Intensive Procedure - Lecture 4 (7ACC 540707)
Series: 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)
Date: 7 July 1954
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
Let's go on now with the fourth lecture on Intensive Procedure. We're taking this up now in terms of its goals, take it up in terms of its patter. I want to give you a very fast rundown of patter.
The first thing we see here which will look like technique to most people is ARC Straightwire. Well, ARC Straightwire sits there at Step 3 more or less as a test of the preclear: shall we go to Route 2 or shall we keep right on going with Route 1. Criteria is simply whether or not the preclear has a communication lag with ARC Straightwire. The patter in this case is "Now let's see if you can recall something that's real to you." "And let's recall a time now when you were in good communication with somebody." "A time when somebody was in good communication with you." "Let's recall a time when you felt some affinity for somebody." "When somebody felt some affinity for you." That's the totality of the patter in that list.
You must pay attention to communication lag. Communication lag is the time between the posing of the question and the receipt of an answer to that question, no matter whether talk or silence intervenes. And we do mean an answer to that question, we don't mean an indirect reply but a direct reply. Now, that means it will take sometimes a long time to get a reply from a preclear. All right?
If the preclear demonstrates a communication lag on the question asked which is a remarkable lag, we would, of course, ask the question again. And if he again demonstrates a long lag, which he would, naturally, we ask the question again and we ask it again and we ask it again, until we are getting a stable lag – which is to say, if the lag which he is achieving now is uniform. Even if it's ten seconds long, if it's uniform we have a stable lag and that is on one question. "Can you recall something that's quite real to you?" Okay. Long communication lag. He gives you something. Then we would say, "Can you recall something that's quite real to you?" And you get a long communication lag; maybe not so long. "Now can you recall something that is quite real to you? Something else that's quite real to you? Something else that's quite real to you?" All right.
We get it down now to a point of where we ask that question and we get a five-second communication lag, more or less. And we ask it again and we get, on the reply, the communication lag was five seconds. And we ask the question again and the lag was five seconds. We have established right there a stable communication lag for our purposes. We've actually shortened the general lag in the case, but we're not interested too much in that with this particular case – with this particular Step 3. We've improved the case. Sometimes a person, simply by recalling something that is real, is able to establish sufficient contact with his past or persons in it to rehabilitate himself considerably in life. That's an interesting statement because it seems to be quite a broad one, but it nevertheless is a very true one.
So, we wouldn't just ask this list consecutively, you see. We would ask the one question until we got a stable lag. Well, the truth of the matter is if you got a long communication lag from the preclear on question number one of this patter – which is "Can you recall something that is quite real to you?" – Route 2, just like that. So, we don't really care whether he answered very much on that, but we do care if we flattened the lag because we leave him hung up in a communication lag or we'll leave him stirred up one way or the other and we shouldn't do that. We'll slow down our processing then by failing to flatten his communication lag with the question we asked.
So, the truth of the matter is that although ARC Straightwire's total patter has just been given to you, on a case that had a long lag, you would only use the first question: "Can you recall something that is quite real to you?" That's the only question we would use if it's established – immediately – a long lag with the case. Why waste time? You mean you're going to go the next forty-five minutes with this case just trying to go over this list once? Well, it would undoubtedly be of great benefit to the case, undoubtedly benefit the case considerably and it has value. But the process that is quite senior to this would be the next one you would enter him into, because you would go immediately after witnessing a communication lag on "Can you remember something real?" (and flattening it, remember), you would go immediately to Route 2 and you would run Step R2-16, Opening Procedure of 8-C, Parts (a), (b) and (c).
If you receive no communication lag from the preclear – no noticeable lag – you could simply go on through the rest of the list, just to make sure. And this, oddly enough, would be what you would do. If you received no noticeable lag, you say, "Can you remember something that's quite real to you?"
He says, "Why sure, yeah."
"What is it?"
"Oh, my mother uh – talking to me when I was a kid."
"What was she talking to you about?"
"Oh, she's just talking to me about bringing in my toys and things."
"Okay. Now can you remember something else that's quite real to you?"
"Yep." See.
"What was that?"
"Well, my father bawling me out for having brought all my toys into the living room."
And you say, "Well, okay. Now something else that's quite real to you?"
"Well sure."
"What's that?"
"Well, the gardener. He was always plowing my toys into the flower beds."
"Well, do you remember one particular toy here or something or other?"
"Yeah. Well, what I'm remembering is I had a baseball and it stayed lost for about two weeks. And when I found it, I tried to accuse him and he told the whole family on me. I – we, yeah."
You say "Okay." Well, that's stable see – stable lag.
But, you would then go on and ask the remaining questions. Why? Well, you just might have discovered a little bit of glibness here. Rather than go on and give the fellow a failure, let's go on with the list. "Now you remember a time when you were in good communication with somebody?" We've already stabilized his lag so we don't have to ask this over and over and over. And he says, "Uh – sure."
"When?"
"Oh, this morning."
"What happened this morning?"
"Oh, landlady said goodbye to me." Okay.
You could then go right on and say, "Well, do you remember a time when you were in good communication with somebody?"
"Yep, sure."
"When?"
"When I said hello to you and walked in here."
"Well, all right. And now, can you remember a time when you felt some affinity for somebody?"
"Sure."
"When?" you say.
"Well, right now."
"Well, what time did you recall just at that moment?"
"Right now."
Right about this time you'd kind of wonder about the case. The case is recalling incidents which are instantaneous with present time and you have said definitely "recall." It's all right – no lag, no lag. That's your only criteria. So, then you'd say, "All right, now can you recall a time when somebody felt some affinity for you?"
"Sure, letter I got this morning from my wife."
You say, "All right, be three feet back of your head." We're at Route 1, Step 4.
He probably would be, undoubtedly would be – he might be back of his head, occluded; back of his head mixed up in some facsimiles or back of his head, not too well oriented, but he would probably be back of his head. See, so that's your only concern as an auditor.
Now, supposing you did and you didn't notice any lag and you said, "Be three feet back of your head."
And he looked at you blankly and he said, "What do you mean? Be three feet back of my head, what – what do you mean?" Route 2, This command, by the way, bangs them out when they're going to come out so darn fast that you get into no arguments.
Now, once in a while a person can be perfectly agreeable – perfectly agreeable with you and say, "Yes, I'm three feet back of my head." But the funny part of it was he was agreeable all through the ARC Straightwire too. You wouldn't have found out he was just being agreeable and saying "Yes" when you expected "Yes" to be said unless you had pursued each one of the Straightwire – ARC Straightwire questions the way I just pursued it, see. That would tell you whether or not he really was remembering something.
But even so, one can still get out from under you. And he can say, "Yes." And you could go on then – and this has happened, by the way – you could go on and work him as what we used to call and still call a Step I for the next five hours. That's actually happened – happened to a young man without any real recognition of being exteriorized. And the clue in that case would be about the only clue you really needed. He had an eye flutter and a certain strangeness about him which was very like an hypnotic trance and that was the giveaway on the case. In this case "Be three feet back of your head," and he was perfectly happy to say, "Yes," he was three feet back of his head. But, this case was not tested by ARC Straightwire before he was told to be three feet back of his head. So even that one probably would get included in exactly the formula we have here.
But remember that a case can simply agree with you mechanically and unless you actually discover whether or not the case is actually doing what you're saying or is simply agreeing with you, they'll miss you once in a while. So don't get a miss like this. That would be kind of dull auditing, actually, to get a miss of this character.
So, we didn't get any communication lag – no noticeable lags on ARC Straightwire – and by no noticeable lags I mean a half a second response, a second response, something on that order. That's not a noticeable lag. It just takes so long to converse politely and this is how long it took for him to answer. And that's no noticeable lag. So, we went right into Route 1 and we ask him to be three feet back of his head. Fine.
And he says, "Huh! Yep … uh … huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah."
You say immediately, "Now what are you looking at?"
And he says, "Well, I'm kinda looking at the room here … uh ..
"All right, now make a picture" – you have to be a little bit more graphic with the preclear who doesn't know any patter or anything – "Now make a picture just like the one you're looking at." "Now make a picture just like that first thing you saw there – another one." "One at a time. Now another one just like it." "Now we call that duplication." "Now duplicate it again." "You got that, now duplicate it again." You've defined the word for him and then used it. "Duplicate it again." "Duplicate it again." "Now take all those duplicates and push them all together, all those pictures, and push them all together and eat them up." Or, pull them into yourself or push them into the body. Do anything you want with them. But actually, you as an auditor would probably be interested in having him remedy his havingness with these duplicates, so that's fine. The point is here, don't go on leaving them sitting there. Do something with them. That's what's important about that; just do something with all those duplicates he just got through making.
Now supposing he said, "There's blackness."
You say, "Get a patch of blackness just like that" "And another one," "And another one," "And another one," "Another one," see. I mean, you have him duplicate the blackness no matter what you found him looking at, because you every once in a while find a preclear with a temporary visio shut – off who exteriorizes like mad. You'll every once in a while find this preclear. He just happens to be stuck a little bit in a facsimile and he exteriorizes and it's kind of black and a little bit of auditing will turn his visio on. And this same process right here, that we're using, will either improve his visio if he's seeing or will turn that blackness into something else if he's not.
There's a variation which I use occasionally, is I tell them to put – if they're found to be occluded, I tell them to put another sphere bigger than that around them. "And now look through the first sphere and see that second one." "Now put another sphere even bigger all around you." "Now look through that first one you made there, at this one you've just now created." And they very often find that they have to go outside to make sure that they really put that other one around – just concentric spheres having them look through the blackness each time. But that's a trick. You don't even have to know or use that trick. This other technique of Route 1 will watch for you; I mean, it's very good.
So, he did. He made all these duplicates – whatever he was looking at. We didn't have him mock-up anything. There's no more significance to this than we want him to duplicate something, that's all – duplication, essential part of the Communication Formula. All right.
And now we want him to find a nothingness and duplicate that many times. And the patter used for that is "Okay, now look around and see if you can find a nothingness someplace. Can't find one, why, create one."
"Oh, I got one here," he says.
"All right, get another one just like it." "And another and another and another and another." "And duplicate it again and again and again and again." "And again and again and again and again and again." He thinks that's fine. Why? Because it's no-form communication. He as a thetan can best communicate with something that doesn't have any form, so he's very happy to communicate with nothing.
Now, you've asked him to do that several times. Now, you tell him to do what he pleases with all those nothingnesses, which will sound silly to you but actually, occasionally, they have some energy in them and they're parked around. And you've cluttered up his environment one way or the other by specifically pointing out a bunch of spots. So, you have him just do something with those. You say, "Well, do what you please with those nothingnesses." Okay.
"Now, let's find the two back upper corners of the room." That's back of his body. Why not in front of his body? Well, if he does it in front of his body, he'll just pick up a ridge or something and put it up to the corners. Quite curious. You do it in back of his body. There's where the vacuum areas and so forth – the nailed-down areas are and so on. There's his customary position, when he's running a body, is behind it. A body is hard to run from in front.
Okay. So, we ask him to hold the two back upper corners of the room. We say, "Locate them." "Now, hold on to them." "All right, now just hold on to them and don't think" – the patter employed, "Hold on to them and don't think." Now, you take it preferably by the clock for a couple of minutes – by the clock – two minutes by the clock. Because as you're auditing along, your concepts of time may or may not agree with somebody else's. And yet you do have a meeting ground of agreement and that meeting ground is the physical universe. And as you have the physical universe as a meeting ground, take it by the clock. All right.
Your two minutes might seem an eternity to you and be three seconds to him. The trouble thetans have about this sort of thing. All right.
So, he's holding on to those two back corners of the room and not thinking and then you tell him to let go. Next command is "Let go." Okay.
"Now," you say, "Find some places where you're not." Now, how many do you make him find? Well, if he has any difficulty whatsoever, you just make him find dozens and dozens, see. "More places where you're not." "Another place where you're not." "Another place where you're not." "Another one." "Another one," "Another place." "Another place." "Another place." "Another place." And you get it down because again, this is a study in communication lag. How long did it take him to discover a place where he wasn't? That is basically a communication lag. So, we flatten the lag on where you were not.
And then we turn around (of all the things that we could do) and we have gotten down here, now – that's Route 1, Step 7, Places Where He's Not – and we go to Route 1-5. "And now, what are you looking at?" you say. He's just got to find some more places where he's not, so he's obviously looking at something else.
"What are you looking at now?"
"Okay," he says, "I'm looking at the window."
You say, "Okay, well duplicate it. And duplicate it and duplicate it, you know, get another one just like it, duplicate it. Now, how are you doing that? Oh, you're putting them up that way. All right, that's fine, now duplicate it again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And another duplicate. And another duplicate. And another and another and another and another and another and another. Now understand these are separate duplicates," you tell him, "each one is a new distinct duplicate and each time you're duplicating the window, not the last duplicate. Okay, and let's get another one and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one. Now take all those duplicates and push them all together and pull them into yourself. You got them?" Whatever you want to tell him, that's not essential – don't leave them there. And we go back through it again. All right.
Now that he has done this: "Now find a nothingness and duplicate it many times." "Okay, and do what you please with those." "All right, now hold the two back corners of the room and sit there and don't think."
And how long do you do this? Remember, I told you in an earlier lecture about perception change – not how long do you hold the two back corners of the room, but how long do we keep on with this after we tell him to let go and find some places where he's not. How long do we keep on with this? Well, you better keep on with it as long as you can get a perception change out of the technique, because the truth of the matter is Route 1, Step 5 through and including Route 1, Step 7 here are a package process of increasing the perception and certainty of exteriorization on the part of the preclear. And that is the goal of that package process. You'd keep it up as long as you got a perception change. That is the other rule. How long do you use a process? How long do you use a technique before you change horses and change design and do something else? As long as you're getting perception changes. And if you go on getting perception changes with this preclear – very obvious perception changes – boy you keep on using it. Because you'll get perception changes with these steps here – Route 1-5 to Route 1-7 inclusive. You will get those changes. And as soon as it starts to flatten out and there's no really big, observable perception changes coming in, you then go to Route 1-8.
And this is an exteriorized method of running Viewpoint Straightwire; that's what Route 1-8 is – exteriorized method of running Viewpoint Straightwire. And it is itself the directly applied formula of Viewpoint Straightwire. It's the formula of Viewpoint Straightwire directly applied to the preclear. Now, we've raised his perceptions as high as they'd raise immediately on this technique of running it over and over again, and he seemed to be in pretty good condition. So, at this point, we have him discover many things which he considers safe to look at.
Now, we never discover a preclear and then test to find out whether or not he actually looked at it or not. Because a thetan is so ready to run away, to hide, to disappear, to mask what he is actually doing from himself, that the truth of the matter is the number of dodges which he will use to look are past computation on the part of an auditor. And he may not know, at the time you're auditing him, he's using dodges of this character. He's got a machine maybe that takes a facsimile of a book and then it brings the facsimile of the book up above the book and makes the actual book disappear. Then it's safe to look at the facsimile of the book, see. But he's really, as far as he can define at the moment – he's kind of muddled up and confused, maybe or something – and as far as he can define at the moment he is actually looking at the book.
Now, if you as an auditor open the book and say, "What page?" Why don't you just shoot the preclear? I mean, you couldn't do a more shocking thing to this preclear than to do that. Because you'll show him all in a rush, that he's using all kinds of machines, that he's highly artificialized, that his locational skill is not good, that his perception is shot and so forth.
So, he's easy to invalidate at this level. Why? Being naked out there all by himself without any head around him, he's quite leery of energy. And invalidation is the reasonable manifestation of being struck with force. The rationale of being struck with force is called invalidation. And a person who is afraid of being invalidated is being afraid of being struck by force; he's afraid of being struck. A person who invalidates himself is a person who simply goes around hitting himself with zap – with energy beams. They have machines set up so that they get on a certain spot, it'll surprise them no end to be hit by this energy machine. Oh, they have all sorts of tricky items to self-zap themselves, to give themselves an electric shock, actually. And the walk-around Homo sapiens' manifestation of having such a machine is simply this: The walk-around manifestation is self-invalidation. After I've done this and I've said, "It's okay," why, then I sort of say, "Well no, it's not okay and I'm no good" and so on. And this is the manifestation verbally to themselves. But the truth of the matter is they have self-zapping machines set up that knock them around, and this is very surprising and very cute.
So, we never put a preclear early in processing into a position where he can be invalidated. And we never put him in a position where he can be invalidated if we can possibly help it, until we have gone right on up and cleaned up those self-invalidating machines and a lot of other machinery, and we've had him create some machinery and do other things with machines – which we will get into here shortly.
You just stick with this, then, "You consider these things safe to look at." That's what you want to know. "Now something in this environment which it would be safe for you to look at." "And something else which it'd be safe for you to look at." "Can you find something else it'd be safe to look at." "Something else it would be all right for you to look at." ("All right" is really a better word.) "Something else it would be all right for you to look at." "Something else it would be all right for you to look at." "Something else around here it would be all right for you to look at." "Something else," "Something else," "Something else," "Something else," "Something else," round and round and round. See? That is a direct formula of Viewpoint Straightwire – is to increase his tolerance of perceiving everything on the Know to Sex Scale.
Well, there is more to this process, Route 1-8, than is given here. There's Emotion, there's Effort, there's figure-figure computing, there's Symbols, there's Eatingness, there's Sex and confusions and mysteries. Well, look at all those things. How would you get him to experience them?
Well, the rest of the process that would be headed under 8, there, would simply be this. Let's ask him to be in various places where these things would exist and we just use the Know to Sex Scale. "Now what – all right – what emotion would it be safe for you to look at now?" Well, instead of asking him to figure-figure, just ask him to move around various places until he can find that kind of an emotion somewhere on Earth or in the world. Just ask him to move around until he can see if he can locate this kind of an emotion somewhere.
Well, actually you're not addressing him very specifically and he's just got his mind on something else and he's not going to fall in any holes or get upset. And you've actually started a little bit of Change of Space Processing on him. Well, just have him go around and see if he can find some emotion that he doesn't mind watching. He finally finds an angry man in a bus and he's all set then. And he finds out "Gee, you know, I can sit here and watch that guy get mad all over the place."
"All right, find some other emotion that you wouldn't care – wouldn't mind looking at – care if you looked at." And he finds something else and he finds somebody that's excited or somebody that's apathetic, and he discovers that's all right. In other words, you send him out in the world, looking around, looking around for something it's safe to look at after you remedied whether or not it was safe for him to look. You remedied that first and you remedied that thoroughly. Boy, he found all kinds of things, you know, that he could look at. It was perfectly safe for him to look, nothing was going to happen to him by just the fact of looking. You reassured him on this basis, then you could take it up and get very specific. "What emotion can you find out somewhere in the world right now that it would be safe for you to perceive?" Let's have him go instead of sit there and try to figure it. Now, that's a process; that's quite a process.
You think he's all set now. And emotion, that's fine, he found a lot of emotions and he was quite excited about that. But the one that you're really gunning for is "Mister Effort." "All right, now let's chase around the world and see what we can find in the way of effort that you wouldn't mind looking at."
"Oh-oooooh effort, let's see – let's see. Effort, effort, effort. Uh-well, there's a bird flying up here," he'll say, something like that.
"All right, there's a bird flying up there. Now is it all right for you to witness that much effort, look at that much effort?"
"Oh sure, that's – that's fine, that's fine; there's nothing wrong with that."
"Well, let's see if you can find something else that's in motion," and so forth.
"Well, there's a steam shovel over there on the other side of town."
"Well, is that comfortable for you to look at?"
"Well, comfortable! Oh, that's something else. You said was it all right for me to look at it."
"Well, is it comfortable for you to look at it?" And you don't want to jump him on this word "comfortable" until you've gone this deep into this type of processing. And now, you get very insistent that he find things that are real comfortable for him to view in the way of effort. What's comfortable for him to look at in the way of effort, now?
"It sure isn't comfortable watching all of those gears and rods and so forth on that steam shovel." It isn't. He has to get way back and he watches it in a very, very careful way and then he's looking at a facsimile of it – only you don't tell him this.
You just have him chase around and find things that are in motion and in action until he can find a level of effort which he can tolerate with great comfort. And he'll eventually come back and take a look at the steam shovel and see the real steam shovel and go, "Ha! Steam shovel, so what." Perfectly all right.
Now, remember that because you're chasing him around, he's still liable to have something on the subject of havingness. When in doubt, remedy havingness and that's the first step in here where we have any concern with havingness. That's because we're actually doing some Change of Space there.
Now that step is a lot of fun to do. It is as good as the auditor is good, really. The auditor uses the standard commands, "What in this room would it be all right for you to look at?" And then you stop mentioning whether or not it's in the room that it's all right for him to look at. Just get him used to looking at a lot of things. And he finds out that it's all right for him to look at a lot of things, a lot of items one after the other. Let him find them, let him pick them out, let him do the looking and so on. Then we boost him into emotion, but this time we get a little more insistent on it. See, if we can find that emotion around someplace in town or something of the sort, and see if it's all right for you to look at it – look at somebody having that emotion and so forth. And we do that quite a few times. And now, what we're really laying for him with a club is effort and we want him to get comfortable about it. Up to this time, we didn't care whether he was comfortable or net. But now we are very careful about whether or not he is completely comfortable about this. And it may be that the entrance level that you finally beat him down into accepting as entirely comfortable will be a shadow of something in moonlight, seen from a vast distance. He can really tolerate that much motion. And then you build the gradient scale of motion from there. You find him something else it's comfortable for him to look at, and he will eventually change his mind about looking at things which are in motion.
Up to that time, he'll do all kinds of substitutions to keep from actually looking at things which are in motion. He'll take facsimiles of them, pictures of them and look at the picture. Or he'll get the idea of it and do a mock-up, entirely disrelated to it. He'll do all kinds of mechanical things there to keep from looking at motion.
So, here's where the auditor, really for the first time, starts to use distrust with a capital D. We want things that are comfortable for him to perceive, real comfortable that are in motion, that are exerting effort. And that actually, although we could go all the way down to the bottom scale of the Sex Scale is found to be practically negligible in therapeutic value really below the effort band. You could carry that out. You could have him look at symbols it would be all right for him to look at.
INTENSIVE PROCEDURE: LECTURE IV PAGE 2 7ACC-16A - 07.07.54