SHSBC 70

PROBLEMS

A lecture given on 12 October 1961

Well, what do you know. I can see the room. I just wanted that as a good
example. I can discipline myself, too. No smoking. Now, of course, the
first one that does any smoking, now, gets a ten-thousand-word infraction
sheet. And if it's me I'll write ten thousand words in the next few weeks
anyway, so.
Okay. This is the 12th of October 61.
Now, continuing our dissertation on the subject of the Problems Assessment.
Okay?
Now, the grim part of this is that between yesterday's lecture and today,
we have had a few mistakes. Now, in the view of the fact that it isn't
possible to make mistakes on this, this is remarkable. I'd say this was
quite a feat. This is quite a feat. Well, it just shows you that anything
is possible.
Now, the first mistake that was made is on writing down the changes. On
writing down changes, we wrote a short story. When you're writing down the
changes in a person's life in Section O, you are succinctly and briefly
dedicated to simply putting down something that can be assessed. Now you
cannot assess, "Well, I went down to the store and bought two pounds of
sugar and this was very unusual for me because I only ever buy one pound of
sugar." Now, try and assess that, see.
So you've got more or less when it was. So your assessment statement would
be something on the order of "1943, sugar." Got the idea? And if you want
to get terribly long winded, "buying sugar." You see? It's that brief. Your
changes must be brief or they cannot be assessed and your assessment will
go by the boards because as you read the assessment, restimulative words
will give you a kick on the needle. So that's the way that is. You write
that very briefly.
What was another one, Suzie?
Female voice: Rock slams take precedence.
Oh, rock slam takes precedence over other needle phenomena. Rock slam is
always greater in meaning than a mere fall. A rock slam will develop into a
dial-wide slam if you pursue it. In almost any case, if you keep pushing
the fellow into it, it will develop and develop and develop.
If you have a rock slam turn on and the thing turns off again, well, you
just ticked the edge of something and it wasn't anything there. But a real
rock slam manifestation that really means there is something there - if it
goes by rock slam - when you start to run it, you will see yourself a nice,
great big rock slam, even if it started with a little rock slam. Rock slams
always increase in magnitude.
A rock slam is a very badly overrun flow, is what it is. It's a
tremendously overrun flow. A fall is just a slightly overrun flow. But you
still have the index of reality expressed by a rock slam. The only needle
phenomena you pay no attention to while doing any kind of an assessment is
a rise. And I suppose at any moment this rise is going to rise up again on
some of the new students and so forth and they're suddenly going to say,
"Oh, well, that was a very strong reaction because it rose and it rose and
it rose." My comment on something like that was I hope you provided him
with a parachute. This is about as close as that is to Scientology.
Why don't we pay any attention to a rock slam, pardon me, a rise? We pay no
attention to a rise of any kind whatsoever because you don't know what
turned it on. You have no idea of what turned it on, because it doesn't
turn off. And so it doesn't mean anything. You see why it doesn't mean
anything?
It is a latent reaction of the needle. It's always latent. You've said
something. The person thinks it over and gets there and it's too much for
him, it exceeds his reality and he can't confront it. So after - on that
question or in two questions or in six questions or a half an hour later,
while you were saying something else in each case, you start to get a rise.
A rise is not a spontaneous start. You do not spontaneously start a rise,
so you cannot identify what began the rise. So if you start to run it down
on the basis of what he couldn't confront. . . You could adjudicate this.
You could say, "The needle was rising. Therefore, it was obvious that the
pc could not confront.. ." Yeah, but how are you going to finish out the
sentence? How can the sentence be finished? In the first place, he's not
going to confront any part of it, so you're not going to find it.
Now, you could go over, if you had a tape recording of everything you had
said and everything that had happened in the last few minutes preceding the
rise and the few minutes after you noticed it and then you took this one by
one, item by item - it might be a word, it might be a phrase, it might be a
this, it might be a that - you could probably find what started the needle
rising. And after that, you would be no wiser than you were before, because
the needle would simply stop rising. That's interesting, isn't it?
A rise is meaningful. It does mean that something has occurred which the pc
is not about to confront with magnitude. It means something has occurred;
he is going to throw his vehicle into reverse and step on the accelerator
straight down to the floorboard. That has happened. But what from? What
from?
Now, it is highly, highly, highly doubtful if you would ever be able to
trace what it is from. You could get near what it was from. But, of course,
you have to solve the whole case to get him to approach what he retreated
from. So now it's not worth it because after you've resolved everything you
could resolve and worked everything you could work, all you would know then
is that you had said something that began a rise. That's all you would
know.
Forcing the pc to confront something which the pc is seeking to get away
from will normally cause some sort of an ARC break. Now, an auditor has to
do it to some degree. But when you have a rising needle phenomena, you are
already confronting something that he is not about to go near and no matter
how much you pushed him, overwhelmed him, beat him, ARC broke him,
overwhumped him in general, you're not going to get him to front up to it
and that's it.
He'll front up to something else and tell you that was it, but you're
asking for showers of red herrings to go across the track. You're asking
for all kind of things to occur. So you just don't fool around with a rise.
I'm just repeating that just to make sure that it's on the record good and
hard. You just don't fool around with one. It means the pc couldn't
confront something.
But in view of the fact that tracing back the something is both time
consuming and uninformative, why do it? Now, you go over a series of
terminals. And you're going over a series of terminals and all of a sudden
you notice the needle is rising. Well, it means that somewhere in the last
five terminals you went over, you struck one that he couldn't confront.
Well, it violates the rules of auditing, because he doesn't have a reality
on it, to audit it. So why are you interested in it? See? You couldn't
audit it even if you found out what it was. A pc will not respond under
auditing to something which causes a rise.
Now, you've got something else that baffles you sometimes as you're busy
doing something. You'll see a pc all of a sudden start to rise and rise -
and rise and rise and rise and rise and rise, and then rise and rise and
rise and rise. Well, there's nothing wrong with a rise because it'll
eventually wind up with a high tone arm, but as you're running things, tone
arms go high. Don't try to restrain the rise of a tone arm. So it causes a
high tone arm. All right. And you audit a bit further and then the needle
falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls. Well you don't
change the process, do you? I mean just keep on doing this.
All tone arm rises and all tone arm falls are, of course, accompanied by
needle rises and needle falls. Has to be because the two are interconnected
- of course, unless you have a meter builtt by Pembry. Then they're
independent.
I'm merely saying that because there's just been - we've just laid down the
law on "HPA/HCA must have a meter" because we're about to turn out HPAs and
HCAs that can operate with E-Meters, and an auditor should have the tools
of his trade and they are beginning to show up already with old pieces of
garbage, you know, that have been hoisted out and were built in 1952 by God
knows who, you know and they're mains-connected, short-circuited, only put
220 volts between the hands of the pc, you see. And we're already running
into this. So the - hence the crack because this is the first squawk I have
heard was from the gentleman mentioned.
Now, the best guarantee of case increase is the needle rises and the needle
falls which causes a tone arm rise and a tone arm fall. Well, so therefore
rising is a part of it, but it is not diagnostic when you're doing
something.
Now, sometimes your pc has an ARC break and your rudiments are out and all
the needle will do is rise. And when you get all of the rudiments in and
the ARC break cured up, why, the needle doesn't rise much or it falls or
something - or something. You get the idea? I mean, what you want to know
from a meter: Number one, you want a meter that will tell you the truth.
See? You want a meter that is a good, standard meter that won't give you a
buggy reaction, won't be so sensitive you can't read things, won't do this,
won't do that and so forth. A good standard meter.
All right. Given that, what you want is a positive reaction and your
positive reactions are all needle reactions except rise. Rise is the
unpositive reaction so it is not diagnostic. And that is about all there is
to it. You - just for fun sometime, when you see a pc's needle rising and
you're coffee shopping somehow or another, try to trace down what started
it rising. Oh, you'll probably be able to do it fifteen, twenty minutes,
half an hour, something like that and you'll probably find out a cat walked
by the auditing room window or there was a lawn mower started up in the
next field or you mentioned the word "work." All of which gave you data
that you could have had anyhow or didn't need, of no value.
All right. What was another one of these?
Female voice: Rudiments out.
Oh, well, yes. Pcs do not run with rudiments out. Goals will not assess
with rudiments out and if it's also true that this list, this checklist,
when you start going over it for Section P, why, it'll also misbehave if
your rudiments are out. That's why the assessment has to be done in Model
Session securely and severely. So you have to get the rudiments in. Because
any assessment will go by the boards if rudiments are out.
It happens on an average of once a week, someplace in the world, that for
half an hour of one session - someplace in the world - a pc is audited with
rudiments in. It's accidental. It's accidental. He didn't mean it that way,
but they cure it up pretty quick. This is snide - snide and sarcastic,
isn't it. But honest, that's almost the way it begins to look to me, you
know. You know?
If you really want to know what rudiments in looks like, run a session like
this: Short-session the pc. Run a Model Session and get the rudiments very
severely in. Audit the pc for ten minutes on something - we don't care
what, even the process you should be running - and then, put the end
rudiments in. And you're going to say what happened to the rudiments that I
put in a little while ago?
All right. So you put the end rudiments in. You give the pc a little bit of
a break and then you start the session again. And put beginning rudiments
in and they're out. And you say, "But I just put rudiments in. There hasn't
been any auditing; there's been a break." So you get the beginning
rudiments in and you run ten minutes worth of process and then you put the
end rudiments in and the rudiments are out. What's going on?
And you will begin to get of the opinion that it is impossible to put
rudiments in. You know why? You never asked the question a second time. You
very often, as a common failing - you say, "Are you withholding anything?"
And the fellow says, "Well, no." Clank!
"What's that?"
"Ah, well, that's uh - it's nothing, really, but Joe and I - Joe and I uh -
we were down at the cafe last night till two o'clock and did nothing but
discuss your auditing."
"Oh, I see. All right. Okay. All right. Now, is it all right now if I audit
this process on you?" Something or other.
What? You yourself run a - sometimes run on the rudiments a nonconfront.
Get the idea? You don't quite confront this and you don't repeat it.
You say, "Do you have a present time problem?" Clank! "What's that present
time problem?"
"Well, I had an awful fight last night with my landlady. An awful fight.
And she's throwing me out. And as a matter of fact, right now while we are
being audited, why, my bags are out on the front porch and the bags are all
out on the front porch and so forth and it's raining. And so forth and so
on."
Well, a man of no action at all would go ahead and try to run a session. A
person who thinks auditing will do everything would go ahead and try to run
a session. A person who wouldn't would say, "You go get in a taxicab or
something of that sort and you move yourself and remove yourself over to
your lodgings and pick up your baggage and bring it back and then we will
start the session." See, present time problem.
But whatever you've done about this present time problem, we eventually get
it so it doesn't knock anymore and we don't get a needle reaction on it
anymore. So we sail along to find out if the pc has an ARC break and we
find out if pc is withholding anything all the way down the line. Well of
course, the next time you take a swish across the rudiments we are doing
what we should have done in the first place.
You see, that was just a present time problem. He had twelve! So every time
you go over the rudiments again, you will run into what you should have run
into by the repetitive question. You should have asked them again, you see?
After he came back, straightening up the bags or you had audited it out or
something like this, why, you should have asked him again. Good. Just as
though you had just thought of it and it was a brand-new rudiment, you say,
"Now, do you have a present time problem?" And it goes clang! and you say,
"What's that?"
But your self-satisfaction, your glibness, your feeling of the
canary-that-just-ate-the-cat feeling, you know. You're feeling so good
about all this, that it doesn't occur to you that he's got another present
time problem, see. Or that there is also something else wrong somewhere.
You got the idea?
So each rudiment, each rudiment itself, is in sequence to the last
rudiment. Now look. There might be an ARC break on "Are you withholding
anything?" but you don't now, of course clean up the ARC break because it
occurs before the withhold.
So of course when you do end rudiments, you run into an ARC break, but it
occurred in the beginning of session. Well, that's a criticism of you
because it means that your rudiments were out during the whole session. You
must have been wasting auditing time. Well, how could you cure such a
thing?
Well, there's no provision in the Model Session for curing such a thing
except just asking enough and realizing that you can take up a rudiment at
any time. You can always take up a rudiment. It's bad practice to take them
up so often that the pc gets no auditing, but you can always take up a
rudiment.
Now, just for fun sometime - just for fun, to enforce and show you what I'm
talking about - run somebody this way. This is an experimental action.
Run the beginning rudiments and then run the beginning rudiments and then
run the beginning rudiments and then run the beginning rudiments. And you
will just be fascinated what happens. And it will be a wonderful example to
you of the care you should utilize in handling rudiments. And when somebody
tells you your rudiments are out - when somebody tells you your rudiments
are out, why, you of course very well must realize that the rudiments you
put in are still in.
You see, nobody is saying that the rudiments you put in went out. See, what
you straightened up on the case is still straightened up on the case, if
you did any kind of a job at all, but there were more things out than you
asked for. You see, you've cleaned up this present time problem. There was
another present time problem. You didn't ask for it.
It was there. It would have knocked again. There was another ARC break, but
you didn't ask for it, you see. There's something else wrong with the room,
but you didn't ask for it. That is much more difficult to achieve, this
room proposition, because usually it takes care of everything in a full
sweep and we've tried to get an ARC break process now which takes care of
it at one full sweep, so that you get all the ARC breaks and we're moving
up there into better rudiments.
But one of the things that happens as your rudiments went out is after the
pc got off his withholds, he had another withhold but he didn't ask for it
- you didn't ask for it.
Well, now how could he have another withhold and you didn't ask for it and
he doesn't get a knock on withholds or anything of this sort? That's
because the withhold he gave you was a damn lie. You ever consider that? It
happens so often. It happens so often. So, your rudiments keep going out,
keep going out, keep going out, keep going out. Why? Because the pc's
withholds are not coming off; you're getting something which isn't true or
something that is half true.
And so we have this new end rudiment line which is in lieu of the withhold
question in end rudiments and that is to the effect, "Have you told me any
half-truths or untruths in this session or said anything just to make an
impression on me?" Could be worded, by the way, "just to influence me?" as
in some types of case you find that more workable. The pc is always trying
to get you on their side by complaining about somebody and that would get
that.
Well, now, how about this? You ask a pc for a withhold, you get a knock and
then the pc tells you a lie of some kind or another. And you ask him - and
you try to clean up withholds and the withholds just aren't kind of
cleaning up very well. Well, they won't clean up if you're getting
half-truths or untruths. In fact, you're going to worsen the case because
it - to tell an auditor an untruth, of course, is an overt. It's just
throwing auditing away like crazy. So you have this new end rudiment
situation.
We still have short sessioning with us. So now, by beginning a session,
doing an assessment such as the P section here and ending the session,
you've found it, you see and by ending the session, giving the pc a break
while you figure it out - as good an excuse as any - and then starting the
session again, why, you get the pc pretty well oriented, because this is
about the first time you will have put him in a formal session doing a
Problems Intensive if you've taken him straight off the street.
So that would be very, very good practice - extremely good practice - is to
finish the O section. Get that all set, you see. And then put him into
Model Session, come right down, get the rudiments in, do the assessment out
of O section to fill in the first part of the P section. Do end rudiments.
Give him a short break. Note which one it is and bring him back into
session again. Why?
Well, you're going to get a double crack at this pc's rudiments. Now, you
see that a double crack at the rudiments is beneficial because let us say
again an ARC break - we have had an ARC break while pulling a withhold and
of course, you don't have another ARC break question following the withhold
question. That sort of thing is cared for by doing beginning rudiments,
doing something or another which is - looks like a finished activity to the
pc and doing an end rudiment. Bringing him back into session, doing a
beginning rudiment. By that time, you've got this fellow pretty well
grooved. Now you start asking him questions, you're going to get much
better answers.
Now look, you put the rudiments in three times if you did that. Now, you
see why it might be a good thing to put the rudiments in three times?
Because a rudiment can go out while you're putting another rudiment in.
Now, that would pretty well guarantee that this pc had your - had you very
much his auditor at the moment you ask this burning question: "What problem
existed immediately before - ?" and you give him the change that you have
assessed. Now, if you've got him in good session, man, it'll shake him down
to the bottom of the Earth, see.
And he'll be able to recall it and he'll be able to handle it and he'll be
in good shape doing that. So it would be a very good idea for you to do
this in view of the fact that you're having some of this difficulty with
rudiments. See how you could handle rudiments?
Now, are you aware of the fact that short sessioning has in itself
therapeutic value? You can do the darnedest things with short sessioning.
Everywhere a pc is restive, he can't keep his attention on something. You
are putting rudiments in, normally, because he can't put his attention on
the session. Right?
All right. A child's attention span is called to your interest and
attention. It's very short. So is that of an extremely worried pc. His
attention span is terribly short, very brief. So, you put the rudiments in,
do something, handle something, out-rudiment the thing and give him a
break. Put the rudiments in, do something - something final and finished,
you see - put the end rudiments in, give him a break. You got the idea?
And if you were handling somebody like that early in an intensive - short
sessioning him - look at all the rudiments you're going into and through.
Now, he isn't going to get very restive, if every time you do this, you do
something.
And look at all the doingness you've got in this P section. This is
fascinating the number of things you can do as a finished product or a
finished action. Well, look them over. You do a whole assessment; you can
do a whole assessment. It's not going to take you very long to do an
assessment, so therefore you can short-session an assessment.
All right. Now let's look at the next point here. We say, "What problem
existed immediately before - " clank! - whatever the occurrence was. You
write down the problem the pc gives. And now you could just turn loose and
you could simply run, "What was unknown about that problem with (whatever
descriptive word it was)." Get the tone arm action free on the thing, in
pretty good shape. You find that this twenty-minute test will get in your
road sometimes on one of these things, but I'd leave it in for Class II
Auditors.
But you could finish up that problem, see, just neat as a package, you
know. Finish it up. Dust it off. Might not last long. It also might last
for three sessions, but end your session, give him end rudiments, give him
a break, something like that. Now, if they've got a new auditing period
coming up in the afternoon, take up something else, don't you see - which
is of course what? You've got to locate the confusion before that change.
Now, I call to your attention, by the way, in passing and discussing this
activity, it's the confusion before the change. It is not the confusion
before the problem. Now, you must be very sure that that is what is asked.
The confusion before the change. And you may get some entirely different
period than existed - that the problem existed in. The problem also might
have drifted out of that time area while you were running it and is no
longer the confusion before that change. It is a problem he has had for a
long, long while. Now, if you ask him "Confusion before that problem," he
will say, "Well, actually, the soldiers of King Henry VIII were after me
because I had written a brochure criticizing him for his number of wives."
Violates the Problems Intensive, see, because that problem went a long way
back. Now, to understand that fully, you must realize that the only reason
people move slowly, get parked on the track or anything else is that
problems become timeless. The timelessness of problems compose the reactive
mind. A timelessness occurs.
Whenever you are having difficulty in dealing with companies that do
business, in getting them to answer your letters, in getting them to
dispatch any goods, in getting them to this, in getting them to that and
you just can't seem to get anything done, think of this: They are slow to
the degree that they have problems they can't solve. They are inactive to
the degree that they have problems they can't solve. So most of their
actions, then, are reactive. They are not as a result of thought, but
they're drifting in the timelessness of problems.
Every new action adds into the old problem and it gets to a point where
"Nothing we do will resolve the problem, so it doesn't matter what we do,
then, does it?" And you'll find more business firms get in that frame of
mind. They've had terrible problems of some kind or another and so on.
Well, I'll give you a better objective view. The bailiffs in US - the
sheriff, has just moved all one's goods out of the house and Aunt Isabel is
being upset because the table was not polished that morning. And she goes
around and tells everybody in the house that she is very upset because they
have forgotten to polish a certain table. It's going to be sold at public
auction.
Now, can you get the sort of attitude people would have toward Aunt Isabel?
Well, do you realize that a person who is totally overwhelmed, whose head
is half cut off by the guillotine or something of this sort - he just feels
totally overwhelmed by life - you come along, you give him something that
is so trivial compared to these enormously important problems he's worrying
about... See, this is 1961, and he's terribly worried about having his head
cut off in 1789, see.
He's so concerned about it that, really, there's nothing you can do about
it and it's a terrible problem and that is so big in comparison of
magnitude of what you want him to do, which is maybe wipe his shoes before
he walks in the house, that anything you say is stupid. Do you get how this
could work the other way?
And he has this same attitude toward other people that the whole family
would have had toward Aunt Isabel at that particular moment. He just sort
of looks at them apathetically. They're talking in another world about
another subject that has no bearing on any reality. Something on the order
of "Come to dinner," "Let us go to the show," "The car has run out of gas"
- anything that you want to say to such a  person, no matter how immediate
it is, maybe he's standing in the rain, you know, and you say, "Well, let's
walk over and get under the porch."
The suggestion you have made is as silly, you see - it's as silly as Aunt
Isabel having to have the table polished. And sometimes you can get these
things in some kind of an order of magnitude in an attitude and you can see
how some people do that or see how people react. And such people react to
everything in life this way. Everything in life that comes up, such as you
ought to go out and get a job so that you can earn money so that people can
eat, you see.
And they are gripped in this tremendously overwhelming problem of some kind
or another and their immediate response is saying, "Oh, well, you go. It
doesn't matter really, you know. Eat? What?"
What you see is an apparent apathy. Actually, the person in actual apathy
is really not in apathy at all. He's just apathetic toward everything. He
himself is in a fantastic foment. He's in agony, but his attitude
demonstrates one of apathy.
And when people have problems of such magnitude that nothing could possibly
solve them and everything is trivial compared to them, then they give this
response of never doing anything, never communicating, never acting, never
solving any problems and they kind of go along and they just hope it'll all
somehow work out - somehow. But they couldn't say how. But, of course, none
of that has any influence on this tremendous, overwhelming problem which
they have. The odd part of it is, is they don't know what the tremendous
overwhelming problem is. They can't articulate that either.
And you get the state of mind of people who are stumbling around in life.
And the ineffective - where you see a person being terribly ineffective
about existence and so on - they've got some state of mind like this. They
are not easily and calmly in an apathetic serenity. No, no. They -
volcanoes going off would be a better order of magnitude to describe how
they feel about things.
So that if you ask them to take their attention off these tremendous
problems, they know they're going to get ate up. So they have no attention
to spare you, see. And they know that if they get their attention off of
this thing or if they get handled a little bit roughly or if they get
twisted around or they get an ARC break or if something is wrong with the
session, they know what's going to happen to them - their attention is
going to shift and the whole world is going to fall in on them.
There is some tremendous problem that's about to eat them up. And you've
asked them to shift their attention too hard or too fast and it is painful;
it's extremely painful.
All right. You get a person who is in this state of mind. They can't spare
you very much attention for auditing and you get the rudiments in and they
can spare you a little bit more attention. And you run something that's
effective, it illuminates their case immediately, directly on the heading
of a problem, see. Like, well, "What was unknown about that problem?" is
what you're going to run. And now you're going to assess the confusion
before the change.
All right. All of these things are right what they're stuck in. They're
very meaningful. They - your assessment will put them right there where
they can put their attention. They know you are with them. They know
they're being audited because they know where their attention ought to be.
And their attention can be there comfortably, if you've done a good job of
assessment, you have found where their attention is stuck, on what problem
their attention is stuck. And having found on what problem their attention
is stuck, you then can go ahead and audit them. But they pay very little
attention to your auditing unless you follow some of this stuff.
So you get your rudiments in. Make sure that the environment is as dressed
up as it can be. Then, to handle one of these bad-off cases - I mean, a
case that is having trouble, is getting no advance; not necessarily bad
off, but it just isn't getting advance in auditing - and then handle
problems and confusions within this illuminative fashion as given in this
Problems Intensive. What immediately is going to happen?
Well, the individual's attention is being traced right where his attention
is. The reason he can't doing anyth - do anything effective with your
auditing command is his attention is all tied up on something else. Only
what little attention he has left in present time is either tied up on
something else also or trying to find out what his attention is tied up on.
And he very often thinks that his attention is tied up on something in his
environment. So he's quite restive. He's quite nervous.
Now, almost any pc is difficult to audit. If you think pcs are easy to
audit, you'd better change your mind because you're looking at the wrong
standard and you'll never as-is the situation. Pcs are never quiet to audit
unless they're in total catatonic apathy. Pcs do things about auditing.
Sometimes they are a good response, sometimes they are a bad response, but
pcs respond to auditing. And if you think that when you audit, nothing
ought to be there responding, then you should change your ideas about
auditing because something ought to be responding. And if you don't get any
response at all from a pc, you start worrying.
If there's no change being registered in the pc, you start worrying like
mad. The pc is just sitting there and the pc is just answering the auditing
question. "Yes. Well, how have you endured a poker in a king's eye or
something, you know. And how have you not endured it or something. And how
has a king endured a poker in your eye? You see."
And the pc is saying, "Well, I've endured it so on and so on and so on and
so on and so on. And so on and so on and so on." And you say another
question and he says so on and so on. And you say another question. He says
so on and so on. Another question, and he says so on and so on. And it just
goes on like that, hour after hour! Well, your rudiments aren't just out,
they're in the next county! There is something really wrong, because
there's no change occurring.
Actually, to audit a pc in that line, you are in violation of the Auditor's
Code. You're in direct violation of it, which says you audit a pc - audit a
process as long as it produces change.
Well, what's change? Well, change is registration or action on the E-Meter.
But where a pc has tremendously heavy problems, these problems are of very,
very long duration. And all you're getting, ordinarily, are harmonics on
the main problem and you've got to cut him back to the main problem.
He'll get there eventually. Sometimes he gets there, splang! and almost
blows himself all over the ceiling. The first time you ask a certain
proportion of cases - I don't know what that proportion will be - you put
him in Model Session; you've got their Problems Intensive all done right up
to the point of the first assessment. You put them in-session. You assess
it. And you ask them a question, "Now, what problem existed immediately
before that change with - ?" you know, whatever the occurrence was.
"Eyaaczooo!" And with a pale scream, his brains practically spatter all
over the ceiling. You're going to get that every now and then. Pc's going
to look at you with some horror. He going to flinch. They're always glad to
find out.
Sometimes you're going to turn on wild somatics. And they're awful, awful
glad to have them. "Oh, that's what turns on these somatics," they say.
"Oh, you'll - that's what this is worried about. Yes, the whole back of my
head is off. Ha, I can feel it, you know. It's missing except for the
horrible, excruciating pain that is going through the middle of my head. So
that's what's been turning that on."
You know? Whatever it was. They got the problem, they didn't hardly hear
themselves speaking, you know. And all of a sudden a terrific cognition.
You'll also get a totally different response. You have to take the top of
it off so lightly that they give you, "Well, what was the problem that
existed before that change about buying sugar? So let's see. I guess it was
how much sugar to buy. Ohhh."
I'm afraid I would follow that through at once with, "What was the
confusion that existed just before that change of buying sugar?"
"Well, trying to figure out how much sugar to buy."
I would say, "Thank you very much," and go back and do a right assessment
this time. That's just a total miss. But sometimes the pc is so worried
about it that he can't confront it, that he can't differentiate it and
you'll get a lot of little, tiny problems. And your first few runs on this
thing will be little, tiny, microscopic problems that he guesses he must
have had. That's as close as he can get to this area, you see. He guesses
he must have had them.
Now you ask him, "Well, now, how did you arrive at that?"
"Well, I just figure it must have been so."
And you say, "Was it so? Did you really have that problem? What was the
problem you really did have there?"
"Oh, well, I really wouldn't know what problem I had. Actually, I could
just guess at what problem a person in that particular circumstances might
have had. You see, there was a change. I bought a new car and I just guess
that a person who was buying a new car, he would have to have - he would
have to have some kind of an idea that he wanted to buy a new car. So I
guess his problem would be what kind of a new car to buy. Yeah, that must
have been it."
You're going to run into that one, too. And that's about as profitless as
swapping pounds for Chinese taels. This is totally profitless. What are you
going to do about a situation like that? Well, handle what he gives you if
he can't get any better. Handle what he gives you. Do another assessment.
See if you can come closer to it or take it up. It might really have been a
problem. Maybe that's just the way he talks while he's having the problem.
But in the presence of tremendous problems you get a freeze of time. Time
is - doesn't exist. Time just doesn't exist in a problem. It's just
something that goes on and on and on. How else would you account for the
fact that people still have problems they had several thousand years ago?
And you start tracing back one of these problems and the common run, when
you hit the jackpot on one of these questions, the common run is saying,
"Well, yes, and I - so on."
"What was unknown about it?"
"Well, the color of the ladies' hats."
And out of curiosity, you say, "What ladies' hats? You got a picture there
or something?" so on.
"Oh, yes, I got a picture here."
"Well, what kind of hats are they?" Thinking, you know, you got something
in the seventeenth century, you know, something like that.
"Well, it's these - these priestess ostrich hats."
"Oh, yeah. Oh, where is that? You got any idea about it?"
"Well, priestess ostrich hats, you see, that was on the planet Zimbo, and
so forth. And there it was and so on. And we all had that problem there.
Everybody had the problem." The funny part of it is there was nothing
unknown about the problem on the planet Zimbo. Everything was known because
everybody knew what the problem was. Everybody knew you had this problem.
No, there wasn't any unknowns about the problem at all. Man, have you hit
the part of the track where the problem was the know.
You know? You see, a problem itself can become the total knowingness. Can
you think of any problems that are in that category? The problem itself is
the total knowingness? Let me mention something to you. And of course,
there are no unknowns about the problem because everybody knows the
problem.
Well, those things run way back along the track. And in the normal course
of running, if you were to ask a person on the next line, "All right. What
confusion occurred just before that problem?"
"Well, everybody in disagreement about buying new hats on the planet Zimbo.
Yeah, there was a hell of a confusion."
Well, that isn't what we're trying to straighten out with a Problems
Intensive. No, you've got to ask before that change, and your change has
got to be very specific and you must have your rudiments in some kind of
shape at the time you ask that next question, because it's another
assessment, only it's just in a verbal assessment, you know.
You say, "What - what confusion existed just before that change?"
"Oh, well, oooh, yes, well, no. That was eight years before that. No. No.
Tha - tha - . Yeah. That - yup - confusion and so forth." And now you're
going to go off onto a list of persons.
Now, to get any kind of thinkingness on this subject at all - you see, it's
a species of assessment, so you had certainly better have your rudiments in
some kind of shape. So when you're sorting out pcs, do the rudiments, do
something of this, do the end rudiments, give them a break. Do the - do the
rudiments, do something about it, you know, do the end rudiments, give them
a break. And you'll find out if you're handling particularly wild cases
that have been stalled, you'll really get places - even though the person
appears to sit perfectly happily in that chair hour after hour and say,
"Well, I guess I'd put out a king's eye. Yeah, well, the king had put out
my eye. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Let's see. Other people would put out the
king's eye. Yeah, that's right, and so forth."
And he's - evidently on like this and you're fooled; you're fooled.
Actually the person is just frantic and they're sort of given up and
they're sort of asking it anyhow, even though it doesn't do any good. See?
That's their basic auditing response. Well, you can queer that pitch by
short-sessioning them.
Well, I didn't mean to overlabor the point, but I'm trying to give you some
kind of a design of the thing and what happens.
Now, the problem floats, but the confusion didn't. So it's the confusion
that got them oriented. The confusion won't float. That confusion you're
asking for, that occurred and then you nailed it down to a specific
dramatis personnae: Mama, Papa, Aunt Agnes, Uncle Bill, the schoolteacher,
George and, of course, Mamie. Now when you start security checking that
area of the track, it's a sort of a "Hey, son. You've really got to
confront this. This one you've got to confront." Because it nails an area
of track and therefore that isn't going to float anyplace. It's going to
stay right where it is. It's going to have an immediate and direct
influence on present time.
You very often will have a pc who is escaping present time by being in the
past. And you make a mistake sometimes when you're auditing a pc by
believing that the pc would audit better on his terminals line. And you
could just skip rudiments or any problems he's having in this life and just
skip those things because it's much more significant and you could undercut
it much better if you went back on the line. No, the pc is back on the line
because it's safer and one of the symptoms of that is the pc who never gets
a picture. Pictures are dangerous. Well, when did they become dangerous?
You trace it back and you find out a pc had some pictures at one time and
then in auditing something happened.
On the special course which is occurring right at this moment in Los
Angeles, they have responded with enormous enthusiasm to these new
rudiments. And one person, one student on the course, they were just
getting the rudiments in, ran into the ARC break process and promptly and
instantly had his pictures turn on for the first time in six years. They
had turned off during an auditing session. They'd been off ever since and
all of a sudden they had turned on, on that process. They were good and
bright and clear and he was sailing beautifully. Everybody is quite happy
on that course, apparently. But there is an example. There is an example of
response to getting a rudiment in.
All right. How about just getting the rudiments in on somebody that never
had any processing before? Well, you'd be surprised how much there is to
get in on the person and what you're doing is showing him that life is
solvable, life is solvable, life is solvable. It's solvable at these little
finite points.
Now, it's a characteristic of a pc who is in apathy, that he's got to solve
it all at once. That's a characteristic of a pc in apathy. That if he's
going to solve it at all, it's got to be solved all at once, now. You very
often, working in a Central Organization or running a great many pcs, will
have a pc who has got to have it solved by this afternoon or they are going
to die; that's going to perish the lot. Got to be done by this afternoon.
Their case has got to be resolved is what I'm saying, you see, by this
afternoon. And that is a symptom of the most severe apathy backed by a
terrific franticness and sometimes you'll move this little gauze of apathy
off and you'll expose some of this franticness and then they all of a
sudden have got to solve all the problem, right now. They won't do an
available auditing command. They will take the auditing command you give
them, which is the available command and then they will make it into a
right now command. This command has to resolve their whole case by one
answer. Well, why is that? That's because the whole track has collapsed.
The fact that problems are timeless and problems join to problems and it
all makes a sort of a timeless strata, also makes a very explosive strata.
And of course, anything that is that explosive about which they would worry
that much, of course, has to be solved as explosively as that.
They have a look at it the way sometimes soldiers or something like that -
they're trying to fix something and they're all standing around trying to
fix this thing, you know, and all of a sudden, one will haul out a gun and
shoot hell out of it. Or they'll kick it or they'll throw it away, you
know. It's just got to be a huuugh! It's giving them trouble so, boy, are
they going to give it trouble, you know. It's just a straight Q and A.
Nothing to do with solving the thing. It has to do with we must have a
desperate solution by which to get rid of it all at once, now. And of
course, we know "all at once now," "get rid of it" is going to add up
exclusively to just one point: We don't get rid of it; we get rid of the
pc, if we had such a thing.
Every once in a while we look for one button that just on - when I say one
button, it is often interpreted as one command given in one unit of time,
one expression and that one expression is very explosive. You see that, we
just give one command, not repetitively, just one order to the pc. We say,
scaroooow, see. And the pc goes Boom! Rrrrrrr goes Clear. Have you seen
this around? Do you recognize some of this? All right.
Now, that becomes necessary to the degree that the pc can't. If a pc can't
do any of the little things, he then in desperation will have to do one of
the big ones and all auditing is done by gradients. All auditing is done by
gradients. And it depends on this kind of thing, successful auditing: It
depends on reaching a reality the pc can tolerate. It's getting to a
picture the pc can see - that the pc can see at this moment of time in the
auditing session. It's not what the pc should be willing to see or ought to
be able to see. It's what the pc can do and what they really can do are
little gradients.
You could possibly confront building a house if you thought of it in terms
- I mean yourself, with your own paws. Youu could probably confront it on
the basis of the fact that, well, you could work on it a half an hour every
Saturday. That'd seem all right, you know. You could go out and scrape some
mortar and bricks together and cut a little grass and so forth. That would
seem all right.
I'm sure that you could confront building a fairly large house, if you
thought you could do it at a half an hour every Saturday. You can afford
that much time, don't you see? And it wouldn't take too much exertion and
the amount of bricks and things you'd have to carry, you see - you
certainly could carry them for half an hour and you start adding it up,
that'd seem pretty reasonable to some people.
Other people, you say, "All right. Now, building a house from scratch. .
And the person gets the idea of "Well, building a house from scratch - uhm
- oh, look why can't you just put it all tthere right now? You know? Why do
we have to go through all of this - this you know, nonsensy little steps
and all of these doodle-dads and so on and so on and construction of things
and building things. Why can't we just say house, you know, and there it
appears." Well, they're on a lower harmonic of OT, you see. But the reason
why they say that - the reason why they say that - should be of interest to
you, an auditor. It's because they can't confront spending a half an hour
every Saturday. That'd be too much. Oh, brother.
Now, we have to carve that down and we have to get something that is real
and we will eventually achieve it on the basis, "Well, what is it that if
every year we go out and move one brick one half an inch, could you
tolerate that much action toward building a house?"
You see, it carves down from the gotta-be-here-right-now - you actually
carve it down, you find out the pc has a reality of this.
Take money. There are a lot of guys running around - I know some of them
personally, that are running around on the subject of money the like of
which I never heard of. Their wives and they are just in some kind of a
wild mess on the subject. Because they've got to have a million dollars or
a million pounds now, see. There isn't even time for it to be carried in
the door sack by sack, see. It's got to be now. And every idea and plan
they get, you see, and that is to say, "Well, you see, if we took the North
Pole and connected it with the South Pole and put a subway between them and
charged the penguins eighteen-million dollars a penguin for using the
subway and so forth, why, then our profit on the matter would be
so-and-so."
And you'll find them sitting around with some highly impractical stupidity
of this particular character and you know, they just seem to sit back in
their chairs further and elevate their feet higher and smoke more slowly.
But these structures that are going to happen right now and the amount of
money that has got to be made by tomorrow, you see, keeps increasing.
All right. We take such a person and we say how much money could you have?
"Oh, millions" is the first response. "Millions. I could just have millions
and millions and millions of dollars." Read it on the E-Meter. You start
taking it down million by million and try to find the reality of how much
money they could actually have. And the first thing you know, you meet the
other side of the circle which is how much money they really can't have.
And you'll find out that it is two cents or a farthing or that nobody makes
a coin quite small enough. And that's the amount of money they could really
have and they could really have that. And if you gave them that much money,
they would know they had some money. But they think in terms of millions.
All the time, you see, it's got to be millions and millions. They get
poorer and poorer and poorer, you see. But they - the only money would be
millions. It's very interesting.
I'm only bringing that up - just one point. I'm trying to show you
something about a case. The case that has got to have the total change now,
the case which makes no change now, are almost the same case. Now, the case
that just sits there apathetically knows that there cannot be a big enough
change or a big enough effect right now to solve his problems, so he's
given up on the idea of millions. He's given up on the idea of the huge
explosion. He's given up that anything is going to happen at all. He's
cancelled all this out and he's on a lower rung than that. He can't have a
change because there is no change tiny enough, until you figure out what it
is.
Well now, how does he get into that state? Well, he got into that state by
having problems that were so overwhelming that he must keep his attention
on them all the time. And he knows nothing could be done about them, but
they're terribly important. But you have to do something about them, but
there's nothing can be done about them, so that everything else that's
going on in life is trivia, including your auditing command.
Your auditing command has nothing to do with his problems - nothing to do
with his problems unless you have the exact problem. If you've got the
exact problem, your auditing command will have something to do with his
case. If you've got the exact confusion which made him get that problem,
your auditing commands will have something to do with his case.
But up to the point of that, even though you can find his goal, even though
you can find his terminal, even though you can do other things to him, even
though you can run processes of one kind or another on him, you couldn't
find a gradient tiny enough for him to do.
The case, actually, cannot do any of your processes except find the problem
he is stuck in because he - but you're not finding any problem. You get the
misnomer here. He's sitting looking at it, so all you have to do is just
kind of shake it. You don't have to put him back on the track because he's
there. You don't have to move him around. You are not moving the pc
anyplace. You're just trying to find out what's the pc looking at and the
whole of this Problems Intensive is just dedicated to that. Where is this
pc stuck? And what problem is this pc overwhelmed with?
Now, the trick is, is he doesn't know or they wouldn't be. He can tell you,
then, a lot of problems glibly. But a proper assessment on this thing does
give you exactly what his attention is on and an improper assessment will
give some offbeat. So that's why he gives you such "I figure-figure"
problems sometimes.
You say, "What problem existed immediately before that change?"
"Well, I - it must have been, I guess... Well, one could say..."
"Now, how are you - how are you getting that now? How are you figuring that
out?"
"Oh, well, it just seems to me that a person in that condition would
ordinarily have this type of problem."
You haven't got it, because he's asking from what he conceives to be a
different time band and the first clue to any of this is, the problem is
the time band of the pc. It is the moment in time of the pc and he wouldn't
be saying, "a person who would have had a problem like that way back then,
so on and so on." Because he isn't way back then. He is in the problem he
is in, and he's in no other problem. And you will find him sitting square
in the problems, if your assessment is done properly. And if your rudiments
are in, your assessment will get done properly.
You haven't got any difficulties if your rudiments are in. And if you keep
your rudiments in, your assessments and questions and that sort of thing
will, perforce, fall right out in your lap, because you've said the one
magic question that attracts his attention instantly to where his attention
is. And then he conceives that to be instantly now and when you hit this
phenomenon exactly right on the button, the pc's attention is not being
dragged off of anything.
You never drag his attention off of something to the problem. Well, he
doesn't have a present time problem. He doesn't have an ARC break. He
doesn't have an immediate withhold. The room is all right. The session is
in progress.
All right. You're already eliminating anything that might get his attention
off of this problem and you've got his attention not in-session, but on
problem.
And now you say, "What problem existed immediately before buying sugar in
1948? What problem existed immediately before that?"
And if you've done it very smoothly, his attention will be sitting right
there and he just goes off brrrrrrrrt, there it is, see. And you will very
often get an "Oh, my God." Now, you don't get a "What do you know." It's
much more heartfelt expression.
Now, a pc who is ARC breaking while you're trying to do a Goals Terminal
Assessment is ARC breaking or getting apathetic because you're taking his
attention off of what his attention should be on and it is violating his
idea of what's safe. The only thing that is safe is to keep his attention
on this problem. That is safe and nothing else is safe. So you're trying to
drag his attention off of the problem and he knows that's not safe, so he's
flying back in your teeth. So he's ARC breaking. He's flying off this way.
He's making extravagant statements to you. He is upset. He is caving in one
way or the other. He is upset! Now, exactly how does he get upset?
Well, he moves his attention just huh-huh-huh-huh. You're asking him
something now. "What goal would you like to - if you think that you had
when you were a small child? What goals you had?"
He's saying, "Huh - huh - huh. Do I dare look? Let's see. Let's see, all
right. Oh, well, it's safe enough. When I was a small child, let's see, I
had a goal of playing with trains. Yes, I had a goal of playing with
trains." And he knows he's doing something pretty adventurous. What is he
doing? He's actually putting his attention on a different part of the time
track and he knows that's not safe. But he is doing it, for your sake. And
if you've got the rudiments very heavily in and they're very well in and
he's very smoothed down and he's lots of confidence in the auditor, you can
do this. You can actually get his attention off of his main problems and
get an assessment and it all runs off and he doesn't get ARC broke hardly
at all. And everything is fine. And you wind up - and you've got his goal.
And you've got his terminal. And you can actually do it. And it's a good
thing to have because all of a sudden he feels swell about it. He feels
fine. Marvelous, he's got his goal and terminal - can still have his
attention on this problem. He got away with something, you see. That's
great.
Now as we start running him level by level, however, we start getting into
something else. He's got to keep his attention on the auditor, and he's got
to keep his attention on this terminal. And he's got to keep his attention
on and do the auditing command. And that is just too damn much mental
doingness.
He goes, then, by hidden standards. He resigns from the auditing session.
Runs it all on a circuit. He tries to get by with it. He vias the auditing
command so that he can still put his attention properly on the problem. And
boy, does he ARC break.
He ARC breaks and he gets upset, or he's just apathetic and just grinds -
which is a level below ARC breaking.
A pc who just sits there and grinds is very often not up to getting ARC
broke. Remember that. "Well, I see, you got - I guess you could put out a
king's eye with a poker. And a king could put out your eye with a - with a
- with an order. And somebody else could pput out a king's eye with a - I
guess uh - uh - uh - put out a king's eye with a... I've forgotten the
auditing command; what was it? Oh, how could you put out the king's eye?
Well, you could put out a king's eye with a. . . Oh, just put it out; just
put it out. That's all. Just put it out. Yeah. Just put it out. That's it.
Yeah, well, thank you very much for the session."
You watch that when pcs - they don't even have to run in that tone of
voice. It's just grind, grind, grind, you see, nothing occurring, nothing
much changing on the case. Ah, pc has got his attention on some horrendous
problem of some kind or another, and so he gives you this little attention
over here which is monotone. And any time a thetan's attention is monotone
on the lower ranges of the Tone Scale, you can just bet your bottom
kropotnik that the most of his attention is absorbed in some tremendous
problem that if he looked at it squarely and if it looked at him squarely
and it was all solved, the whole universe would blow up.
Attention is all absorbed over here because that's not a natural action.
One of the things that speeds up my auditing of pcs and that sort of thing
is because I look at them and I see them drifty-eyed and dreamy and so
forth and drifting off and getting apathetic and they're grinding and I say
very forthrightly, I say, "All right now. What are you looking at? What are
you doing? What are you thinking about? What are you worried about? Where's
this going? And where's the ARC break? And how - when did the havingness
start to go down? And what is this and what are you looking at? And what
are you worried about? And oh, well, that's what it is. All right. Now you
can tell me. It's okay." And after five or ten minutes of pleading with
them, they will get their attention off of the problem enough to actually
say what it is. See, because that requires an effort, too. See, it'd be too
much effort to say what the problem is, so it's kind of all operates as a
withhold. You see how a pc would act?
Every time you have an ARC breaky pc, you would - you have violated to some
degree fixation of attention on problems. It isn't just fixation of
attention; you have violated his fixation of attention on problems. You've
asked him to do something he doesn't consider safe. It is not your auditing
he is finding fault with. He is actually, merely finding fault with having
his attention shifted.
And when a person is in this condition, you have to work like mad to make
sure that you keep his attention centered where it is centered and not
shifted around. So therefore, a Problems Intensive is just about the
hottest thing you can do with a case because there's where his attention is
sitting.
But now what we've done is add up a way of getting backtrack problems, not
present time problems. We're getting backtrack problems which slide up and
become present time problems of long duration.
But we're getting the problems which underlie the hidden standards and then
we're getting the prior confusions which made the hidden standards and the
problems necessary.
In other words, we're turning loose machine guns, howitzers, hedgehogs and
a few atom bombs loose on this same problem. But all of it can be turned
loose because his attention is right where his attention is. His attention
is right there anyhow, I mean, so you haven't asked him to shift his
attention and he'll run a Problems Intensive like a lamb whereby he'd blow
up in your face and explode all over half the universe if you did anything
else. You see?
Therefore, it looks like very calm, safe, productive auditing - which it
is, of course - but it looks like, well, it looks like anybody could do it.
It gives that very definite appearance, you know. Well, anybody could do
this. It's rather a sloppy process, rather wide and so on. It actually
isn't a sloppy process. It actually isn't wide at all. You're just being
assisted like mad in running it by the fact that you're running the pc only
where the pc's attention is obsessively fixed and you never ask him to move
his attention very much. The only attention you're asking him to do is just
improve his attention so that he can feel confident and not have to worry
about sitting there in session. He can go ahead and worry about his problem
all he wants to. And you'll find out you don't have ARC breaky pcs if you
bust in on cases to this wise.
Now, we do need a Problems Intensive that covers the whole track, that
doesn't just devote itself to one lifetime. Whether I will ever dream one
of those things up or figure out a way to do that and so on is neither here
nor there. You have this one now. Be happy with that.
I would like to say one more thing. I've done a lot of talking here which
may or may not have assisted you. It may - might not be meaningful to what
you are doing. But auditors blame themselves because of ARC breaky pcs.
They think they must be doing something wrong. There is some self-blame of
some kind or another attached and pcs blame themselves because they ARC
break. So that if you can get a certainty as an auditor on exactly why a
session goes wrong, if you can see the exact mechanism and its exact
magnitude, if you can see exactly where a session is detouring and why a
session detours just in terms of a person's attention is on a fixated
problem of such magnitude, his attention is on this problem to such a
degree, it must be on it because of the tremendous importance of the
problem, that he doesn't dare have any other attention for anything so that
anything else that disturbs him causes him to go into - through this
phenomena you know as an ARC break and the only thing you have done is
disturb his attention.
But let me make one more comment on that which I think you will find of
great interest. You very often - as this Problems Intensive will eventually
demonstrate to you in running it on a pc - you very often have been running
pcs with present time problems without recognizing any part of it. And very
often a pc has, unknowingly to himself and unreceivedly by you, stated to
you many times his problem. He has stated many, many times his problem and
you have never heard it as a problem. You never hear it as a problem; you
go ahead and solve it. And yet he has told you this problem over and over.
And he ARC breaks when you're auditing him. And he gets upset and so on.
And yet he's actually telling you the problem in one way or another over
and over and over.
It is actually quite vocal. It's quite out loud. You're hearing it with
both ears, but it's not going any deeper than the drum. It's fantastic. A
problem is a problem. It is what the pc is worried about. That's what a
problem is or it's the problem of unresolvable long-parked timelessness of
conflicting forces which the pc can't do anything about or which is - he
feels he ought to do something about or somebody else ought to do something
about, but it's a big problem. And he will sit there in the auditing chair
very often and tell you over and over and over again his present time
problem of long duration and you never hear it.
And when you're running this Problems Intensive, you're very often going to
have a pc come up and give you something and something is going to go, if
you've been auditing before this, you say - go clink! "Now, wait a minute.
This pc's been saying this all the time." Well, don't feel silly. Don't
feel silly about it. You're going to run into problems that pcs have talked
about and talked about and talked about. Because you've never recognized
them as problems, usually on the basis that everybody has them or something
of that sort. I wouldn't actually - shouldn't actually generalize any
further than that, but I will give you a classic example of a problem that
went on for a very, very long time and actually neither the auditor nor
preclear in this particular instance recognized it as a problem.
The problem was how the pc could get some auditing and the auditor always
solved it by giving him some. Only, it was totally goofy because the pc was
basically worried about whether or not he could be audited! That was the
problem. Was he auditable at all? And the auditor always just audited him
to show him that he could have some auditing.
And they went on for a long time with the problem and solving the problem
and it interrupted every session and it upset every session and it went on
for the longest kind of a time. Why would it go on this long? Well, that's
just basically and flatly and positively the auditor never recognized that
any problem is a problem and there aren't certain problems that become
solvable targets. There aren't certain problems you should solve and
certain problems you should run.
I'm sure that nearly all of you at some - if you'll think it over, there
are certain problems that you feel should be solved, not should be run. The
pc has these problems and he doesn't recognize they are his problems and
then you do something about the problem as a problem.
Now, we go reductio ad absurdum. The pc says, "I am hungry." You say
immediately, "That is a problem," and so instead of feeding him, why, you
give him a big rundown on it. Well, what you've missed at this particular
point, you see, is it isn't a problem with the pc of long duration or
anything else. He's going through a repetitive cycle and he long since has
become totally submerged into the mishmash of this universe, so he no
longer considers any of these things problems. It isn't a problem. He gets
hungry every few hours, and that's just the way it is, you see. It's not a
real problem to the pc, so of course you wouldn't take it up as a problem.
You'd tell him, "Well, go on. Have something to eat."
But there are other ones. They're much more definite like this. They're
much more positive. Is there's the fellow with a problem of, well, "Can
auditors audit?" You know, he's an Instructor in an Academy and he's been
teaching a lot of auditors and he - something of that sort and he sits
there and, "Well, do you have any problems?" and so forth and he, well,
tpling! you know. "What problem was that?"
"Well, I was having a little problem with the students and so forth," and
about the third session that you get a pling! and he's having a little bit
of a problem with students, why, you'd better get busy, you know?
He's got a problem. He's got a present time problem. What is this present
time problem? And you start searching it out. You find out by this time
that it's with these - with students. Well, all right.
And, "What is this problem with students? Now phrase this problem with
students. What is this problem with students? Now, all right, how would you
describe that? All right. State that as a problem. All right. Give me
another version of it. Now, what is this problem?"
And all of a sudden the fellow says, "Oooooooh, well, can - can - the
problem, actually, is not with students."
"Well, what is it with?"
"Well, it's why I became an Instructor."
"Well, why did you become an Instructor?"
"Well, I became an Instructor because I wanted to find out if people could
audit. And I don't think they can, you know. And uh - it's - it's - the
problem is how to get audited by people that I know can't audit-including
you."
You get the idea? So you very often take the matter-of-fact problem that
you think is just - you should just go right ahead and solve and it's
actually right in there. It's a real present time problem. It's a real,
honest-to-goodness, dyed-in-the-wool, got-bronze-stars-on-it present time
problem. There it is.
And if you say, "This is ordinary. This is usual. This is natural. This is
like eating. So, therefore, we don't have to take it up." Well, I'll call
something to your attention: A problem on the subject of Scientology is of
the order of magnitude of a withhold on the subject of Scientology.
Now, you've seen a withhold stop a case cold, haven't you? Have you ever
seen a withhold stop a case cold? Do you have any reality on that at all?
Hm?
Audience: Yes.
All right. Now can you imagine a present time problem on the subject of
Scientology stopping a case cold? Right?
Well, that doesn't mean that you should pay attention to every present time
problem the pc has, just making eight sessions out of it or something like
that. But watch this pc and if he starts coming up with problems about
Scientology, then for heaven sakes get it stated, measured, so forth. "Have
you got a present time problem?" Cling! And it's something about
Scientology and so forth, give it the same order of magnitude that you'd
give a withhold on the subject of Scientology.
And this fellow says, "Well, I got a withhold. I didn't phone my boss from
the country club be - and tell him I was not coming back to work on Monday.
I had a withhold from him."
You know, that's the bing you get. Well, man, you could run the case weeks
with that withhold and nothing would have happened.
"Well, I made an appointment to be audited yesterday and then I didn't keep
it." Now, try to get over that one. Because the withhold is on the subject
with which the pc is dealing at the instant he's being audited. So,
therefore, the auditing itself and the presence of the subject matter
itself are a restimulator to the withhold or to the problem and everything
you are doing is a restimulator to the withhold or the problem.
He can forget about his boss; his boss isn't here. But he can't forget
about Scientology; he's being run on it. So you give present time problems
on
the subject of Scientology the same order of magnitude you'd give withholds
on the subject of Scientology.
When you're assigning somebody to do a Security Check, always assign the
last two pages of Sec Check Form 3. The last two pages. You'll find, there,
they outweigh all of the earlier pages. If there's anything wrong there,
it'll just park the case in its tracks. Well, similarly a problem. And
because you're an auditor and the pc says, "I have a problem about
auditors. I just don't ever seem to have an auditor, to have a problem."
Get him to state it, for heaven sakes.
Don't solve it by being a better auditor than he's had before. Get the
idea? Because you're running a pc who has a continuous, constant present
time problem and the case will behave just like a case with a present time
problem. And it will ARC break and it will get very upset and it will blow
all over the place and it will be very critical of the auditor and it will
do all of these things. Why? You're running a case with a present time
problem. How did you miss it? Well, you ran a case with a present time
problem and missed it because the present time problem is something you're
solving. That's the most usual course of human events.
You don't look at the problem the pc's got because you are doing the
solution to it. The solution to it is right in his hand. So, therefore,
there is no particular reason to handle as a problem.
The problem I just discussed with you just a moment ago was in existence
for eleven years before it was contacted. Now, smile over that one if you
want to. It was in existence for eleven years.
Could the person ever get any auditing? That was the problem and it was
eleven years before it was suddenly detected. The pc, of course, had never
gotten any auditing in all those years, because he was being audited over a
present time problem of could he ever have any auditing during those eleven
years. How do you like that? Interesting, isn't it?
So a present time problem - and the only thing I will give you is a passing
note on all of this Problems Intensive - a present time problem in
rudiments, a present time problem in the produ - in the Problems Intensive
is not what the auditor would like to think a problem is; it is what the
problem is to the pc and what the pc thinks the problem is and what is a
problem to the pc.
Whether the auditor is solving it or not solving it or what he's doing
about the problem or how intimate the problem is to an auditing session or
any of these considerations have nothing to do with it. A problem is simply
a problem and it is a problem to the pc. If it is a problem, it is a
problem to the pc. It may be a problem to you but not a problem to the pc,
you see. It's "What's the problem to the pc?"
The problem is yours. Every time you give him an auditing command, he
coughs in your face. No problem to the pc. You could keep - you keep
running him, you know. You keep running him on "What part of that cough
could you be responsible for?" Doesn't do anything for the cough because it
isn't a problem to the pc. And you can't solve problems for a pc who
doesn't have them as problems.
I know I've said something that sounds terribly obvious, but it's true. You
can't run and solve and clear problems to - in a pc if they're not problems
to the pc. It sounds an awful obvious statement, but very often auditors
have made up their minds what's a problem to the pc, dive in immediately,
run that because that's a good, hot, juicy problem and it's the fact that
the auditor - the auditor misses the fact that the reason he doesn't like -
well, there is something about coughing. He always has a problem about
coughing.
What is it? Well, it's how to wash pocket handkerchiefs.
"Well, it - what about coughing?"
"Oh, there isn't anything about coughing. It's handkerchiefs, though. My
poor mother, you know. You know, she might have had to have gone out and
taken in washing to support us children."
"Well, what's the problem here?"
"Well, there isn't any problem."
"All right. Do you have a present time problem?"
No, he doesn't have a present time problem. Skip it! See, no matter while
it should look to you dramatically that the thing ought to be the problem,
the problem is what registers on the meter and what is a problem with the
pc. And a problem is what it is no matter how idiotic you think it is.
See, don't edit problems, because you can miss problems. And problems that
have directly to do with auditing have more weight on the case in slowing
it down than any other type of problem. Just like withholds that had to do
with Scientology have more stoppage value on a case than any other type of
withhold. Okay?
Well, I hope some of this information about how you do a Problems Intensive
is valuable to you. I see that you are sailing into them now and you will
be doing them left and right and I think a lot of fur is going to fly and
you'll probably have lots of questions to ask about it next week.
In the meanwhile, thank you very much.


