I've been sitting here. I have a headache. I have a headache because I have a headache. Let's see what other kind of a problem could I be? What other kind of a problem could I be? What other kind of a problem? Well, let's see now, what other kind of a problem? Oh, I don't know. I ... I could have sore feet." See, the vastness of this man's imagination is immediately demonstrating itself to you.

There's two-way communication. As long as you keep this boy on the subject of problems he'll talk! You got that? He'll talk! And he won't leave the subject of problems until he can create problems at will. And that's what you do with two-way communication. But remember its natural anatomy: cause-distance-effect; effect turning to cause, coming back across the distance and being the effect again. You understand that?

An auditor who is good does this with interest. He can be interesting and interested. He never gets restimulated, because he knows where he's going with this process and he knows that it works. And that's the main reason he won't get restimulated. It becomes a game.

All right. The preclear will get better and better under this. He will also have some of the fanciest somatics you've ever seen. Let's take a fellow with bad legs. "How many problems could you be to yourself?" He will tell you about nothing but legs. Don't specify legs, see? Just "What kind of a problem could you be to yourself?" Don't talk about legs. He'll talk about legs.

And one of these fine times he will stop being so fascinated with his legs, because there's some deposit of energy in there he finds delicious on the subject of legs. He's very interested in that problem about legs. Legs, legs, legs, legs, on and on.

So, two-way communication in its essence is just simply getting the pre-clear to talk. You're talking to him. You get him to talk to you. Get him to write you something. Get him to do something to outflow. And the next thing — and the easiest way to go about it — is to get him on the subject of problems, and you've got it.

Okay? Right.