View source for Skull Gazing (15ACC 561109)

Series: 15th Advanced Clinical Course (15ACC)

Date: 09 November 1956

Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard

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This is a lecture on skull gazing.

Audience: What?

It is a very interesting thing – an extremely interesting thing – that skull gazing is one of the older sciences and arts known to man.

If you prowl about the confines or precincts of any witch [[DOCTOR|doctor]]'s [[ESTABLISHMENT|establishment]], you will discover a number of skulls; this is fairly certain. The skull is the badge of the witch doctor. He is known also in some barbaric tribes to consult with these skulls concerning the hiding of weapons, loot and [[GOODS|goods]] by the dear departed. He talks to the skull in order to discover the happenstances of another age.

Of course, this is not necessarily barbaric. I think people go down to the Lincoln Memorial, down here, and consult with Lincoln with regard to the Civil War. I think they do, you know. He is there, and they obviously are there for some [[PURPOSE|purpose]] or another.

But when it comes to modern skull gazing, it has fallen into great disrepute – great disrepute. Because – I [[HATE|hate]] to use a dirty word (there are ladies present) but [[PSYCHIATRY|psychiatry]] has not been able to perceive anything in skulls for some centuries and so has taken to skull chopping. Now, this is not to be confused with skull gazing. It is a debased [[BRANCH|branch]] which is closer to the military arts than the medical.

However, this whole subject of skull gazing is one to which I'd like to invite your interest because the crystal ball, for instance, is probably nothing more than a [[SYMBOL|symbol]] for a skull. The whole idea of skulls occupies many people's [[ATTENTION|attention]].

Now, it would be all right to know the parts of a skull; be all right to. It would be all right to know the number of cubic centimeters of [[BRAIN|brain]] [[CAPACITY|capacity]] of the Cro-Magnon man, and other [[DATA|data]]. But I myself would classify these under a [[COLUMN|column]] I have which is sarcastically headed "Little facts we cannot do without."

Now, skull gazing is a substitute for [[THETAN|thetan]] reading. I admit that it's a very debased substitute, but it shows that man was at least looking in the right direction when he was trying to find out about [[LIFE|life]]. He fell short, trapped no [[DOUBT|doubt]] by that imposing mass of calcium, but he was at least looking in the right direction.

Looking at or into somebody's skull is quite worthwhile if you want to do something for them.

Now, it's a fascinating thing that the skull is usable in many other ways. You can saw off the tops of them, use them for ashtrays.

I one [[TIME|time]] had a very, very good friend whose name is entirely unpronounceable. I finally got so I called him "Buck" for short, but he had an awfully long name. But I envied his [[COLLECTION|collection]] of cups. They were very fine cups. They were quite beautifully carved and so on. And they were always used to serve the guest a potion of beer and so on. And I complimented him upon his cups, and he told me "Yes, that was the late, lamented (another unpronounceable name) that I vanquished in a battle just over the mountains there," and so forth. It was a skull. And I had been looking at it upside down. So that shows you that I have my shortcomings in skull gazing: I'd been drinking beer out of a skull and didn't even know it.

Now, I'm not asking you to collect skulls, or drink beer out of skulls or anything like that, but I am making a certain plea with you to at least look in that direction while you're [[PROCESSING|processing]] a [[PRECLEAR|preclear]].

At the [[EXPENSE|expense]] of its becoming known to him – he however is quite [[AWARE|aware]] of this, and he himself was kidding himself about it: just yesterday, we had a splendid example of another practice known as not-skull-gazing (it's a hyphenated practice), and it's not recommended at all.

A [[STAFF_AUDITOR|staff auditor]] had been processing a preclear for about ten days, and the preclear was making no progress to amount to anything. And I saw him for about three minutes last night. I took one look at him, and I asked him if he was on [[DIANAZENE|Dianazene]]. And he said "No, what's that?" you know? Took another look at him, and it was quite obvious that something was going on here.

This preclear had been many times injured, and he'd been X-rayed within an inch of his life. I think even X-ray treatments had been used on him. And he immediately gave me the [[INFORMATION|information]] that for the last three years, he had had this continuous flush and prickly [[SENSATION|sensation]].

Otherwise the auditor there had been doing a very fine job of skull gazing. A very fine job. He had simply omitted looking at the preclear at all. He'd looked at everything in the [[CASE|case]] but the preclear.

Here was a preclear sitting there at a moment when we were [[TESTING|testing]] various compounds. Clinic knew all about it; everybody knew all about it; he knew all about it, and there sat his preclear halfway through one of these incidents that [[RUN_OUT|run out]] on Dianazene, and the auditor hadn't noticed it.

Now, the preclear had never had any Dianazene of any [[CHARACTER|character]]. He was simply halfway through one of these incidents. It followed, we found out rather rapidly, his last [[SERIES|series]] of X-rays for an injury. Of course, X-ray contains a considerable [[QUANTITY|quantity]] of unwanted particles.

Now, that is an example there. Obviously, it wasn't that processing couldn't help this [[INDIVIDUAL|individual]]. As a [[MATTER|matter]] of fact, undoubtedly one could have shoved it through, but one would have had to have made things [[SOLID|solid]], had to have done something with invisible particles, would have had to have done something there to have removed or passed along or given a fast shove this particular, peculiar kind of [[ENGRAM|engram]] – since this peculiar kind of engram, we have discovered, is one of the more difficult ones to handle in processing. It can be handled directly, you know, without any Dianazene [[ASSIST|assist]] at all, but it is a job of [[AUDITING|auditing]]! (exclamation [[POINT|point]]) It's considerable, because the whole [[BANK|bank]] seems to be [[GROUPED|grouped]] around such [[RADIATION|radiation]]-type incidents.

Well, how would you like that? To sit down and [[PROCESS|process]] somebody arduously five hours a day for ten days and then discover at the end of that time that you had not looked at the preclear at all? It'd be awfully critical of one's powers of skull gazing, wouldn't it?

The auditor thought this was very funny. He thought it was a very good joke on himself. He took it in very, very good order. It's not something that would ordinarily happen, but it's that kind of [[INCIDENT|incident]], that kind of circumstance, which is usually present when a case refuses to move, bogs down or doesn't roll. It's just that the auditor doesn't look at the preclear.

Now, what could you tell from skull gazing? Just what could you tell about a preclear just by looking at him? In the first place you could tell if he was in good shape or bad shape physiologically. This would be an interesting study in itself. Actually, that presses along and becomes practically the entire field of medicine: Simply looking at somebody and putting down facts or going "Hmmm" afterwards.

Now, this [[OBSERVATION|observation]] is not limited to the medical [[SCIENCE|science]]. In other words, you're not practicing medicine if you observe or examine a preclear. As a matter of fact, if that were true, why, you could be arrested on the grounds of practicing medicine without a license for having an Esquire calendar in your home, you see? So examination or observation is not necessarily then diagnosis, is it?

And so, we don't really have to categorize the [[INSPECTION|inspection]] of the preclear by the auditor under the heading of diagnosis. In the first place, it is too formidable a word. In the second place, it's much too complicated for the [[ACTUAL|actual]] [[ACTION|action]]. All one does is look at the preclear and then tallies up what he sees.

We look at a pretty girl, and we remark that she's pretty; she's got nice legs. We look at a nice-looking guy, and we say he carries himself well and so on. These are just cursory examinations. But they happen to be of [[IMPORTANCE|importance]] to an auditor.

If you were to see a nice-looking girl and you looked at her, and you didn't find very much [[WRONG|wrong]] with her, that would be quite remarkable in this day and age. That would be quite remarkable.

In the first place, both in England and in the United States, the beautiful woman is just a little bit out of date. Man's [[ACCEPTANCE_LEVEL|acceptance level]] has apparently dropped a bit; they feel insecure.

As a matter of fact, I can tell you by [[EXPERIENCE|experience]] one of the most dangerous possessions which you can [[ACQUIRE|acquire]], of course, is a very beautiful woman. I mean, that's very dangerous, because obviously other chaps come around and you're always involved in fisticuffs or arguments or something of the sort.

And I remember the fact of the matter was that my experience went further than this. I found out that that once had been the case, but it seldom was today. You want to be careful about having a girl who isn't very good looking. You see, she's entirely too attractive to her fellow man, see? Sounds odd, doesn't it? But just look back at old acceptance level.

All right. Now, that is a bit off the subject, but it's certainly true that the acceptance level of an individual of the appearance of another varies from [[PERSON_TO_PERSON|person to person]].

It's quite remarkable, by the way, that in England some of the most stunning women you have ever seen are married to colored persons from Jamaica and so on. Now, there's nothing wrong particularly with colored persons, but just as colored people are critical of this mixture of races, why, so might white people be. But why would only beautiful women be married to these? Well, that's because they're above the acceptance level of the white man in England. And he knows by experience that they are quite dangerous to have around.

Therefore, we look at this girl; we find her a beautiful girl. She is under a certain amount of hammer and pound in the society. There has been a certain amount of [[TENSION|tension]] surrounding her growing up. There has been and would be normally a certain amount of tension, but this would be what you might [[CONSIDER|consider]] just [[ROUTINE|routine]] [[ENTHETA|entheta]], just routine environmental [[ENTURBULANCE|enturbulance]] – you know, just routine. And she'd more or less know how to handle this – other girls [[BEING|being]] catty and that sort of thing, people clawing her around one way or the other, protecting herself one way or the other.

But how about a sudden [[SHIFT|shift]], such as all of her teachings tell her that [[BEAUTY|beauty]] is acceptable and will bring about her acceptance into society and on the part of all males in the society. And then discovering that her beauty debars her from the society and the acceptance of males in the society. Now, what about that?

Here we have a long series of I'm-supposed-tos. The [[STANDARD|standard]] pattern of any [[TRAINING|training]] is based on now-I'm-supposed-to. If you want to make a preclear really dizzy (not necessarily well), just have him start out "Now I'm supposed to–," and let him furnish in the blanks. It's quite remarkable; he runs out an enormous number of patterns. "In order to be acceptable, I'm supposed to be beautiful" winds up in "Being beautiful is being unacceptable," which then leaves this horrible [[PROBLEM|problem]]: How, then, is one acceptable? Dahh! See, we've got one of these must reach-can't reach / must withdraw-can't withdraw computations. It just hangs dead center. It is a puzzle. It is a puzzle.

Now, these puzzles can be quite severe – quite severe. One of the more amusing ones that I ever ran into is I found somebody whose [[PAST|past]] was all snarled up on one [[POSTULATE|postulate]] only. Now, this is a rarity; this is a rarity that you would find just one point on a case. But this case just unraveled and came all to pieces on just hitting this one postulate.

Got to talking about his considerations of the past. What about the past? And we discovered that he found it would be impossible to teach young people anything about history. Why?

Well, they haven't ever seen the [[OBJECT|object]] so that they couldn't possibly associate the actual item of time with training. Person had been a school teacher, and he just couldn't figure out how to teach anybody that the American Revolution or something of the sort was a century and a half ago, because the idea of a century and a half had [[NO_REALITY|no reality]] to the child as far as he could see. And his [[EFFORT|effort]] to teach the child, and his consistent [[FAILURE|failure]] on the thing had finally wound up his own past.

Quite amusing. Naturally, the child – we know in [[SCIENTOLOGY|Scientology]] – knows all about that past and that measure of time. There was no difficulty there at all, but the fellow did measure up a difficulty; he did [[CREATE|create]] one. And because he couldn't solve it at all, he simply hung up on an unsolved problem, and his past was hung on that.

We ran into that rather easily, just discussing the past, considerations of the past. I asked him how did he know how long ago that was, or some almost accidental question, and this other [[DATUM|datum]] tumbled out, and the [[TIME_TRACK|time track]] straightened out just like that. Interesting, huh?

Well now, looking at him would include discovering what he had been. What men have been, furnish the training patterns that you are [[CONFRONTING|confronting]]. Those training patterns consist of fixed, not- to-be-changed data. Now, these are confirmed as training patterns and put out beyond his [[POWER|power]] of [[CONTROL|control]] when he is injured or put under very heavy duress with injury and [[UNCONSCIOUSNESS|unconsciousness]] during activity in one or another occupations.

To give you some sort of an idea how this is, a painter that I [[PROCESSED|processed]] was having a terrible amount of trouble with [[PAINTING|painting]]. Now, we'd expect a painter to have trouble with painting because of the various [[MECHANICS|mechanics]] of trying to make a piece of canvas appear to be in [[MOTION|motion]] that was actually still. Total contradiction: he faces something still and tries to put it in motion. Eventually he obsessively seeks to put everything in motion that is still. He cannot tolerate stillness. This gives him a considerable number of difficulties. Don't you see how this would be?

All right. This painter was having trouble with painting, so therefore it was obvious to me that a physical injury – I was [[TRAINED|trained]] in [[DIANETICS|Dianetics]] – a physical injury, you see, must have been associated with painting. So I asked him about it. And he had never been injured while he was painting. He'd never had to paint while he was ill. He'd had to paint sometimes when he was tired, but there was no good, solid basis for the fact that painting – just the act of painting – made him sick. No good [[REASON|reason]] for it at all.

But the more we talked about it, the more difficulty began to appear. We were working with an engram about nine hundred years old. It was right there; nice, old engram.

He had not just been injured; he had been a painter before and they'd killed him for it – besides knocking off his servants and breaking up the house and ripping up all of his paintings, and throwing him still half alive on the [[FIRE|fire]]. Otherwise, there was no engram connected with painting. This is quite interesting.

Writing... one time I found a writer who was a writer who wasn't a writer at all, but was doing a [[LIFE_CONTINUUM|life continuum]] for a writer in this lifetime, but had had no real association with this writer in this lifetime, but was doing a life continuum for that writer. How amazing! Until we find out that the preclear had been the wife of a writer about three hundred years ago, and she'd killed him. She was doing a life continuum for that writer, who vaguely resembled this present-time writer, and she hit this lifetime and suddenly started to do a life continuum for this casual acquaintance.

It's quite interesting because one would never have suspected the [[VALENCE|valence]], but the valence was sitting on good, hard, solid, engramic [[FOUNDATION|foundation]]. The techniques that bring these things into view – holding things solid, making things still, Over and Under – any one of these things will blow these puzzles and problems into view, but when you've blown them into view, for heaven sakes, know what you've blown into view. You are, after all, looking at a preclear, and the preclear has a story. He has a present-life [[COMPUTATION|computation]]; he has a [[SERVICE_FACSIMILE|service facsimile]] – that which he uses to get himself some [[SYMPATHY|sympathy]] and out of difficulties.

The life computation is very interesting: He considers himself all snarled up; he doesn't know wherein. You start running something like Over and Under, or inventing problems of comparable or incomparable magnitude or anything else, this data is liable to tumble out. And it'll be tremendously significant to the preclear.

Now, we're not ransacking his bank to find these significances, but when they turn up, if we do [[NOT_KNOW|not know]] where to persist rather than [[CHANGE|change]] – if we do not know where to persist – he never sees them.

Now, we have to look at him so he can look. If we don't look at him, he never looks.

Let me tell you some more about this. There's many a fellow comes along, he sits there, we know exactly what is wrong with him. It is so obvious: He's in his father's valence, has several chronic somatics of his father. By his own detailed story, that's his father. His hatred for his father, his affection for his father, his ideas of his father, the missingness of his father during early childhood, on and on and on and on, all add up to Father.

He sits there and he says, "Yes, I'm in Father's... I realize I'm carrying on for Father and so forth." But nothing happens. He knows it; you know it – nothing happens. Well, what is going on? Well, that isn't [[WHAT'S_IT|what's it]]. That's all.

If he knows all about it, it isn't aberrative. It is unfortunately – to [[DRAMATIZE|dramatize]] right along with the gamma ray – the hidden [[PARTICLE|particle]], the hidden datum, the hidden influence which is the effective one. Do you see that? It's the hidden one.

Now, what is the virtue of discovering what is wrong with a preclear? Because today you can do something about it. And very often he simply comes to you to be audited solely because there is something wrong with him that he would like to [[REMEDY|remedy]]. But he doesn't know what is wrong with him, and he really cannot articulate what he even thinks is wrong with him. So therefore, it's up to you.

You don't take what the preclear says. You base your [[EVALUATION|evaluation]] or examination of the case on the way he says it. And some of the data of it may be pertinent, but not as he thinks it is.

It's quite interesting to process only those things which the preclear offers you to be processed. You know right away in running Learning Process Number One that this would be the most fatal procedure in the world. He said, "I have [[BIRTH|birth]] in [[RESTIMULATION|restimulation]]; I want to get rid of it."

Well now, if this is a [[SCIENTOLOGIST|Scientologist]] talking, he had birth run halfway through and nobody finished it, this is a fairly rational statement. He just wants to do something technical. It's just totally technical. Go ahead and flatten birth if you want to, but you won't improve his case. Go ahead and do it. It'll make him unhappy if you don't.

One of the easier things to do is simply to get off all auditing. How would you do that? Have him invent an identity or an individuality that could [[COPE|cope]] with auditing, and invent a worse situation, of course. Just those two commands run alternately will dispose of more auditing in less time than you could easily experience. "Invent an individuality that could cope with it."

Most people have felt they have been coping with auditing anyway. You know, just barely. The moment that the auditor really started to get someplace on the case, they felt they were no longer coping with the case or the auditor, and they submerged out of sight. Particularly somebody who is removed from himself about sixty-four valences and who thinks of himself as a [[RIDGE|ridge]] or an atom or an angel or something, you see? You really start to get somewhere with the case, and he will immediately assume that he has lost. Well, he hasn't lost. Something has lost, and if you don't run it a little while, he won't find out what has lost; it is seldom him.

All right, now let's take this a little bit further. Let's just take it on surface examination, not quite so esoteric. I discovered quite by accident a preclear a very short time ago had a lump in the breast. Quite by accident. Assisting her to take off her coat and she winced. Hah! Hah! Of course, there's Ronnie, puppy to the root right away; somebody winced. Somebody displayed a nonroutine reaction. Got it? That's the entrance point. No matter how minor that was. A catch of the breath, something like this.

"What was that?" I say. "What was that? What happened there? What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing. A beautiful day, isn't it?" and so forth.

"What was that?"

"Well, if you must know, why," rather embarrassedly the lady said, "if you must know I have a lump in the breast that is – ever since I had an automobile accident."

I said, "Well, who was driving?"

She says, "My husband was."

Now, the familial relations had been strained for many months. Here we had a physical manifestation; there was something there observable which was extraordinary – an extraordinary manifestation – a lump in the breast. Lord knows what it was. Who cares?

Now, what would one do about this? The person says yes, this is a little bit serious but knew where it came from; not very important. Oh, not very important? Well, here's where you should know a little bit, you know? Here's where you should know a little bit about diagnosis and health and things like that. You don't, to just fool with it. There isn't very much literature on the subject. You might as well yourself invent what you know about it; that saves you time. Because much of it that you read is totally incorrect.

It was like my effort of fifteen, twenty years ago to understand something about cases by reading – by reading [[LISTS|lists]] and cases and so on. I had a pathetic, rather childish faith that I would actually find something there that would be worth reading. And I found that all of the data might or might not be present, but certainly the conclusions were in some difficult direction. But I couldn't find any cases that had recovered from anything, and I began to be suspicious. And after a while I found out there wasn't such a thing as a science of [[MIND|mind]] loose on Earth. That was an interesting discovery. It was an awful shock to me one day when I discovered that. I sat down; I was absolutely stonied. I said "Oh, no! You don't mean I got to put this whole thing together. Why, these lazy bums! These stupid blanks."

All right. How about this lady with the lump? Now, the basis of any auditing process today is "make the preclear do it and know he's doing it." In other words, have the preclear do it. Run preclear at [[CAUSE|cause]]-distance-[[EFFECT|effect]], you see?

So the most elementary process along this [[LINE|line]] would be "All right, injure your breast," see? That an interestingly plain process? See, that is straight-on [[GAMES_CONDITION|games condition]]. "All right, injure your breast."

"Well, how am I supposed to do that?"

"Well, just mock up something and you make it injure the breast, you know?" you know. If you want to put it that way. I added one more via, see? Oh, that was acceptable.

So here we go. And on and on and on, and all of a sudden in oh, I suppose forty, fifty commands, of course, with somatics and pains turning on and off and various facsimiles flicking around – but not interestedly; she wasn't very interested in this – then she went [[ANATEN|anaten]], and then went anaten again, and then went anaten again and then come out of it, and go anaten again and come out of it, and go anaten again and come out of it. And all of a sudden looked at me and said, "He didn't really need to hurt me that much." Husband! One year, pc has carried around a lump in the breast as an accusation against the husband.

"All right. Mock up something and make it injure your breast" a few more times and came out of it, came uptone on the subject and the lump went away. The lump was probably cancer.

Now, it is totally possible. The lump in the breast is not a strange mechanism, and in this radioactive [[AREA|area]] I just suppose cancer will be a routine affair.

But what about this? The preclear was wearing her case, and so do they all.

Now, it isn't up to you to guess what it is, but look, and see what you see, and you'll have something to [[AUDIT|audit]] at once that is terrifically productive. If you only use this "You do it." "You do it," you know?

Fellow has got a twitch of some sort, a twitch, you know? Twitch, twitch. You just tell him, "You do it." Simplest auditing there is, games condition. Something else is twitching; you make him do it. Make him go a few times like this and it sort of wears out. But more important than that, if you audit very expertly, in very thorough [[COMMUNICATION|communication]] with the preclear, why, at least a goodly portion of his case will tumble out in your hands – not to then be audited; it's just there and solved, that's that.

Why is the fellow going like this? He all of a sudden says, "You know, that's like that ape."

"What ape?"

"Well, the one that bit me."

"Well, what ape is this? You never told me about an ape biting you before. Where have you been that apes bit you?"

"Oh, that was when I was in Borneo."

"In Borneo?"

"Oh yes, I was raised in Borneo."

Wild business!

Now, it might occur to you that people's [[ANXIETY|anxiety]] to be victims, to be betrayed, and other complications, might have some use. Might occur to you that it might have some use. Yes, it does. The person is trying to do it himself. He is trying to do this exact process that I have just given you. He's trying to do it himself. By doing what? By talking about it's having been done to him. That is at least trying to do it himself, you see?

But it's too circuitous, and he doesn't do it repetitively enough, and there aren't enough people that will stand around and listen. So this is the mechanism, the exact underlying mechanism, to why some people's troubles go away simply by talking about them – upon which Freud based all of his hopes; he based all of his hopes on that – and not going away. One, was the person permitted to do it himself? Was the person permitted to do it himself? If he was not permitted to do it himself, nothing went away. You get the idea?

Now, if himself is the [[VICTIM|victim]], you have him do it to himself. You see?

One of the most horrible processes you ever ran on anybody – and it's probably therapeutic; I wouldn't know. I've never gotten too interested in it. There are too many ways to go at the same [[PROPOSITION|proposition]], and frankly, I have not made the test, that's all. Why should I go around Robin Hood's barn about it? I just have not audited it. And that's cause versus cause: The preclear mocking up somebody else as cause, which of course makes the preclear cause of somebody else's cause. Got it? It's a process known as Causing Cause. And it's sitting there in the shelf to be tested someday.

But one of the processes would be this: "Mock up somebody accusing you. You mock up somebody accusing you. You mock up somebody accusing you. You mock up somebody accusing you." You could settle with the preclear who's doing this, the person that he mocks up is saying "You did it." So you just have him mock up somebody saying "You did it" accusatively. "You did it. You did it. You did it." Now, he is causing cause. The other person is assigning cause to the preclear. The preclear is unwilling to have cause assigned to him, but his entire health depends upon his being cause. So he is actually fighting against his own best interests.

And there are people who go around all over the place accusing. Now, they're just trying to do it themselves, too, you see? It's quite an amusing thing.

There are several small computations of which we have [[KNOWLEDGE|knowledge]], any one of which explains all human phenomena, leaves none outside. It's quite interesting that there are several that do this. There really are several that do this.

It's also unfortunate that all of them have to be used to solve cases. So you'd say none of these are the [[MASTER|master]] data of the entire race, but they are certainly master data of classes. And evidently one of them can be substituted for another one rather easily. so that they run out each other's classes too. But every now and then they'll [[FLUNK|flunk]]. They might explain everything beautifully, but not solve all of the cases, don't you see?

All right. Causing Cause is probably one of these. I can't tell you too much about it, not having audited it. But one mocks up somebody accusing him of causing something. I know that this gives a pretty wild reaction, because the only cursory little test I did of it I desisted; I desisted, that's all. It was over the preclear's [[ABILITY|ability]] to withstand [[AGONY|agony]].

He was a very sensitive preclear anyway. He was always complaining. I remember one time we were doing 8-C, and I stepped on his foot and tripped him, and so forth, accidentally and so on. He complained; he claimed it was an [[AUDITOR'S_CODE|Auditor's Code]] break, and so on. Always complaining about something or other. I made him [[SLAM|slam]] his hand against a wall on another instance and there was a nail in the wall, and complained about that. I finally said, "My golly, you certainly complain about everything."

And he says, "Well, come to look at it, I guess I do. It's probably my mother. Let's run out Mother's valence." So we went on with the process of slamming the hand into nails. Anyway. You have to have more sense than that, actually, to run, with modern controls, preclears, because they will wind up doing anything you tell them to do on their own determinism.

Anyway, here we have this whole difficulty of people being the victim. Well, if they're trying to be the victim about anything, you could say, more or less, there's their case. Well, their effort to be the victim of this is their effort to do it. It's actually no more significant than that. And the reason [[OVERT_ACTS|overt acts]] go up against motivators is the action of the preclear in doing something tends to [[RELEASE|release]] its having been done to him, see, only to the degree that he processed it by doing the act. You got it?

Now, this doesn't say that the initial act on the track was always native to somebody else. The initial act on the track might well have been the preclear's. There's no reason to get into a big bundle of morality and tribulation and retribution about this sort of thing; it's simply much more simple to examine it on the basis of "he's trying to do it." Now, the little boy who bumps his head and then goes over and bumps his head some more got his head bumped in the first place when he didn't do it. And he seems to know, basically, that if he does it a few times he'll be all right.

Now, a fellow can – a child will always remove his own splinter (or try to), preferable over and above the parent removing a splinter. See? It's better if he does it. You got the idea?

Well, we won't give this any higher rationale than that it's more therapeutic mentally. It gives the cause-distance-effect or [[GAME|game]] condition. And if you simply make the preclear do this on anything, he's quite happy.

We don't have to go into the complexities of games condition, although those complexities are very well worth inspection. They are complex, but less complex than what man is doing broadly because a games condition and a no-games condition – the two of them contain practically the totality of complicated impulses that man is subject to. He will do all of these things. This is a simplification; games condition, no-games condition are simplifications of man's complexities and are not themselves terribly complex. There's a definite list of them. You should know those lists, by the way. You should know them by heart, because you will see evidences of them and find use for them in this.

But let's just take this highest denominator of those, and let's discover that if we make the preclear do it himself, you have a good chance of winning. If you don't win, it's too simple. So you got to make it more complicated. So you have him do it himself by vias. And if that's not complicated enough, do it himself by vias with vast significances and just keep piling up the significances from there on out. And you'll win someplace along the line. You'll find a workable process.

All right. Making him do it himself: This woman, for instance, in knocking her own chest around, all of a sudden ran out a too- deeply-buried [[ANTAGONISM|antagonism]] or [[RESPONSIBILITY|responsibility]] on the part of the husband. You see? Had assigned this whole thing to the husband and had gone on accusing the husband, but not verbally, since that's not permitted. She could do it by [[MOCK-UP|mock-up]]: sick breast, see? Wear the scar. "Look at the battle I've been in," sort of thing, you know? The [[BODY|body]] is very prone to this. People wear scars and [[ILLNESSES|illnesses]] like medals.

Now, don't think this really worries a thetan. It really doesn't [[WORRY|worry]] a thetan very much. If you have a thetan waste [[PAIN|pain]] for a while, he will discover that he loves it. Beauty is by [[CONSIDERATION|consideration]]. There's all sorts of ways and means that we can look this over, but we can't find any real reason to be [[UPSET|upset]] by somebody being a victim. Got it?

But if we look him over, we find out what he's being a victim about. He's wearing some obvious manifestation. Now, some of the manifestations he has – and all preclears have many – are, you might say, more deeply ingrained than others and are less easily removable.

In other words, let's say the fellow had, well, burn scars on his forehead, he had a cauliflower ear, he has one finger which is [[BROKEN|broken]] and twisted, he uses a cane, he carries glasses. Let's just look over that. See, that's an array. That is array.

Well, you sort of pays your [[MONEY|money]] and takes your chance, unless you know the Know to [[MYSTERY|Mystery]] [[SCALE|Scale]]. Put the [[SOMATIC|somatic]] or the obvious physical illness on the Know to Mystery Scale and tackle the lowest one first. Got it? Tackle the lowest one first.

Now, that is why Herr Breuer and Freud, and particularly Freud, achieved so much [[SUCCESS|success]] on sex, but why their people never got any better than sex. You notice after they've been treated a little bit on sex, they started to worry about eating. And Freud, later on, was wondering whether or not he shouldn't go into eating, too. Well, he was having a hard time getting away from the starting point. They go on into eating, and they go on up into the areas of symbols and [[THINKINGNESS|thinkingness]] and effort, and so on, right on up the line.

So you take the observable manifestations and foibles of the preclear – and these, by the way, are the physically worn ones; they are not his mental quirks – just take these physically exhibited manifestations, make a list of them, put them on the [[TONE_SCALE|Tone Scale]], process the lowest one first. By doing what? Make him do it. Any way you could get at it, that's the formula for the removal of a [[CHRONIC_SOMATIC|chronic somatic]]: Make him do it.

Now, a pain is much higher toned than a set deformity of some sort. A pain is higher toned, let us say, than a scar. So if you process at his somatics, you're going way upscale. Where are you? You're into 1.8, area of pain. If you process his emotions, you're way too high. If you process his perceptions, you're way too high. That's why people still go around wearing glasses and having trouble with perceptions and so forth. They've got other difficulties that no auditor has ever noticed. They've got other difficulties which are [[LOWER_ON_THE_SCALE|lower on the scale]]. You'll find these things have a tendency to wind off, one modifying the next in some fashion.

Now, we're looking at the physiological, the solid manifestations; the solid manifestations of a case. They are not the mind. See, they're not the mind.

If you saw a thetan going down the boulevard dragging behind him an old, bent-up bronze wreath of some kind or another which clanged and clanked, and would keep getting caught on milestones and corners of things and so on, you would say, "What you doing with that wreath?"

Well, it's rather obvious; it's a memento of his last funeral or something like that. We could say it's just a [[TOKEN|token]] or a substitute for the body he just lost. We could say it's a lot of things. And we'd say, "Hey, you don't need that wreath. There's some much better items around if you want to pick them up. As a matter of fact, you could go pick up another body if you wanted to."

He might do that. But if he didn't, and if he didn't [[DROP|drop]] the wreath and he just kept dragging it down, complaining about how hard it was to get on down the road, but all the time he was trying to get on down the road the wreath kept getting caught in the milestones, you know? I mean...

And you say, "Hey! You know you're dragging a wreath?"

Funny part of it is, you gave him a big explanation at first, and you told him he didn't need it, and you told him a lot of things; you were assuming he knew he had a wreath. If you were to say to him, "Hey. You know you're dragging a wreath along behind you?"

Fellow is liable to say "Nahh."

And you say, "Well, look around."

And he'd say, "Where? Where? I don't see any."

You'd say something must be wrong with his [[PERCEPTION|perception]], one way or the other. Well, actually the [[TRUTH|truth]] of the matter is there's probably something wrong with you, because there's a Model-T Ford he is also dragging along, but that's another quarter of a mile behind him. And his attention is so fixed on it and it won't run that he's never noticed the wreath.

Well, just add that up as a straight observation of a preclear.

I'll tell you a funny story with regard to that. Processed a preclear one time that had a missing ear. Ear was totally missing – gone. Zip. I assumed the preclear knew all about this missing ear. How stupid can an auditor get, see? Wasn't getting anyplace on him at all. He didn't seem to have anything else wrong with him. He was doing all right. Had a few freckles, but they're allowable. Finally in desperation I said, "How did you lose your ear?" This was the wrong question. It didn't take me long to find out it was the wrong question, either. Not that he blew up. Not that he blew up, but I had asked him how he lost it, not "Have you got an ear?"

Now, you'd say it was utterly impossible for an individual to go around without an ear for a long time and not know that he didn't have an ear. This fellow knew all the time he didn't have an ear, but he didn't know he didn't have an ear, don't you see? And all of his difficulties and so forth were surrounding the incident of the ear, and in order to get rid of those difficulties and forget them, he had to forget that he didn't have an ear, too. Don't you see? He had to forget everything, and when I finally called his attention to the ear, we got into an argument. I thought it was because he was sensitive about it, but actually we were bringing him into the [[COGNITION|cognition]] that there was an ear missing. And he hadn't thought about this since he was about fifteen. There was a time when he was fifteen that he had thought about it, and had felt very bad about it, but the rest of the time he was totally unaware of a no-ear.

Now, you think people are sensitive about some of their deformities and that sort of thing. That is a commonly held belief, and I don't believe it has any slightest bearing. It's quite remarkable. I've seen a person with a birthmark, rather badly disfigured with a birthmark, be quite surprised that nobody ever spoke to them about it. I had one person become convinced that everybody ignored her.

"Why does everybody ignore you?"

"Well, nobody ever comments on anything I wear or how I look or anything of the sort."

"Is that right? Nobody ever says a word about it?"

Says, "No, nobody ever mentions this birthmark."

Now, the trouble with you as an auditor is the trouble with me as an auditor. It's the trouble with all of us. We're reasonable people. We're not mad enough to be able to diagnose a preclear at first glance unless we ourself have fitted it into a reasonable framework. Because there's nothing quite so batty as battiness. And what is batty about battiness is, of course, that it is batty, and that's all there is to it. And I'm afraid that any further dissertation on the subject is getting too complex.

What you do about it is quite something else. You have the game condition, you have a great richness in tools with which to work. You can do all sorts of things with this person, but if you want to hit at his battiness, it is normally, simply his battiness. And it isn't reasonable for thetans to go down the road lugging bronze wreaths, or going along on crutches. It is not sensible for a body to go along on crutches. This is not reasonable, because the locomotion characteristics of a body are not adapted to crutches. See, we consider, though, it is reasonable. He can't walk, so he's using crutches. It might just as well be the other way around.

And you'll find out if you process him that he is using crutches because he [[CAN'T_HAVE|can't have]] ashtrays. And you look at this finally, when it finally turns up on processes, and you'll go glong! Well, that is what is batty about it. It does not compute, does not equate, and the [[IDENTIFICATION|identification]] of [[A=A=A|A=A=A]] does not form any logical [[SEQUENCE|sequence]] along which a thetan can travel.

So he gets to this point of "I am very beautiful so men should accept me; I am very beautiful and no man accepts me." Drzzzh! See?

Now, that is a light look at it. But how about a fellow with a clubfoot? You want to straighten out his clubfoot for him. Well, you'd have to have him make it clubbed one way or the other. You'd have to do something in that direction. You'd have to put in on a games condition off of a no-games condition. And then, then you would discover why he had a clubfoot. Only he'd discover it too.

Now, not-[[KNOWINGNESS|knowingness]], or not-knownness, is of course a very good common denominator to [[ABERRATION|aberration]]. We find all aberration is not known. The factors in it are not known.

For instance, one day a very, very short time ago, when somebody started processing me on light, I couldn't understand what the devil the auditor was doing. Why was the auditor making me keep those lights from going away? I was sitting on a stage, and I was being processed in the exact location on an exact thing. And I couldn't find out why the auditor wanted me to do this. And all of a sudden lights ran the entire [[EMOTIONAL_SCALE|emotional scale]] on me. I'd been [[STANDING|standing]] on stages in the glare of stage lights and footlights and so forth, so long that they had caved in my conception of that peculiar, particular type of light. Not these lights. The same process wouldn't have worked on those lights. Because it wasn't very bad off, it was not associated with all lights. It was completely localized to stage lights. But stage lights were more articulate than I was. That was quite interesting.

The auditor was smart enough to ride over my protests and just go right on (it was Julie, by the way) and she was smart enough to just [[AS-IS|as-is]] all the argumentation. I kept saying, "I don't see why you're having me process these lights. This is silly. Let's get on with it. We came down here to hold this hall still and get this thing squared around and it has nothing to do with lights." Talk about stupid!

Auditor barrelled on with it, and all of a sudden, bang! the lights had emotions, independence, [[AUTOMATICITY|automaticity]]. Wow! I thought I was really gone there at first, because all of a sudden a stage floodlight did a dance. It did a lovely dance. It just moved from the left to the right all on its own. And I said, "Well, Ronnie, you've had it." "You've been at this too long," I says.

Something has gone completely out of control and the preclear doesn't know it. Now, he has a clubfoot and he knows, maybe, that he has a clubfoot, but he doesn't know why he has a clubfoot. And until he gets it onto a logical sequence and brings it back out the other way, he will continue to have a clubfoot. That's for sure.

Now, a preclear is wearing a body. Now, that is a silly thing for a preclear to wear sometimes, particularly in a radiative age. He can't tell you why he's wearing a body, just like somebody else can't tell you why his body has carbuncles, until you process it.

So it is required of you as an auditor that you observe the obvious. Please observe the obvious. That's the most difficult thing in the world to observe: the obvious. General Sherman tank wrecked at the middle of 14th and F streets is not obvious; it's unusual. See, that is extraordinary.

Well, there are many too many things which are very obvious which nobody ever sees – nobody ever sees. The automobile parked at 14th and F streets is very usual. Nobody sees it. That's why we have pedestrian accidents. See, it's too usual. They don't see this.

You see this person; this person has some kind of a deformity, something off the ordinary, something that isn't in common to everybody, something he would have no use for at all, some deformity, some condition. You start going into internal conditions, you're wasting your time. Internal complaints are too many and too varied. One of the first internal complaints a person has is he has a stomach, intestines and lungs. I never heard of putting stomachs and intestines and lungs in bodies. The idea! Show you there's something wrong with the body. Anyway...

But we consider that usual, and so he accepts it and it has never worried him. The unusual has to some degree worried him, but the unusual that is also obvious will be the center of his case.

Physical – physical observation is demanded, and only then can mental observation be achieved.

Thank you.

SKULL GAZING		9.11.56

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