The Nature and Effect of Communication in Games (7ACC 540709)
Series: 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)
Date: 9 July 1954
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
Okay, I want to go over communication with you now again in its component parts.
You will receive, and you have in your Intensive Procedure, a very brief definition of communication, just enough to let you go along. But it doesn't talk much about the operation of communication, it just says what its component parts are. Component parts of Communication are Source-point, Distance, Receipt-point. That's parts. "Well, actually just prior to those is the Consideration and the Intention – the Consideration and the Intention. And then there's Attention and Duplication. So to communicate at all, an individual would have to have a desire to have himself Duplicated. See that?
Part of the rock-bottom intentions of communication are to be received and to be duplicated – to be received and to be duplicated. Of these two, neither one of them is really senior to the other one. But those are such fundamental parts of communication that they exceed, as far as the parts of communication is concerned, every other consideration. If a communication is going to exist, then – to be received and to receive, to be duplicated and to duplicate – occupy the very, very major role in consideration.
Above all other things in communication, then, these things are paramount: Source-point, Distance, Receipt-point with a consideration to be received and to be duplicated, to receive and to duplicate. And this requires, of course, direction, which is an integral part of communication. You know, you talk to the wall when you want to be heard by somebody standing on the other side of the room and you're not directionalizing your communication. So direction becomes an integral part of communication. And quite in addition to direction, some ability to estimate distance.
These are all inherent in communication: attention, with the intention of being received, being duplicated, of receiving, of duplicating, with the willingness to be a source-point or a receipt-point. Now, any time any one of these factors breaks down in terms of willingness, communication to that degree breaks down. And to the degree that a person does not want to receive or to be received – see, an individual could feel so degraded that he would not want to be received or duplicated. You know, he'd feel bad and so he doesn't want to be received or duplicated. And he'd feel that other source-points were so bad that he wouldn't dare receive or duplicate those. Well, he then enters upon a series of communications and an other-responsibility, so that he handles what he is pretending are source-points and receipt-points at a distance from him. So that he gets a consecutive line of communications, each one of which modify the following line so as to alter the communication. And instead of one channel of communication from source-point to receipt-point, this individual then utilizes a great many channels of communication and gets himself lost somewhere so that he can't be a source-point or receipt-point. And that is the condition of communication of Homo sapiens.
He needs a system to communicate. Why? Because he actually himself does not want to be received, does not want to be duplicated; does not want to receive and does not want to duplicate. And the answer to this is a complex system which will relieve him of all responsibility for any of these actions. And this is a consecutive line, each one of which minimizes the duplication as much as possible, so that he can stand remotely in some lost situation and actually not be communicated with and not communicate with. So he sets up machines which will carry the full burden of the communication lines.
And this is in essence the background theory of the preclear who gets lost. Why does he get lost? Well, he gets lost because he doesn't want to be precise in the estimation of distance or in the declaration of direction. One has to declare a direction and estimate a distance, as mechanical actions, and he has to want to be duplicated and want to be received, and he must want to duplicate and to receive.
And this, in essence, would require an individual who is right in there pitching to be willing to be source-point and receipt-point on exactly the same point. And space itself extends from the desire at length not to be source-point and receipt-point on the same point. That's where space comes from. They start putting space in there, so that there will be something to communicate with.
You put the receipt-point way over thataway, but you still want it to be you because you want it to duplicate you. You still want it to receive, but actually you're not completely willing to exchange on it. Now, there is the entrance into space.
But all these things are simply this: they are considerations which have been evolved as a part of a game. They have no more seriousness than that, but they can be considered to have seriousness because they themselves are simply consideration and because seriousness in itself is simply consideration. So, any type of communication could be considered – any type – and could then manifest itself. Somebody who is in good shape could say to himself – he could just do this, he could say, "Well, I… I certainly communicate badly." Well, how would he communicate badly? He'd have to go through this mechanism to communicate badly. He would have to get unwilling to be received, unwilling to be duplicated, to some degree unwilling to receive and some degree unwilling to duplicate.
He'd have to get unwilling to declare a direction and estimate a distance, and there and thereafter he would be in wonderfully bad communication condition.
Those are the component parts of communication. They are the component parts of communication solely because they are the agreed – upon parts of communication. And people can stay in communication one with another as long as these parts are agreed-upon. Therefore, they form the most fundamental of fundamentals on the full track. There's nothing more fundamental.
Now, beingness itself is simply declaring that one is the source-point, not that one is on a source-point or is occupying one – that one is a source-point. And that's an identification with a source-point and that immediately becomes beingness.
What is beingness? The technical definition of beingness would be an identification with a source-point or a receipt-point. That is what beingness is. All right.
Therefore, if we start working with a preclear, utilizing any parts of this Communication Formula, we will recover his ability to communicate. But the funny part of it is, is we have to recover his ability to communicate before he can get up to a point where he doesn't have to! Mostly because the considerations he has made are part of the lost structure of trying to be as remote as possible from source- and receipt-points. And he keeps backing off from these and he, therefore, must at least come over and sit down on a source-point at a receipt-point in order to recover from this horrible malady called communication.
Now, let's consider it an illness. Let's consider that perfect communication would be an illness which deteriorated and led to vast and horrible complexities. How could you be inoculated against it? Obviously, to get out of the field of communication, you would have to get out of the field of the Third Dynamic. That's rather obvious, isn't it? You'd just have to leave the Third Dynamic entirely alone even where your communication was only devoted to rocks or something, considering them to be people. You'd have to stop looking at things. You would have to be in a situation where you couldn't be looked at.
And you would have to have all source-points occupy all receipt-points. Well now, if you did this because you were unwilling to communicate, you'd be real sick and sure enough communication at that time would be a malady. If you had all source-points occupying all receipt-points and no distances or directions declared – willingness to duplicate, to be duplicated, to receive, to be received, gone by the boards – this would be a wonderful circumstance, wouldn't it? That would be real sick. That's catatonic schizophrenia. It's a malady, all right.
Well, let's go up the other way and find out that very probably, then, be best not to communicate at all. And so, we just drop all the postulates of source-point and receipt-point, and we just change our mind about all kinds of communications and so forth and we just back out of the universe this way – no, you'd be sick there too. And you could get sick then two ways: you can just decide to back out and there's no more to it and the other way would be that you would decide to pile all the source-points on all receipt-points. See, there would be two ways you could go about this and you would achieve the same end result.
I'm afraid that this malady called communication is in truth a very serious and terrible malady unless it is performed. It is a ritual which has its own discipline – a ritual with its own discipline. When an individual becomes unwilling to be received, to be duplicated, to receive, to duplicate or to be source-point, to be receipt-point in any direction – the ritual itself, then, is set up to go to work to make him sick.
There's an insistence on communication around here someplace. Well, the insistence is in the consideration itself. And the insistence is found in the DEI cycle. Desire-Enforce-Inhibit is a deteriorating consecutive manifestation. Desire is followed by Enforcement. Enforcement is followed by Inhibition, which is followed by Desire, which is followed by Enforcement, which is followed by Inhibition, which is followed by Desire, which is followed by Enforcement, which is followed by Inhibition.
And as we went downhill and downscale on the DEI cycle, yes, a person would become less and less able, less and less willing – less and less – in all different directions because of the discipline of communication itself. It is set up by its own postulates to be enforced and then inhibited. Mostly because the intention of the individual himself begins with a desire to be received, which is followed by an enforcement of his own receipt. If you tell a cop in a police state that he can't come in the house, then he'll break down the door or something, you know. But after he's broken down the door and hurt his knuckles and shoulder and so forth, why, he'll be careful about the next door he breaks down; he won't want to break down that door. In other words, here's another inhibition, here's another stage going on.
Its the individual's own desire to be received, then, which goes down these stages and enters the complexity – other thing. Well obviously, then, the main fault on the track with the individual would be that he warns to communicate with anything at all. And all he'd had to do is change his mind about needing to communicate with things and, of course, then his whole case would resolve instantly. That's obvious, isn't it? Except that it leaves all these other communication points around desiring to communicate with him and now he's cut communication, so we get another police action entering in to enforce the ritual of communication.
It's a ritual. That's all it is, all it ever was. It can be dignified by mechanics and other things and so on, but it's a self-enforcing ritual, which when any part of it is disobeyed becomes a police ritual. It polices itself, in other words. And everybody is agreed to this, and they think this is the best way to get along and they think this is fine. So, if they all have agreed to this, then, they must automatically have agreed to something else. They must automatically have agreed to the fact that it's best to be aberrated or best to have one's knowingness cut down. And sure enough, that's what they have agreed to. Because the first intention of a communication system is to cut down knowingness – first and primary intention of a communication system. And no matter how you look at it or how many ways you communicate, it always seems to cut down knowingness. And we get a game formed by cut-down knowingness.
Therefore, we could say that the visible truth of the matter is that somewhere, sometime, someplace – which is right now – there must be some horrible fact to be faced if one were to simply become oneself, totally serene, totally detached, totally disconnected from the remainder of the universe. There must be something horrible about that state to require a police agreement of this kind on the subject of communications. Yes, it's a police system, communications is, I mean – first and foremost, because it polices itself, that's the only reason it is. Once you break any part of it, why, it suddenly goes to work and it polices itself back into shape and punishes whoever broke any part of it. Oh, it's very, very savvy. But for people to have something like this sitting around, then there must be something horrible they are escaping from. And as far as we can discover, the most horrible thing that they are escaping from is total knowingness, total lack of time, total instantaneousness forever. That's obviously what everybody is escaping from, isn't it? Or is it?
Well, if this state of total knowingness and total serenity were not horrible, then one would certainly stop communicating and simply assume it. Is that right? He'd simply assume this state, wouldn't he? All that would be necessary for him to assume any kind of a state of this character would just be to simply abandon all parts of the communication system – swish! Abandon them all, though, and abandon them all simultaneously with no hangovers in any direction, before the system can police itself back into existence. Just have to skip everything. And if you did that, why, theoretically you'd get out into this state of total knowingness and total everything.
There must be something bad about that state. Must be. Just must be something horrible about that state. Or there's something very, very betraying in the first considerations that came through, that you ought to start communicating in the first place. I mean, that must have been a trick then, it must have been based upon a base betrayal. And this base betrayal, then, must have led one into communication. Because nobody would start communicating at all, you know, and of his own free will and accord, knowing very well where that would lead to. That's obvious, isn't it?
Oh, so there must be something horrible about being totally knowing, totally serene and without any time of any kind, so on. This must be dreadful and probably is – probably is. Undoubtedly is. You probably got that way and were awfully bored. Only trouble with boredom is it's a problem in barriers. You can always solve boredom. And boredom doesn't exist unless you're trying to go someplace, so we find boredom as part of the communication system – it's the affinity corner.
Well then, there isn't anything bad about this state of total serenity at all, is there?
Well, the way to assume it is simply drop all communication lines and all parts of the communication system – never do it anymore. That's what Buddha said – Gautama. He said in one of his lectures, discussions or discourses to a fellow by the name of Ananda: there were twelve things which you would just have to abstain from, and any two of them would bring you bliss. He's a great man but right there, there was a great big raw-tooth bear trap laid on the track. If anybody abandoned any of these two parts of anything – by the way, they're not the parts of communication but they're wonderfully similar to some of the processes which we handle. That is to say, he just groups a number of actions. And if you didn't ever do these actions anymore and if you just abstained from all these, then you'd get total serenity and so on.
Well, it looks to me like life is just life, isn't it? That it isn't bad or good unless you want to make it so. And that an individual could go into a 18 billion, trillion year communications spasm and then come out the other end unscathed. But think, he would have had all of the randomity. But look, that's a consideration too; that one has to have a game is a consideration too.
Oh look, this is too much of a problem. I mean, it's just too much of a problem, so let's not maunder around about it. We'll just look at the component parts of the communication, restore the ability of an individual to conform with each one of them and say, "All right now, you want to go be a personalized Nirvana. Well, goodbye. And if you want to sell groceries, that's all right with us too." Because the truth of the matter is, the primary violation which one could perform is a violation of an individual's self-determinism.
And it just apparently leads to the fact that the state is bad. And the state is good simply because you in a game have declared what is bad and what is good. And the state is neither bad nor good and that's probably what is wrong with that state. It is a non-considered state – non-monitored, non-monitoring, non-considered, non-considering state. Well, that's a very happy state and that's probably why when you get into that state, why you'll pick up your traps and go all the way through it again. It simply doesn't matter either way. That's the truth of the matter, it doesn't matter whether you remain in a total agony of a super malcommunication or whether you assume Nirvana. You are what you say you are and that's about what you are.
Now, as far as getting some preclear able is concerned, you get him able through the Communication Formula. Yes, you could probably say there's something very desperate about getting him well. All right, there is. Just to the degree that he's breaking down other people's Communication Formulas, see? There is something desperate about case A simply because he's busting up the communication game of B, C, D and E. So, he's a bog point. His agreements on communication need retreading. And that's mainly what's wrong with the case.
If you want a culture, you want a society which is going forward, if you want something like that, why, then you'll find out that these communication holes, these guys who come around and say – you say, "hello" and they say … [pause] Well, these communication bog spots, in other words, are interesting ones from the standpoint of the psychiatrist, but
they do make it very difficult to operate in the culture. Of course, you know, the truth of the matter is, "Nobody is any good anyhow, and they shouldn't do anything to help them anyway, because it's all their own fault, actually."
No, it's a game. And if you want a good game, why, you'll have pretty good communication. And if you get a very sloppy game, why, you'll have very bad communication factors in it. So if you want to improve the game, its speed, its action, your interest in it, so forth, why, you just improve the communication levels of those around you and you'll get a faster game. Every once in a while a game starts to slow down to a walk. And for the next billion years or hundred thousand anyhow, why, everybody is crawling. And then somebody knocks off everything and it gets another communication speed and they go along at a more acceptable speed. But there isn't any particular reason to do that, to lie around waiting for life to push you around and kick you around and so forth, when you yourself can take a hand in it. You can change the communication velocities.
You can change other things, since velocity itself is a part of the Communication Formula. These are all considerations. The weird part of it is that you can change the consideration formula on a preclear and you can change his considerations. That's the only thing weird about processing; that's real weird. You can change his communication ability, you see, to change the factors (mechanical factors of communication) and you'll change other considerations quite rapidly. That's what's interesting about processing and that's fascinating. It means that everybody – although he was basically a consideration machine – it means everybody has dropped below the level of even being a consideration machine, so that the very bare mechanics of communication at all can change their minds. And for Homo sapiens, that's the first way you'll change his mind. After that he can change his considerations. Just like you can exteriorize a thetan. You can say: "Be three feet back of your head." "All right, change your mind about things." He sure can – he sure can. There isn't any difficulty about that at all if he is already in good shape on his
Communication Formula. He's found out where he is and what's running the body: that's himself. Now his Communication Formula is in good shape and he can go on from there.
Your goal as an auditor is not to ransack the higher philosophic yappity-yaps or plunge into the deep Stygian thinking machines or worry, worry, worry about the considerations of life and its basic philosophy. That doesn't happen to be your concern as an auditor. Your concern as an auditor is to change the communication factors of the preclear so as to improve his ability and velocity in the field of communication. And you will discover that you will have removed a bog spot for some group, for some area, somewhere.
So, it's a very, very bad thing to change one's determinism to this degree – I don't think so. And you don't either or you wouldn't be auditing people. Now, there is essentially the target of the auditor. The target of the auditor is not the razzle-dazzle I've been giving you and I'm just trying to show you that it is just razzle-dazzle, who cares. Your target as an auditor is to improve the communication level of the people you are processing. If that violates their self-determinism, that's on their heads, that's their fault, obviously.
The various parts of communication are there. And a person is as well as his ability to communicate exists. And he's as sick as these things are deteriorated. And that's about all you can say about it.
THE NATURE AND EFFECT OF PAGE 2 7ACC-17 - 09.07.54
COMMUNICATION IN GAMES