View source for Farewell Lecture (15ACC 561123)

Series: 15th Advanced Clinical Course (15ACC)

Date: 23 November 1956

Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard

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I just figured out a way to keep from losing this ACC course. I figured out a way. I just wouldn't come in and give a farewell talk, you see, as the course ending. I just wouldn't do it. I'd just go into my office and just forget to do it, you see? And not having finished the [[END_OF_CYCLE|end of cycle]], of course, would have an ACC course from there on out, you see? Very simple. You'd all go away and I'd never know it, you see?

Well, all due [[RESPECT|respect]] to all of that, we have had really a terrific course here from the way I see this. Do you see it from your side too?

Audience voices: Mm-mm. Uh-huh.

This probably was not the 15th ACC course. We lost count and I took a number at random that seemed reasonable. And things that seem reasonable are seldom right. So it was a very simple mechanism there, and we simply call this the 15th ACC course. But in view of the fact that 16 is not lucky – 16 is not a lucky number – the next one will have to be the 17th, you see? You see why?

Female voice: No.

No [[REASON|reason]] at all. Huh?

Male voice: Somebody'll look for the – who went to the 16th.

Yeah.

Female voice: ...[[MISS|miss]] too much.

Now, you see, that would be a total [[HAVINGNESS|havingness]], the havingness of a course that never happened. And we can say always that that 16th Course was the perfect course. From army [[STANDARDS|standards]] that would be true. There were no black marks on the record during the 16th Course, so it must have been a perfect course. That it didn't exist would have escaped their notice.

But from a standpoint of ACC courses, this course, it seems to me, has been the most [[SUCCESSFUL|successful]] of any ACC course we have ever given. Mostly because, of course, we knew what we were doing. We knew what we were doing with processes, and for the first [[TIME|time]] the people in the course had tremendous background, lots of [[EXPERIENCE|experience]] and a very good command of [[BASICS|basics]] and fundamentals to begin with, and that was quite important.

As it usually has happened in the [[PAST|past]] that there were enough people in the course who had skimped their basics and so on, that we were always having to return to [[BASIC|basic]] [[SCIENTOLOGY|Scientology]].

Now, basic Scientology and the basics which you know are not necessarily the same thing. We could then begin with an [[UNDERSTANDING|understanding]] that those present in the 15th [[UNIT|Unit]] did have a command of basic Scientology, and therefore, in view of the fact that their appetite for [[COMPLEXITY|complexity]] had been more or less satiated – because Scientology in spots and development is complex – we could then go to the simplicities of procedure.

It would amaze you utterly that these simplicities of procedure which we have covered in this 15th Unit would so utterly escape the [[ATTENTION|attention]], so utterly [[BYPASS|bypass]] the comprehension and even the interest of the usual [[INDOCTRINATION|Indoctrination]] Course [[STUDENT|student]], that it's pretty hard to comprehend; pretty hard to comprehend.

But you say "[[CONTROL|control]]." Control consists of start, [[CHANGE|change]] and [[STOP|stop]]. A [[GAME|game]] [[CONDITION|condition]] is [[CAUSE|cause]]-distance-[[EFFECT|effect]] with the [[PRECLEAR|preclear]] at cause. The control of the preclear permits the preclear to control his [[ENVIRONMENT|environment]] and [[BANK|bank]]. Isn't that totally comprehensible? Well, it is now, six weeks deep.

But this would actually – even if he knew all the words and knew what they meant and thought it over carefully – would probably utterly and completely bypass an Indoctrination student. He would have so many questions in his [[MIND|mind]] that they would add up something like this: "Well now, how does that compare with a Freudian book I read once? Where is the frame of [[REFERENCE|reference]] between this and the ordinary definition of 'humanities,' which says that you mustn't control people? Where is this [[LEVEL|level]] of [[IMPORTANCE|importance]]? Now, in view of the fact that we have said this first right in the course, why, of course now, that is relatively unimportant. What's important is whether or not the preclear has any relatives."

Now, maybe you don't believe me. Maybe you don't believe me. You're perfectly entitled and always will be entitled not to believe me, and totally entitled to make up your mind quite otherwise and in other directions (if sometimes at your peril), but you're going to find this out someday yourself.

You're going to pound home a [[DATUM|datum]] to somebody – on a course basis, you see; not an [[AUDITING|auditing]] basis but just as a course basis – and you're finally going to get him utterly convinced that the essence of auditing happens to be a third-dynamic operation. It's a third-dynamic activity because it takes an [[AUDITOR|auditor]] and it takes a preclear, and that this impinges on the [[SIXTH_DYNAMIC|sixth dynamic]] because it is in the same time continuum and environment. You're going to punch this through.

You're going to say, "Therefore, the [[RUDIMENTS|rudiments]] of the [[SESSION|session]] are very essential. Therefore, getting a preclear and an auditor there is of the essence. Third-dynamic operation. Therefore, you mustn't let the preclear sit there and run a first-dynamic operation of figure-figure and [[SELF|self]]-[[AUDIT|audit]] and twist the command, and play [[SQUIRREL|squirrel]] cage with his bank." You know, run round and round and round the bank.

Although we've had other definitions for a squirrel, that's the one I commonly use to myself. A squirrel is somebody who runs round and round and round the cage of his own bank.

Now, what – what consequences you will face in trying to instruct somebody in that level of simplicity – and even that is more complex than the simplicities which you've been taught, and yet it won't be complex enough, not nearly complex enough.

There will be phenomena and manifestations that leap up that are far more important, because what will be missing will be the [[EVALUATION|evaluation]] of importance; the evaluation of the importance of the datum. And he won't be able to place it with its proper importance because he won't know enough [[DATA|data]] to [[RANK|rank]] it with, don't you see? You know enough data to rank it with. You know how much ground can be covered. You've looked at it for a long time.

Therefore, you can take one of these data, and you can sum it up and square around a tremendous [[AREA|area]] of other data, but remember, you know what the other data is; you are not living in amongst the four walls of the unknown.

The fellow just beginning doesn't even know that he has a mind. He thinks he is his mind. He doesn't know that he is something that swiped a [[BODY|body]]. He doesn't know anything about whole-[[TRACK|track]] phenomena; he doesn't know that an [[ENGRAM|engram]] can make anybody wheeze. He just doesn't know.

And this unknowingness he substitutes for with a great deal of supposition and figure-figure which goes on rather endlessly and continuously, and he invents data or thinks of something he read in a newspaper, and he ranks this up alongside of that, and it becomes a fantastic contest between your simple data and enormous seas of complex data which at all times are ready to engulf him.

You give him a simple data and the bank caves in. You give him another simple datum and the bank caves in. And after you've caved it in about four or five times, you say, "You know, I don't think this fellow is getting it?" Yeah, he's getting it; you're killing him with it. It's as simple as that; you're just murdering him with it, that's all. You're taking a [[FUNDAMENTAL|fundamental]] [[TRUTH|truth]] and you're asking him to unbale that fundamental truth and [[RECALL|recall]] it in himself. Amongst all of the tremendous [[DUNNAGE|dunnage]] which [[LIFE|life]] has fed him for all those billions and trillions of years, you're asking him to do this trick, and it's about the neatest trick that anybody ever tried to do.

I think to make a good [[SCIENTOLOGIST|Scientologist]] it would really be necessary to throw at him the most complex data which we have and let him sort it out. And then [[GRADIENT|gradient]]-[[SCALE|scale]] it off to simpler and simpler data. One day he'll wake up and he will have attained a basic [[REALITY|reality]] on Axiom 1. One day he will have attained a great reality on Axiom 1, as well as 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Will have been no great trick for him to have attained a reality on the remaining forty-five [[AXIOMS|Axioms]]. They're complex enough; he can study those. But he can parrot the first ten; he can parrot them.

You might say that an [[OPERATING_THETAN|Operating Thetan]] is one who can use himself as the [[STABLE_DATUM|stable datum]] to all of his [[WISDOM|wisdom]], see, without caving in something on himself. That would be an Operating Thetan. He can do the impossible of [[STANDING|standing]] alone in a third-dynamic environment and be everybody or himself at will. Now, that's awfully simple, isn't it? There's nothing to that.

"Be thyself," somebody said way back on the track. Well, why didn't anybody believe that simplicity? Why didn't, immediately, man become totally sane the second that somebody said "Be thyself"? No, he interpreted it and spun himself in with it. And he did the neatest job of spin-in on that I've ever seen anything. Because he interpreted it on the basis of "Let's see, if I am myself then I am my body and my [[CHARACTER|character]]. But my body and my character are messed up with all of my various other facets of [[BEINGNESS|beingness]], and these are so complex that to be myself would mean to be a very complex thing, so I am now [[BEING|being]] very complex, and I am being myself. But I'm not well, I'm not healthy, and I'm not having a good time." Well, that is the course of a simplicity, and there is one of the most fundamental simplicities the race has ever generated.

To solve the riddle of "Be thyself" probably required more generations of [[THINKING|thinking]] men than I know of at this time. One neat little riddle.

Therefore, what you know now, you know. You know you know it. Have a good [[CERTAINTY|certainty]] on it. It's okay. Do a good job with it. Many parts of that, of what you know, you can communicate very easily to people, with ease. But... But you're not going to communicate all of it at one fell swoop. I can just see one of you, [[CLEAR|Clear]] enough to really get mad.

I got mad one time and blew the whole board of the [[DIANETICS|Dianetics]] [[FOUNDATION|Foundation]] in Elizabeth, New Jersey to flinders. It never was the same again.

They had the idea that anybody who was in fair shape would be beautifully serene. And a guy crossed me up very impossibly on the board. And it was the occasion, by the way, of past lives. And the board was trying to pass a [[RESOLUTION|resolution]] saying that "Past lives will no longer be researched in this [[ORGANIZATION|organization]]." They had reached too far!

And I brought my fist down on the desk and cracked it. It's a fact. And they all went white. And one of them ran out of the door. And they were all disappointed in me; they were all careful to tell me that. They were all disappointed in me. They didn't realize that I'd made my [[POINT|point]].

Their level of complexity was such as they only realized that I'd gotten mad, because somebody had told me that the data discovered in researching the field of the mind was not to be viewed, and if viewed was not to be talked about. And what the hell else were we there to do? You see? So it really fell to pieces on the [[RECOGNITION|recognition]] that it didn't have any common [[PURPOSE|purpose]]. There were different purposes scattered around, and they were entirely different than any purpose I had, and I hadn't found it out. And there went an organization. [[BOOM|Boom]]!

Happened rather early in the organization, about the middle of summer, by the way. It took it months to [[FALL|fall]] completely to pieces, but it fell to pieces from that moment.

The expression of yourself, the expression of your feelings, are usually totally forbidden in the society. That's because the society cannot understand them even vaguely. Self-expression is something that is always urged. Psychologist talks about it with great [[GLIBNESS|glibness]]. I have never heard such glibness; it runs out of their mouths like the word "milieu" in French.

They're always saying, "Self-expression is the thing." They don't include in the activities of self-expression, getting mad. They say, "Anybody who gets mad is, of course, mad." Doing a Q&Q. "Anybody who is mad is mad." "Anybody who expresses himself is [[INSANE|insane]]." "Self-expression is the thing we need." You get how confused that datum is? That's really confused.

"If we need to express ourselves, and if we could express ourselves satisfactorily, we would all be well." That is what [[PSYCHOLOGY|psychology]] says. It should say, "If we were able to, we would be [[THETA|Theta]] Clears." But if we cannot express ourselves freely, why, then we are of course inhibited, and this is very bad. But if we express ourselves freely, why, we are totally uninhibited and this is very bad.

And if you've gotten lost in the last two or three sentences, that is where psychology is. But merely assume it as a level of complexity. Do you follow?

You can understand an insane person if you can understand that much complication. They are complicated. Wow! This insane fellow that you meet in the sanitarium, listen to his [[OPINION|opinion]] on the subject of grass and how it got that way, and man, you will have the most complicated stream of stuff you ever imagined. It would be almost impossible to [[DREAM|dream]] up that many complexities, and they're basically non sequitur. They don't even follow on a [[LOGIC|logic]] [[CHAIN|chain]], and yet he thinks they're logical.

Well, what complication does it take in a man to [[CONSIDER|consider]] such things as psychology logical? It's pretty complicated, pretty complicated. Don't consider that a psychologist is unwilling to understand you, or that a psychology major is – who is dedicated to and practicing psychology, so forth – is unwilling to understand you. They are operating at a level of complexity which makes them hurt when they are offered a simplicity. It actually hurts them.

If you have somebody do this [[PROCESS|process]] – if you have somebody dream up a stable datum for that [[CONFUSION|confusion]]... Give you a little process here. It's a cute process; it's murderous.

You say, "What's the [[MATTER|matter]] in your life?" There are actually about three ways to run a [[PRESENT_TIME_PROBLEM|present time problem]] today that are real good, that will run almost on anybody. One is by Substitution, one is by Problem of [[COMPARABLE_MAGNITUDE|Comparable Magnitude]] and the other one is by dreaming up stable data – which is also a substitution but it's a [[SUBJECTIVE|subjective]] process. These are all very good; these are all very good, but a Problem of Comparable Magnitude is better than this one I'm telling you about. Nevertheless, it's a cute process.

You say – "Oh," he says, "I'm having an awful lot of trouble in my house."

"Why?"

"Well, both mother-in-laws have moved in."

"Oh? Is that all?"

"No! That isn't all. Terrible things are going on. I am in such a [[STATE|state]] that most of the time I can't even get to work on time, and I have just received a notice that if I don't improve I am to be fired."

"Well," you say, "By golly, that's really getting pretty bad."

"No, it's worse than that, you see. I just borrowed five thousand dollars the other day and I gave a postdated [[CHECK|check]] for it. And if I lose my job..."

You say, well, this boy has got trouble, all right. "Now," you say, "do you mind if we do something with a process to handle this situation?"

And he says, "No." He says, "Go ahead. I hear you Scientologists do weird things."

You say, "Well, you go ahead. Now, you tell me a stable datum for that confusion."

You don't have to ask him for something which would withstand that. That, by the way, is a spotting-the-environment process, you know? "Look around here and find something that would withstand that confusion." It's probably a shade better than the one I'm telling you about.

But he says, "Stable datum for all of that confusion? A General Sherman tank." This would tell you at once, by the way, that he was not aberrated on the subject. It's sequitur. It does fit. A General Sherman tank really could withstand all that confusion. So you know that you're only [[HANDLING|handling]] a present time problem, not the [[SERVICE_FACSIMILE|service facsimile]] or any part thereof.

So you say to him, "All right, mock up a General Sherman tank."

"Okay," he says.

"Good, mock up a General Sherman tank." He does; you say, "Okay. Mock up a General Sherman tank." That's all you do, see?

This is one of these fine [[RESEARCH|research]] processes. It's pretty good [[IN_SESSION|in session]] but it is better than any other of the processes that are really better in session for research, see? It's a wonderful research process because you can see the entire [[MECHANICS|mechanics]] of the bank run on it.

General Sherman tank out there, and at first he can just mock it up as easily, just nothing to it. And mock it up again – I mean, if his mock-ups are pretty good, you see? And he can mock it up again. And it's easy, you know? And he can mock it up. And he can even mock it up and [[UNMOCK|unmock]] it, mock it up and unmock it. And he's getting along just fine for a few commands, and then the fringes out here get kind of black and things kind of whir over here a little where...

And you say, "Now just mock up that General Sherman tank again." And all of a sudden there's a snowstorm goes across it. "That's fine," you say. "Mock up that tank. Good." And there's a hurricane walks along and picks it up and throws it into the air. And you have him mock up that tank, and the continent opens up and swallows it. The stars all fall in on it. It's pounded to flinders. This is not any part of it under his control. He will [[WATCH|watch]] this with the greatest amazement.

If he's really worried about the situation, he of course has confusion on the subject, and he is no longer capable of supporting or continuing the stable datum which he once had for this type of confusion; it's been invalidated, so he's dreamed up another one and it isn't stable yet, you see?

So he mocks up this tank, and it is then hit mechanically by the confusion. And you've got the perfect [[PICTURE|picture]] of a stable datum and the confusion. One really ought to be audited on this particular process to actually appreciate what is a stable datum, what is a confusion, in terms of mechanics. Because it is a graphic picture, let me assure you.

Now, you have to actually pick out a confused area; you actually have to keep him at it for a while, and you certainly have to carry him on through. You have to get him to mock up a General Sherman tank until he again can mock up a General Sherman tank perfectly. But at this time he will no longer be worried about the situation. He'll go home and tell both mother-in-laws to [[PACK|pack]] up, and go back and threaten his boss with suit if he doesn't get back his job, and go around and probably talk the fellow into exchanging his postdated check for a set of bonds on a uranium mine.

But there is a graphic example of the [[REST_POINT|rest point]] and a confusion. Now, this is a simple thing. A General Sherman tank is not necessarily simple, but it's one item; it certainly is positive; it can certainly cause an effect upon the environment; it certainly to a marked degree withstands effects, and you wouldn't immediately suppose that simply mocking it up a few times would cause all this to [[CAVE_IN|cave in]].

In the first place, he didn't think it up. You are actually auditing a [[SIMILAR|similar]] situation when he was a [[MEMBER|member]] of the tank corps of Arslycus or Arcturus or someplace. You get the idea? Something wild happened to him that he compares to this. And he just hands it to you, just like that.

Well, what do you do when you finally get this present-time situation audited out on one stable datum? Well, you would just leave it [[FLAT|flat]]. But if you were to plug this at the [[WHOLE_TRACK|whole track]], and plug this at other confusions he has been in, you would find, then, the remaining mechanisms connected with stable data and confusion. You'd ask him for another confusion he's been in, and he'd give you a stable datum for it.

He would say, "Oo-oo-uh, nuh-nuh-nuh, how about a... how about a planet."

You'd say, "That's fine. That's fine. Mock one up." Well, he can do that easily. And here he goes! And the torrents and screaming particles and [[MASSES|masses]] and ridges racing around and colliding and crashing and the planet being blown up and being bombarded with gamma rays, and being torn to pieces by elections, and anything and everything going on with regard to this planet. Well, you can sit yourself out for a long haul if he chose a planet, because he will simply [[RUN_OUT|run out]] all the confusions for which a planet has been a stable datum on which he has depended. And that's a long lot of auditing.

This is one of the reasons it isn't a good process. Auditors just don't have quite that much patience, because that's about a thousand-hour job, you see? Nothing but "Mock up a planet. That's good. Mock up a planet," all the while discussing with him – you know, now and then – this confusion that you spoke about. Keep it restimulated, see? Don't let him ease off on this just to get restimulated tomorrow, you see? Be a psychiatrist for a while, if you really want to see the research phenomena.

The psychiatrist wishes the [[PATIENT|patient]] to know that the patient must get rid of all of it. That is the psychiatrist's [[MOTTO|motto]] and, by the way, is the motto of some of your preclears. They've got to get rid of all of it, right now, at once! Nothing will do as a process that doesn't completely and totally unburden the bank utterly right now! Got the idea? They've got to get rid of all of it.

And the psychiatric motto on the whole track might also interest you: "I have gotten rid of all of it. I have gotten rid of it all." This is so much the [[CASE|case]] that if you simply have a preclear repeat this for a while, he'll get a [[VISIO|visio]] of a psychiatrist even though he didn't know what you were talking about. [[SPACE_OPERA|Space opera]]. He, of course, will be gorgeously restimulated because of the [[REPEATER_TECHNIQUE|repeater technique]], but it's almost worth doing.

I would only do this on somebody who at the end of seventy-five hours insisted on explaining to me that nothing had happened.

If he says nothing happened, he meant probably that he didn't get rid of all of it at any given instant during the session.

Well, this Mock up a Stable Datum does show us the rest point and the confusion very graphically and their [[BEHAVIOR|behavior]] in a bank. And as you feed a stable datum, then, which is a whole-track datum, which is a datum which the [[INDIVIDUAL|individual]] has carried along and has used as a stable datum for a long, long while, and it's deeply buried, and it's the one datum which is a common denominator to an enormous class of data, and you shoot this at him, and he says, "Yes, I can understand that – that's very easy. Nothing to that. Nothing to that. Naturally, if you want somebody to be able to help himself, you've got to put him under control. Yes, I can agree with that. Seems simple."

We could just keep this up for a little while, convince him of it, talk to him about it, talk to him about it, talk to him about it, and the next thing you know we would have pulled the same trick as we have pulled with the process "Mock up a General Sherman tank." You follow this? It's the same trick, and he will get into just that much confusion until he really can take the datum aboard. There's a tremendous amount of confusion, then, that he as-ises as he goes along.

If Scientology were used only on an educative basis, you would have to keep educating somebody in a relatively complex Scientological datum, repeatedly, over and over and over until the edge came off that much confusion. And then you would have to take a slightly simpler datum and educate him in this over and over and over, and let him think about it and inspect it and so on until no more confusion or [[UPSET|upset]] occurred with the datum. And in that wise you would probably be able to clear him educationally. And that is why Scientology [[EDUCATION|education]] is itself a [[CLEARING|clearing]] process.

Now, as we look back on the track, however, there isn't anything I know of in Scientology that I cannot find in others of whatever race, color or creed. It is a common denominator to these people. If that is the case, we must remember Kahlil Gibran's statement about – from The Prophet about how he could not teach anybody unless a shadow of that was in the other fellow's mind. The person had to know a shadow of the truth before he could accept one. We can only teach people that which they know.

This is dramatically apparent when we go to a library and find... Well, a good book for this is Will Durant's Story of [[PHILOSOPHY|Philosophy]]. We go and pick this off the library shelf and look through it casually, we will find quite ordinarily that some eager beaver who was a pencil reader... Pencil readers are not necessarily bad things to have around because they do give us clues which are quite interesting, such as this one. They underscore everything which they understand. They underscore it and say it is important, but it is important simply because they understood it.

And we look through this whole [[LINE|line]] of philosophy and there's a tremendous amount of philosophic bric-a-brac kicking through that book. It's really a very terrific book. Too simple, by the way, for a philosopher ever to understand it. Philosophers themselves resented the book very much, and the [[PUBLIC|public]] at large was very fond of it.

And we see in there tremendous underscorings and exclamation marks and circles around some of the weirdest clichés. These will be the commonest clichés that are adrift. Durant will quote a philosopher as having said "Man should be a [[MORAL|moral]] animal." See? You find it underscored; it's a great truth. I don't know if it's a great truth or not, but somebody thought it was a great truth. But they take much simpler things than this such as "God is [[LOVE|love]]." In a whole dissertation on something or other which utterly disproves that God is love, we find "God is love" underscored. In the whole dissertation we only discover one sentence was agreed with and the rest was not examined. Do you see? So we had a clash of agreements which were superficial agreements, and the superficiality of the reader stands out very markedly in his annotations of that textbook as it's found on library shelves of the country.

You'd be aghast. These things are just far-afield clichés. They apply with what complexity to what one would hardly ever be able to connect up, but they are truth to these people. Those are the [[SINGLE|single]] truths which they can accept.

You say to them, "Men say that there is God." That's a very simple truth, isn't it? "Men say there is God." That's perfectly true. Wow! Don't ever spring that at a dinner party! You know, nobody will ever hear what you said! What you listen to is the collapse of data upon a simple truth. And they merely [[DRAMATIZE|dramatize]] that collapsing data, don't you see? As the data collapses they mouth it.

You will listen to the atheist. You will listen to the devout religionist. You will hear arguments in favor of God. What's that got to do with what you said? "Men say there is a God" or "Men have said there is a God." "It is a statement which has been made by men in the past that God exists." You could go on like this, varying your data, nailing it through, and you would just simply get to a point where some fellow down at the end of the table would just have gotten up by this time, have slammed his spoon down into his plate, and stalked from the room, because you were an atheist! The person at the other end of the table however would have met him in the hall because he didn't want anything to do with a Catholic, which of course you must be. And all you've tried to say is a simple truth which isn't even important truth; it is just a statement of fact.

Now, this goes much further. You can do this to people, and it is one of the more vicious games that I sometimes engage in. If I'm talking to somebody who is tracking all over the place, and it is just supposed to be a social [[CONVERSATION|conversation]], I am liable at length to say something profound to them, very profound. Such as "Do you know there's a tablecloth on this table?" Productive of the most wild denials and arguments. They never hear "There is a tablecloth on this table." They think I have said the tablecloth was dirty. And they think I have said that the tablecloth was expensive. That there shouldn't have been a tablecloth on the table. They think anything but what is said. It's too simple.

You can tell an automobile salesman on a lot sometimes, "Well, the car is all right, but it has four wheels." If you've not put him into a jocular mood, and in good [[COMMUNICATION|communication]] first... You see, you do have the [[POWER|power]] of making man understand. You see, you do have the power of talking to a man directly and making him understand what you are saying with sufficient ARC that it withstands the resulting confusion, see? He knows he's in a safe environment; you are in good communication with him; you can tell him something fairly simple and keep him from getting confused. So you have to not be an auditor for a moment to really pull one of these things off.

But a salesman comes up, "Well, what can I do for you? This is a very, very fine Renault. Vintage model, you know. Very, very fine Renault. As a matter of fact, we were offered the other day..." and so on. And he goes on and on and on.

And you just stand back and look at it very critically, and you just say to him in a rather critical [[TONE|tone]] of voice, "Well, I don't know. It has four wheels." And you get a dissertation about tires, about wheels, about vintages of wheels and so forth. And you say, "Yes, you didn't hear what I said, though. You didn't hear what I said. I said that..." (That's to keep you from getting into good communication with him: "You didn't hear what I said," see?) You say, "I told you, I told you. Just look at it. Just look at it. Would you buy that? Has four wheels." And you get into some of the wildest things. This doesn't always happen; but it happens often enough to make life interesting.

I've thrown a cop into a complete tizzy by telling him he had a pencil in his hand. It's just a datum just is not going to get through all that confusion, and the confusion collapses on a simple statement of fact, like "You are alive." Simple statement of fact. They read things into it.

Lord knows how they manage it, but some of the things that get read into a statement – such as, you're introduced to somebody and he says, "How are you, Dr. Smith." And you shake him by the hand and you've just been told his name was [[BROWN|Brown]], and you say, "Your name is Brown." And he'll go on and explain to you how come his name is Brown, and about Brown, and about this and that, and something else, and so on. And you can interrupt him somewhere along the line and say, "I said your name is Brown." And he's liable to become quite mad at you.

He won't have the least idea; and the person he communicates to why he became upset with you, and so on, will have a wild, complicated story that has no bearing on fact whatsoever. All you've said was a simple statement! It is true that his name is Brown.

So the handling of truth can be a very dangerous adventure. They sometimes hang people. They do all sorts of things to people for conveying truth – unless you know an awful lot of truth. It isn't that a little [[KNOWLEDGE|knowledge]] is dangerous; it's that a truthful datum shot into a lot of confusion upsets people. And if you understand some of the principles of control and complexity and so forth as you're talking to somebody, you can give them one of the more complicated dissertations.

You can stop a biologist in his tracks and make him believe that you are the most learned person in the field of biology you ever heard of by giving him a total non sequitur [[SERIES|series]] of textbooks, which explain exactly and prove what he just said. One of the more fantastic things to do to somebody.

He says, "The amoeba is a monocell. And we know this because of something or other."

And you promptly say, "Ah yes, Smithers."

And he says, "What?"

You say, "Smithers, Smithers. Yes, yes. Mm-hm-hm-hm, Smithers. Smithers, G.K., Oxford Press, 1937. Yes, very, very deep dissertation on it that proves conclusively that that is true: an amoeba is a monocell. That is right. That is the heart of that textbook, by the way. It's a very, very interesting textbook. It gives studies, [[FACTUAL|factual]] studies, of 8,642 student observations of the entire subject. It is a wonderful, wonderful study. They used Grumhauser microscopes, you know, on that."

He'll say, "Yes, yes." He'll be a little bit taken aback at first, but you just carry the ball, and go on and give [[AUTHORITY|authority]] to his statement! And he'll feel it's truer than true.

These are fantastic things to do to people, but they all come out of an understanding of this and that.

You see, the power to understand must contain, then, the willingness to be confused or the [[ABILITY|ability]] to handle or control or [[CONFRONT|confront]] confusion.

It isn't enough to have a straight [[COMMUNICATION_LINE|communication line]]. To have a straight communication line, you must also have the willingness to have hell confused out of you. You should be able to walk up to a kid who is going "Boom! Boom! Bang!" something like that, and say, "What are you doing?" And he explains to you what he's doing, and cops and robbers and that sort of thing, and it's all going this way, and it's running that way, and so forth, and not understand a word he says. Be totally willing not to – just no necessity to understand a word he says or take in any explanation of any kind whatsoever, and just be totally dumbfounded and confused about it for no reason whatsoever. If you can do that, boy, can you communicate.

There's an interesting study. One of the material props that you will find very useful in running Confrontingness is a radio turned on to soft music very quietly. And after somebody can be made to confront a wall – mock up and confront a wall and do other things (some [[VALENCE|valence]]) – have the preclear mock up that somebody [[CONFRONTING|confronting]] the [[SOUND|sound]] of that radio. Very useful use for a radio. I knew there would be one sometime or another. It was not invented in vain.

And here you have, then, the direct sound; it's a present-time sound and a [[MOCK-UP|mock-up]], so it does work. Now, I told you if you said – you had the preclear say gobbledygook and have somebody confront him, you would get [[RESULTS|results]]. However, this is rougher than the one I have just given you. It's an easier thing to have him confront the radio.

Now, when he's got that radio successfully confronted by Aunt Emma or whoever it was, now turn it up a little bit and let him confront more volume. And you'll discover that he has some qualms in doing this, and you go through the whole thing more or less all over again. And then you turn up the volume some more, and you'll find you'll go through it all over again. And then get a [[PROGRAM|program]] that is all yak – just total yak, but sensible yak – and have him mock up Aunt Emma confronting the yak. See, mock her up; don't pay any attention to the radio, you see, just mock up the valence confronting it, valence confronting it, valence confronting it. And then turn over to some band which crosses two stations – and the more horribly they [[CROSS|cross]] the better – and take it very low at first and bring it on up. And boy, by the end of that time, can he make Aunt Emma confront sound. And Lord knows what'll happen to his own hearing and his own ability to speak.

This, if you can get him to do it (if you can get him to do it), would cure a stammerer just as easy as that. You could run gradients on it about substitutes for sound and all sorts of things, but you'd get there.

This, by the way, comes out of the most recent research which is in progress, and that research is directly aimed at [[RADIATION|radiation]] cures. We have the stopgap of [[DIANAZENE|Dianazene]], and we have already overreached it, but it is a mass answer to a marked degree. But we're already sailing loud and clear up the track on the subject.

And one of those things is the discovery that sound must be handled. The only sound that a thetan ever got as phenomena in space, of course – beyond basic [[POSTULATE|postulate]] – in clear space came with impacting particles. He had to be struck by [[ELECTRICAL|electrical]] particles of one kind or another, and they themselves carried the vibrations of sound. They made [[NOISE|noise]] which he could then perceive. So he associates sound intimately with gamma rays. It's quite interesting.

If he has an allergy to sound, you will not get him to unbale an allergy to space totally until you have cured his allergy to sound. It's as easy as that. Turning on the perceptions by Confrontingness using such things as this are rather easy.

Now, I know how the sixth dynamic can operate very definitely and I know that anybody can be flat down on any part of the sixth dynamic. I would not have believed that stage work had finally chewed me up a bit on the subject of light. It had chewed my body up. I wouldn't have believed it, and didn't believe it while I was being [[PROCESSED|processed]] on it. But I was being processed the hard way, which was "Keep that light from going away." And this was rough.

But of all the identifications with every stage I'd ever seen, heard or had anything to do with, you just never saw the like of it. Well, I had to do it the hard way. The easy way is to turn on a very bright light and have the preclear mock up Aunt Emma confronting it, see? You turn on the light, have him mock up somebody and make them confront it and flatten that all the way out, finding, of course, better and brighter lights.

So we have sound, so we have lights. Now we keep one [on] [[MEST_UNIVERSE|MEST universe]] terminals. There are bottles full of smells. Almost any pungent odor such as ammonia is plenty to have the preclear use as a confrontingness mechanism to turn on some smells. But you have to go a little bit wider and a little bit wilder than a bottle of ammonia.

The primary thing about ether is that he [[CAN'T_HAVE|can't have]] it. That which he can't have can knock him [[ANATEN|anaten]]. Simple. That which he can't have can make him [[UNCONSCIOUS|unconscious]]. So almost anything could knock anybody unconscious, but first he must be in a posture of not being able to have it. Ether probably one time was probably considered one of more delicious beverages. It was probably a pleasant aroma that somebody mocked up, that other people got curious about. And somehow or another there must have been a great ether [[MONOPOLY|monopoly]]. And this great ether monopoly was countered by some [[GOVERNMENT|government]], and the government undoubtedly taxed ether to such a point that it could no longer be ladled out that way, and it became scarce, and people couldn't have it. And they finally found out they couldn't have it at all. I beg your pardon, there was another step in there, another step in there. The government first prescribed it, and made everybody drink it, and then they taxed it and made it scarce, and then nobody could have it anymore, and it is used today by the medico as an anesthetic.

All you would have to do with any substance would be to make it run this, and it would thereafter be an anesthetic. You can take any food and make it into a poison. You could take any poison, on the reverse, and make it back into a food.

One of these days I'm going to process a preclear and have him chopping up arsenic, or cyanide by the tablespoonful, you know, slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp, and then call in the medical [[PROFESSION|profession]], particularly toxicologists. I will tell them, however – since we mustn't confront them with a level of simplicity like Scientology; it's too simple for them – I will tell them that this is the result, this is totally the result of an anticyanide injection. And I won't say the injection consisted of [[PROCESSING|processing]], you see? Then they will believe it.

They will say, "Now, how did you do this?"

"Well, actually we took the component parts of cyanide, we took the component parts of it and we broke them down and analyzed it down to the last radical. And having done so, we discovered that by [[ADDITIVE|additive]] radicals... We developed an anodyne." You must say anodyne, not antidote, you see?

And they'd say, "An anodyne. What's that?"

And you'd say, "Don't you know? Haven't you been studying lately? Ah, well..." And you just go on with your explanation. You've lost them there. If you get them about eight times as lost, then at the end they will believe that the man ate cyanide. But up to that time they won't think he did.

With such levels you have to remember that the verbal proof is much more important than the physical [[OBSERVATION|observation]]. This is why you see doctors cutting open skulls even when they know that skulls when cut open don't heal, or something of the sort. You see, they can't observe it. They just go on doing it.

Levels of complexity that the society has achieved are to be admired; they're to be greatly admired. If you admire them enough, they'll vanish. One should be proud of his fellow man to have gotten that complicated. And when you see the confusion in which some people are, you should feel a certain amount of [[PRIDE|pride]] being related to somebody that could generate that much pointless confusion. Because it takes some doing; it really takes some doing. A person who's that confused must have been awfully industrious for a long, long time; must have had to work day and night to have gotten into that state.

This I know must be the case, because I often congratulate a preclear on having gotten into that condition, and they sometimes look at me rather shyly out of the corner of their eye, you know, and smile a little bit proudly before they suddenly snap into their social valence.

There's a wonderful [[SEQUENCE|sequence]] in What [[PRICE|Price]] Glory? where Sergeant Quirt and [[CAPTAIN|Captain]] Flagg – a play of many a yesteryear – where Sergeant Quirt has managed to hold his leg above the parapet and get a bullet through it in just exactly the right place to get a lot of leave. And he's being congratulated and envied by one and all for the leave he's going to [[GET_IN|get in]] Blighty. Everybody is congratulating him very sincerely.

They should have. Took a lot of doing. First, to have a leg, then to have an [[ENEMY|enemy]], then to have bullets and have them all connect at that opportune moment.

Don't believe it that a preclear who is in bad shape is unskilled. Takes terrific [[SKILL|skill]] to get that bad off.

And for a society to get into such a state that it accepts only with adornments the simplicities that we know is probably the largest joke that has happened here on Earth for some time.

If we try to tell them directly what it is all about, they wind up in such a thorough confusion, they never hear a word we say. They cannot conceive of a simplicity which is not at least attached to a mass, or it's attached to something. It arrived in some circuitous way. They cannot achieve this. And the only way we could permit them to achieve this, and the only way they would achieve this is for us to be very, very judicious in handing out the data of Scientology to people who are struggling along. We would only add to their confusion. We must hand it out complicatedly enough.

Remember that. I give you this [[ADVICE|advice]] and I never follow it myself at all. I have a lot of trouble with this sort of thing. I merely say what I have found out, and what I think and what I know, and what I've observed and so on, and that's what I say.

And therefore, I get myself into lots of interesting tight spots (which I couldn't care less about) but, nevertheless, they're occasionally very tight spots. I have been accused of saying and doing some of the darnedest things. I must be awfully good to have done and been some of these things. Same basis as Sergeant Quirt getting shot in the leg.

But here's our problem: To follow close enough to a man's own [[CONCEPT|concept]] of life so as to achieve his understanding, to demonstrate to him sufficient application as to so enlist his cooperation. And that accomplished and achieved, then we will have won; we will have won always.

The [[ACTION|action]] of cutting little dogies out of the society at large is rather an interesting one. Depends in a large measure upon your knowing that you know simplicities and being perfectly willing to engage in the most god-awful complexities that anybody ever dreamed up. Do you understand that? Being terribly learned in explaining something to somebody, just being awfully learned, and at the same time maintain your own opinion of your own sincerity. It's quite a trick.

Very often a simplicity is uttered and will go straight home, and a person will understand it and will think it's all all right after that. Very often this works. It isn't something that you can count on as a wide shot. It is an individual approach.

There's somebody right here in class one time was having an awful lot of trouble with a preclear's mother, and told the old lady eventually about the eight [[DYNAMICS|dynamics]] and merely explained these, and she thought that Dianetics was just fine from there on out. That was all, and she never had any argument with it further. And up to that time it'd been the work of the devil.

But still the eight dynamics are a bit of a complexity to suddenly launch off into from the blue, and Lord knows what she thought they were the eight dynamics of, but she was satisfied afterwards.

The judicious use of a simplicity also contains the willingness to [[CREATE|create]] a complexity surrounding it. Remember that and you will always remain in control of yourself, your subject and your audience.

I'm very glad you've been here.

Thank you.

FAREWELL LECTURE		23.11.56

[[Category:Lectures]]
[[Category:Lectures 15ACC]]
[[Category:Lectures 1956]]