Dianetics 55! 1955 Chapter 13
Chapter 13: The Processing of Communication
If you will examine the Six Basic Processes you will discover that they are communication processes. The efficacy of 8-C derives from the fact that it places into the realm of knowingness communication with the physical universe. The physical universe does not give us back answers, but the Opening Procedure of 8-C remedies to a marked degree the liability of this no-answer situation by making the individual aware of the fact that walls are simply walls, that chairs are chairs, and floors floors, and ceilings ceilings. Opening Procedure by Duplication is processing another facet of communication: Terminals, the object (terminal) at Cause interchanging flow with the object (terminal) at Effect. Elementary Straightwire is simply a communication with the past, and securing of answers from the past, in other words, using the past as a terminal. Havingness, in itself, describes the mass at a terminal, or masses, and Spotting Spots in Space improves the tolerance of an absence of a communication terminal.
These Six Basic Processes, as designed, bring an individual up a gradient scale of tolerance for more and more communication. Once a preclear has been pressed through these he is ready for the direct processing of communication. He is not ready for the direct processing of communication until he has been put through these Six Basic Processes.
The ability of an individual depends upon his ability to communicate. The first and foremost of mechanical abilities is this communication ability. An individual who cannot communicate with something will become the victim of that something. That which a person withdraws from in this universe becomes, to a marked degree, his master. That which one fears becomes one’s master. If an individual were willing to communicate with anything and everything in the entire universe he would then be free in the entire universe. Additionally, he would have an unlimited supply of distances and terminals. A barrier, perforce, is something which an individual cannot communicate beyond. When we see space as a barrier, its total operation as a barrier is the inability of the individual to be at the other extreme end of that space or outside that space. When we see energy as a barrier, we simply see it as something which will not permit the egress or ingress of an individual. When we see mass, walls or time as a barrier, we mean „imagined impossibility of communication.“ If you do not imagine that you cannot communicate, then there cannot be a barrier.
At the same time we are placed up against this conundrum: in the absence of communication, in the absence of interchanges of communication, in the absence of other terminals, flows, and terminals to which others can communicate, an awareness of awareness unit is not, by its own consideration, living. Livingness is communication. Communication is livingness. We add to this the variant degrees of Affinity. We add to it Agreements and attain Reality, but still these are only significances entered into communication. Any and all types of significances can be entered into communication in order to „give a reason for“ communication. These „reasons for“ are simply reasons for a game, reasons to have communication.
In the light of the concept of Pan-Determinism we see that an individual has to assume that he cannot know what another is talking about if he wishes to communicate with and depend upon the communications of that other. In other words, he has to pretend he cannot communicate. An individual who has some sort of barrier around him must pretend that he cannot communicate beyond that barrier. Actually this is nothing more nor less than a pretence. These barriers are the shadows through which the fish would not move. They could have swum through these shadows except for the fact that they did not believe they could penetrate beyond the shadows. It could be said that belief alone is the reason for any entrapment.
However, there are the mechanics of entrapment and we discover that an entrapment must be a communication barrier. An individual becomes entrapped in something because he does not believe he can communicate outside of it, or he becomes fixated on a terminal as a terminal himself.
To be very precise, the reason why an individual is entrapped has to do with scarcity of communication. An individual is still waiting, is still looking towards something, expecting it to communicate to him. It has not, and he has eventually turned his attention slightly off of this onto something else which he expects to communicate to him. And when this does not, he expects communication and so finds it elsewhere, but each time he sets up one of these expectancy lines he is to that tiny degree trapped against the terminal from which he was expecting but did not get communication. Thus, we have the entire bundle known as the reactive mind, the entire anatomy of ridges, and any other enturbulative mechanism, and even problems themselves, being a seemingly endless chain of communication scarcities.
What are the specific scarcities in a communication line? There is no scarcity of silence. Anyone has far too much silence. Silence might be conceived to be the native state of a thetan – an awareness of awareness unit – but it is not, for obviously a thetan is alive only to the degree that he is communicating, is action – concentrated only to the degree that he is living. We discover that the tiny cells of the body consider themselves to be the very mirrors of truth when they are the most silent. There is an interesting and peculiar test here where the auditor has the preclear mock up in any area which contains a somatic a great many answers or originated communications from these „dead cells“ and we discover this somatic-ridden area coming to life, waking up, becoming active once more. This in itself is a specific for all types of somatics. All one has to do is to have the preclear mock up answers in these dead cell areas. An ultimate truth, which is studied to a far greater extent in „The Creation of Human Ability“, is a Nothingness, but this ultimate truth is not Life. Life is composed of this pretence that one cannot communicate, that one must communicate. It is composed of this intricate tangle of communications and self-erected barriers which give us games. When we get too deeply immersed in this game, when answers get entirely too scarce, we forget that we were the one who interposed the idea that no answers were to be given.
Silences do not process. There is entirely too much silence on the track. Remember that: it does not process. You can fill silence, but silence itself is death. When you process silence you process the preclear down towards death, not upward towards life. The way to process him upward towards life is by supplying abundance of communication. We find the preclears who are in the worst condition are the preclears who are the most silent, the most out of communication. These are the closest to death, closest to aberration. The way to get them alive again is to remedy some of the scarcity of communication. For a preclear who is in very bad shape, or in common practice, any preclear you would encounter, you would use first the Six Basic Steps in order to bring the individual up to something approaching a livable communication strata. And then you would go immediately into the remedy of scarcity of communication by having him mock up himself, even if just as ideas, the various parts of a two-way cycle of communication.
The parts of a communication cycle that have to be remedied are: (1) originated communications, (2) people to communicate to, or other awareness of awareness units to communicate to, (3) answers, (4) acknowledgements, and additionally, but not as important, (5) arrivals, (6) departures.
It is not necessary that the preclear have the ability to mock up or put out and hear back sound. In other words, sonic and visio are net necessary to this process. The entirety necessary is the idea of communication. You might say you have him mock up a „verbalizing idea.“
A preclear will sort through, himself, pads (2), (3), (4), (5) and (6) if the preclear is simply told to „mock up some people speaking.“ He will, in rotation, get people answering, people acknowledging, people greeting him, and people saying goodby to him. Because the preclear is usually far down the Tone-Scale on origin and ideas, and because „necessity level,“ other determined forces, have been necessary to get him into communication, it is likely that he will not, himself, spot the origination of communication, and the auditor will have to call his attention to this.
Remember this is not done on a preclear who has not first been put through his paces on the Six Basic Processes, for an auditor sitting there asking the preclear to mock up answers, or acknowledgements, or originated communications could not otherwise be sure that the preclear is doing this at all. Further, the preclear’s attention is very likely to stray into various portions of his own bank, for his bank starts to come to pieces under the impact of all these communications.
The preclear must be kept at his job. His mocking up of communications must be kept at a simplicity and out of deep significances, and if his attention seems to fixate upon flows and he begins to „wrestle with mass,“ the auditor should get him back into mocking up communication as fast as possible.
What degree of originality is required of a preclear in mocking up any of these originative communications, answers, or nowledgements?
The answer to this is „none.“ No variety is necessary whatsoever. Simply the idea of communication, with some sort of a specific idea being communicated, is all that is necessary. Having the preclear, silent himself, mock up before him something saying „Hello,“ and saying „Hello“ again, and saying „Hello“ again, and having him mock this up behind him saying „Hello,“ and saying „Hello,“ and saying „Hello,“ would be quite adequate for an originated communication. Having the preclear mock up any banality such as „All right,“ or „O.K.,“ serves very well for both answers and acknowledgements. We are not at all concerned with the significance of the communication. We do not want long and involved communications. The preclear will try to get off into them. He will also try to get into his prenatal bank, his early childhood, and eight lives ago. We do not want him to do this, we want him to go on mocking up originated communications, answers, acknowledgements. We are validating ability, we are not trying to get rid of inabilities in his past. We are trying to increase his ability to communicate in the present, and originate communications, and take a Pan-Determinism out of all communicating terminals. We are not trying to get him to run out anything in the past. I know that an old Dianeticist is going to have a very hard time restraining himself from running out the prenatal which immediately appears after the preclear has made something say „Hello“ to him 15 or 20 times. It is the auditor’s job to make the preclear go on having the preclear or something say „Hello“ or „Okay,“ or „I did it,“ and to ignore that engram. The number of engrams which will blow into view and beg to be run are countless. The auditor is not interested in these. Of course, if the preclear wants to ten the auditor about these, the auditor must permit the preclear to originate communication and must answer it simply to get the preclear to originate communication. He should not let the preclear go on, and on, and on discussing what has occurred, once the preclear has told him the essentials of it. The auditor wants to get the preclear back onto mocking up originating communications, answers and acknowledgements. The auditor is also making the preclear mock up something to talk to while he is doing this, a point which is cared for automatically and which is not addressed actually and actively in auditing. Naturally, if there is a spot in the air out there saying „Hello,“ or „Okay,“ or „I did it,“ the preclear is assuming that there is something alive there that can say „Hello“ to him.
All manner of thinkingness machines, large black masses, white and green fire, purple spheres, falling stars, shotting rockets, may appear in the preclear’s bank while he is undergoing this process. The auditor is not interested in this phenomenon, he is merely interested in getting the preclear to mock up further communication.
It does not matter if the preclear says these communications himself aloud or simply does them quietly to himself. The necessity here is not sound. Sound is a by-product of communication. It is the carrier wave of communication and is not itself communication.
Some interesting variations can be worked on this, but they are not advised, and indeed they violate the terms of this process, but they demonstrate how much power this process has. One has the preclear say aloud, „Okay, Mamma,“ a few hundred times. He will be amazed at the amount of variation which will occur, the communication lags, the impatience, the anger, the amount of data which will jump up about Mamma. But this data that is jumping up is simply the bank which is triggered to agree with what the preclear is doing at this moment. In other words, that is stimulus response. Restimulation is stimulus- response and is covered in great detail in „Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.“ We could clear away an ally, we could do almost anything we wanted to do in Book One with this process of remedying the scarcity of communications.
Another point immediately arises, as to whether or not Havingness has to be remedied on the preclear. It has not been found necessary to remedy havingness on the preclear if one is actually remedying the scarcity of communication. This is a great oddity, for the preclear’s bank, being composed of tangled and unfinished communication lines, starts to come apart the moment you begin to remedy the scarcity of originated communications, answers, and acknowledgements. Some of these black masses which the preclear has fondly held before his face blow into forever, and yet the preclear does not need his mass remedied. The reason why he had to have mass was to compensate for the lack of communication. Where you have had a lack of communication you are liable to have a mass. As an example of this, an individual loses an ally and then keeps close by him a ring which belonged to that ally. The ring is a substitute communication terminal for the ally. After a while one begins to believe that he really has to have mass; he doesn’t have to have mass at all.
The remedy of the scarcity of communications cures a person of having to have mass, having to eat obsessively, or do anything else obsessively.
Along with the remedy of originated communications, the preclear’s imagination rises quite markedly, and thus he is able to imagine new games and new ways of communication with sufficient rapidity to compensate for the old games which you are taking away from him. Actually the preclear, being a preclear, is a game, perhaps even the last last-ditch game in which the individual could engage.
When the auditor has the preclear run acknowledgements, the wording is: „I did it.“ This will remedy responsibility difficulties. All automaticity comes about through lack of acknowledgements (absent players, secret players).
In view of the fact that Pan-Determinism is control on all Dynamics, and in view of the fact that control is start, change and stop, one can have the preclear stop making things communicate for a moment, and then change the communication, and then start anew. This gives the preclear practice in starting, changing and stopping.
The auditing command which would go with this is simply, „Mock up some answers,“ „Mock up some original communications.“ „Mock up some acknowledgements,“ with enough guiding talk to give the preclear the idea that you do not want new, startling, difficult action but only the simple placing of communication ideas such as „Hello“ in the vicinity of the preclear over, and over, and over, and over.
The exact auditing commands to process communications are: Originated Communications: Auditor: „Have somebody out there,“ (indicating a spot in the air) „start saying ‘Hello’ to you.“ The preclear does so, is himself silent. When the process is long run: Auditor: „Start saying ‘Hello’ to a live spot out there.“ The preclear aloud, or as himself, does so.
Answers: Auditor: „Have a spot out there start saying ‘Okay’ to you.“ The preclear does this many times. Auditor: „Start saying ‘Okay’ to a spot out there.“
Acknowledgements: Auditor: „Have a spot out there start saying ‘I did it’.“ When the preclear has, many, many times: Auditor: „Start saying ‘I did it’ to a spot out there.“
The command that turns on a somatic, repeated often enough, will turn it off.
When in doubt, remedy havingness.
This is the processing of communication directly. Remember that it is done after one has already done the Six Basic Processes. Remember that a two-way communication is maintained with the preclear while it is being done, and remember that the preclear must be audited in full understanding and practice of the Auditor’s Code, 1954.