View source for Problems (SHSBC 611012)

'''Series:''' Saint Hill Special Briefing Course (SHSBC)

'''Date:''' 12 October 1961

'''Speaker:''' L. Ron Hubbard

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Well, what do you know. I can see the room. I just wanted that as a good example.

I can discipline myself, too. No smoking Now, of course, the first one that does any smoking, now, gets a ten-thousand-word infraction sheet. And if it's me I'll write ten thousand words in the next few weeks anyway, so.

Okay. This is the 12th of October 61. Now, continuing our dissertation on the subject of the Problems Assessment.

Okay? Now, the grim part of this is that between yesterday's lecture and today, we have had a few mistakes. Now, in the view of the fact that it isn't possible to make mistakes on this, this is remarkable.

I'd say this was quite a feat. This is quite a feat. Well, it just shows you that anything is possible.

Now, the first mistake that was made is on writing down the changes. On writing down changes, we wrote a short story. When you're writing down the changes in a person's life in Section O. you are succinctly and briefly dedicated to simply putting down something that can be assessed.

Now you cannot assess, “Well, I went down to the store and bought two pounds of sugar and this was very unusual for me because I only ever buy one pound of sugar.” Now, try and assess that, see. So you've got more or less when it was. So your assessment statement would be something on the order of “1943, sugar.” Got the idea?

And if you want to get terribly long winded, “buying sugar.” You see? It's that brief. Your changes must be brief or they cannot be assessed and your assessment will go by the boards because as you read the assessment, restimulative words will give you a kick on the needle.

So that's the way that is. you write that very briefly. What was another one, Suzie? Female voice: Rock slams take precedence.

Oh, rock slam takes precedence over other needle phenomena. Rock slam is always greater in meaning than a mere fall. A rock slam will develop into a dial-wide slam if you pursue it.

In almost any case, if you keep pushing the fellow into it, it will develop and develop and develop. PROBLEMS 2  If you have a rock slam turn on and the thing turns off again, well, you just ticked the edge of something and it wasn't anything there. But a real rock slam manifestation that really means there is something there – if it goes by rock slam – when you start to run it, you will see yourself a nice, great big rock slam, even if it started with a little rock slam.

Rock slams always increase in magnitude. A rock slam is a very badly overrun flow, is what it is. It's a tremendously overrun flow.

A fall is just a slightly overrun flow. But you still have the index of reality expressed by a rock slam. The only needle phenomena you pay no attention to while doing any kind of an assessment is a rise.

And I suppose at any moment this rise is going to rise up again on some of the new students and so forth and they're suddenly going to say, “Oh, well, that was a very strong reaction because it rose and it rose and it rose.” My comment on something like that was I hope you provided him with a parachute. This is about as close as that is to Scientology. Why don't we pay any attention to a rock slam, pardon me, a rise?

We pay no attention to a rise of any kind whatsoever because you don't know what turned it on. you have no idea of what turned it on, because it doesn't turn off. And so it doesn't mean anything. You see why it doesn't mean anything It is a latent reaction of the needle.

It's always latent. You've said something The person thinks it over and gets there and it's too much for him, it exceeds his reality and he can't confront it. So after – on that question or in two questions or in six questions or a half an hour later, while you were saying something else in each case, you start to get a rise.

A rise is not a spontaneous start. You do not spontaneously start a rise, so you cannot identify what began the rise. So if you start to run it down on the basis of what he couldn't confront . . .

You could adjudicate this. you could say, “The needle was rising Therefore, it was obvious that the pc could not confront. . .” Yeah, but how are you going to finish out the sentence? How can the sentence be finished? In the first place, he's not going to confront any part of it, so you're not going to find it.

Now, you could go over, if you had a tape recording of everything you had said and everything that had happened in the last few minutes preceding the rise and the few minutes after you noticed it and then you took this one by one, item by item – it might be a word, it might be a phrase, it might be a this, it might be a that – you could probably find what started the needle rising. And after that, you would be no wiser than you were before, because the needle would simply stop rising. That's interesting, isn't it?

A rise is meaningful. It does mean that something has occurred which the pc is not about to confront with magnitude. It means something has occurred; he is going to throw his vehicle into reverse and step on the accelerator straight down to the floorboard.

That has happened. But what from? What from?

PROBLEMS 3  Now, it is highly, highly, highly doubtful if you would ever be able to trace what it is from. you could get near what it was from. But, of course, you have to solve the whole case to get him to approach what he retreated from. So now it's not worth it because after you've resolved everything you could resolve and worked everything you could work, all you would know then is that you had said something that began a rise.

That's all you would know. Forcing the pc to confront something which the pc is seeking to get away from will normally cause some sort of an ARC break. Now, an auditor has to do it to some degree.

But when you have a rising needle phenomena, you are already confronting something that he is not about to go near and no matter how much you pushed him, overwhelmed him, beat him, ARC broke him, overwhumped him in general, you're not going to get him to front up to it and that's it. He'll front up to something else and tell you that was it, but you're asking for showers of red herrings to go across the track. You're asking for all kind of things to occur.

So you just don't fool around with a rise. I'm just repeating that just to make sure that it's on the record good and hard. you just don't fool around with one. It means the pc couldn't confront something But in view of the fact that tracing back the something is both time consuming and uninformative, why do it?

Now, you go over a series of terminals. And you're going over a series of terminals and all of a sudden you notice the needle is rising. Well, it means that somewhere in the last five terminals you went over, you struck one that he couldn't confront.

Well, it violates the rules of auditing, because he doesn't have a reality on it, to audit it. So why are you interested in it? See?

You couldn't audit it even if you found out what it was. A pc will not respond under auditing to something which causes a rise. Now, you've got something else that baffles you sometimes as you're busy doing something You'll see a pc all of a sudden start to rise and rise – and rise and rise and rise and rise and rise, and then rise and rise and rise and rise.

Well, there's nothing wrong with a rise because it'll eventually wind up with a high tone arm, but as you're running things, tone arms go high. Don't try to restrain the rise of a tone arm. So it causes a high tone arm.

All right. And you audit a bit further and then the needle falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls. Well you don't change the process, do you?

I mean just keep on doing this. All tone arm rises and all tone arm falls are, of course, accompanied by needle rises and needle falls. Has to be because the two are interconnected – of course, unless you have a meter built by Pembry.

Then they're independent. I'm merely saying that because there's just been – we've just laid down the law on “HPA/HCA must have a meter” because we're about to turn out HPAs and HCAs that can operate with E-Meters, and an auditor should have the tools of his trade and they are beginning to show up already with old pieces of garbage, you know, that have been hoisted  PROBLEMS 4  out and were built in 1952 by God knows who, you know and they're mains-connected, short- circuited, only put 220 volts between the hands of the pc, you see. And we're already running into this.

So the – hence the crack because this is the first squawk I have heard was from the gentleman mentioned. Now, the best guarantee of case increase is the needle rises and the needle falls which causes a tone arm rise and a tone arm fall. Well, so therefore rising is a part of it, but it is not diagnostic when you're doing something.

Now, sometimes your pc has an ARC break and your rudiments are out and all the needle will do is rise. And when you get all of the rudiments in and the ARC break cured up, why, the needle doesn't rise much or it falls or something – or something. You get the idea?

I mean, what you want to know from a meter: Number one, you want a meter that will tell you the truth. See? You want a meter that is a good, standard meter that won't give you a buggy reaction, won't be so sensitive you can't read things, won't do this, won't do that and so forth.

A good standard meter. All right. Given that, what you want is a positive reaction and your positive reactions are all needle reactions except rise.

Rise is the unpositive reaction so it is not diagnostic. And that is about all there is to it. you – just for fun sometime, when you see a pc's needle rising and you're coffee shopping somehow or another, try to trace down what started it rising. Oh, you'll probably be able to do it fifteen, twenty minutes, half an hour, something like that and you'll probably find out a cat walked by the auditing room window or there was a lawn mower started up in the next field or you mentioned the word “work.” All of which gave you data that you could have had anyhow or didn't need, of no value.

All right. What was another one of these? Female voice: Rudiments out.

Oh, well, yes. pcs do not run with rudiments out. Goals will not assess with rudiments out and if it's also true that this list, this checklist, when you start going over it for Section P, why, it'll also misbehave if your rudiments are out. That's why the assessment has to be done in Model Session securely and severely.

So you have to get the rudiments in. Because any assessment will go by the boards if rudiments are out. It happens on an average of once a week, someplace in the world, that for half an hour of one session – someplace in the world – a pc is audited with rudiments in.

It's accidental. It's accidental. He didn't mean it that way, but they cure it up pretty quick.

This is snide – snide and sarcastic, isn't it. But honest, that's almost the way it begins to look to me, you know. you know? If you really want to know what rudiments in looks like, run a session like this: Short- session the pc.

Run a Model Session and get the rudiments very severely in. Audit the pc for  PROBLEMS 5  ten minutes on something – we don't care what, even the process you should be running – and then, put the end rudiments in. And you're going to say what happened to the rudiments that I put in a little while ago?

All right. So you put the end rudiments in. you give the pc a little bit of a break and then you start the session again. And put beginning rudiments in and they're out.

And you say, “But I just put rudiments in. There hasn't been any auditing; there's been a break.” So you get the beginning rudiments in and you run ten minutes worth of process and then you put the end rudiments in and the rudiments are out. What's going on?

And you will begin to get of the opinion that it is impossible to put rudiments in. you know why? You never asked the question a second time. you very often, as a common failing – you say, “Are you withholding anything?” And the fellow says, “Well, no.” Clank! “What's that?” “Ah, well, that's uh – it's nothing, really, but Joe and I – Joe and I uh – we were down at the cafe last night till two o'clock and did nothing but discuss your auditing.” “Oh, I see. All right.

Okay. All right. Now, is it all right now if I audit this process on you?” Something or other.

What? You yourself run a – sometimes run on the rudiments a nonconfront. Get the idea?

You don't quite confront this and you don't repeat it. You say, “Do you have a present time problem?” Clank! “What's that present time problem?” “Well, I had an awful fight last night with my landlady. An awful fight.

And she's throwing me out. And as a matter of fact, right now while we are being audited, why, my bags are out on the front porch and the bags are all out on the front porch and so forth and it's raining And so forth and so on.” Well, a man of no action at all would go ahead and try to run a session. A person who thinks auditing will do everything would go ahead and try to run a session.

A person who wouldn't would say, “You go get in a taxicab or something of that sort and you move yourself and remove yourself over to your lodgings and pick up your baggage and bring it back and then we will start the session.” See, present time problem. But whatever you've done about this present time problem, we eventually get it so it doesn't knock anymore and we don't get a needle reaction on it anymore. So we sail along to find out if the pc has an ARC break and we find out if pc is withholding anything all the way down the line.

Well of course, the next time you take a swish across the rudiments we are doing what we should have done in the first place. PROBLEMS 6  You see, that was just a present time problem. He had twelve!

So every time you go over the rudiments again, you will run into what you should have run into by the repetitive question. You should have asked them again, you see? After he came back, straightening up the bags or you had audited it out or something like this, why, you should have asked him again.

Good. Just as though you had just thought of it and it was a brand-new rudiment, you say, “Now, do you have a present time problem?” And it goes clang! and you say, “What's that?” But your self-satisfaction, your glibness, your feeling of the canary-that just-ate-the-cat feeling, you know. You're feeling so good about all this, that it doesn't occur to you that he's got another present time problem, see.

Or that there is also something else wrong somewhere. You got the idea? So each rudiment, each rudiment itself, is in sequence to the last rudiment.

Now look. There might be an ARC break on “Are you withholding anything?” but you don't now, of course clean up the ARC break because it occurs before the withhold. So of course when you do end rudiments, you run into an ARC break, but it occurred in the beginning of session.

Well, that's a criticism of you because it means that your rudiments were out during the whole session. You must have been wasting auditing time. Well, how could you cure such a thing Well, there's no provision in the Model Session for curing such a thing except just asking enough and realizing that you can take up a rudiment at any time. you can always take up a rudiment.

It's bad practice to take them up so often that the pc gets no auditing, but you can always take up a rudiment. Now, just for fun sometime – just for fun, to enforce and show you what I'm talking about – run somebody this way. This is an experimental action.

Run the beginning rudiments and then run the beginning rudiments and then run the beginning rudiments and then run the beginning rudiments. And you will just be fascinated what happens. And it will be a wonderful example to you of the care you should utilize in handling rudiments.

And when somebody tells you your rudiments are out – when somebody tells you your rudiments are out, why, you of course very well must realize that the rudiments you put in are still in. You see, nobody is saying that the rudiments you put in went out. See, what you straightened up on the case is still straightened up on the case, if you did any kind of a job at all, but there were more things out than you asked for. you see, you've cleaned up this present time problem.

There was another present time problem. You didn't ask for it. It was there.

It would have knocked again. There was another ARC break, but you didn't ask for it, you see. There's something else wrong with the room, but you didn't ask for  PROBLEMS 7  it.

That is much more difficult to achieve, this room proposition, because usually it takes care of everything in a full sweep and we've tried to get an ARC break process now which takes care of it at one full sweep, so that you get all the ARC breaks and we're moving up there into better rudiments. But one of the things that happens as your rudiments went out is after the pc got off his withholds, he had another withhold but he didn't ask for it – you didn't ask for it. Well, now how could he have another withhold and you didn't ask for it and he doesn't get a knock on withholds or anything of this sort?

That's because the withhold he gave you was a damn lie. you ever consider that? It happens so often. It happens so often.

So, your rudiments keep going out, keep going out, keep going out, keep going out. Why? Because the pc's withholds are not coming off; you're getting something which isn't true or something that is half true.

And so we have this new end rudiment line which is in lieu of the withhold question in end rudiments and that is to the effect, “Have you told me any half-truths or untruths in this session or said anything just to make an impression on me?” Could be worded, by the way, “just to influence me?” as in some types of case you find that more workable. The pc is always trying to get you on their side by complaining about somebody and that would get that. Well, now, how about this?

You ask a pc for a withhold, you get a knock and then the pc tells you a lie of some kind or another. And you ask him – and you try to clean up withholds and the withholds just aren't kind of cleaning up very well. Well, they won't clean up if you're getting half-truths or untruths.

In fact, you're going to worsen the case because it – to tell an auditor an untruth, of course, is an overt. It's just throwing auditing away like crazy. So you have this new end rudiment situation.

We still have short sessioning with us. So now, by beginning a session, doing an assessment such as the P section here and ending the session, you've found it, you see and by ending the session, giving the pc a break while you figure it out – as good an excuse as any – and then starting the session again, why, you get the pc pretty well oriented, because this is about the first time you will have put him in a formal session doing a Problems Intensive if you've taken him straight off the street. So that would be very, very good practice – extremely good practice – is to finish the O section.

Get that all set, you see. And then put him into Model Session, come right down, get the rudiments in, do the assessment out of O section to fill in the first part of the P section. Do end rudiments.

Give him a short break. Note which one it is and bring him back into session again. Why?

Well, you're going to get a double crack at this pc's rudiments. Now, you see that a double crack at the rudiments is beneficial because let us say again an ARC break – we have  PROBLEMS 8  had an ARC break while pulling a withhold and of course, you don't have another ARC break question following the withhold question. That sort of thing is cared for by doing beginning rudiments, doing something or another which is – looks like a finished activity to the pc and doing an end rudiment.

Bringing him back into session, doing a beginning rudiment. By that time, you've got this fellow pretty well grooved. Now you start asking him questions, you're going to get much better answers.

Now look, you put the rudiments in three times if you did that. Now, you see why it might be a good thing to put the rudiments in three times? Because a rudiment can go out while you're putting another rudiment in.

Now, that would pretty well guarantee that this pc had your – had you very much his auditor at the moment you ask this burning question: “What problem existed immediately before – ?” and you give him the change that you have assessed. Now, if you've got him in good session, man, it'll shake him down to the bottom of the Earth, see. And he'll be able to recall it and he'll be able to handle it and he'll be in good shape doing that.

So it would be a very good idea for you to do this in view of the fact that you're having some of this difficulty with rudiments. See how you could handle rudiments? Now, are you aware of the fact that short sessioning has in itself therapeutic value?

You can do the darnedest things with short sessioning. Everywhere a pc is restive, he can't keep his attention on something. You are putting rudiments in, normally, because he can't put his attention on the session.

Right? All right. A child's attention span is called to your interest and attention.

It's very short. So is that of an extremely worried pc. His attention span is terribly short, very brief.

So, you put the rudiments in, do something, handle something, out-rudiment the thing and give him a break. Put the rudiments in, do something – something final and finished, you see – put the end rudiments in, give him a break. You got the idea?

And if you were handling somebody like that early in an intensive – short sessioning him – look at all the rudiments you're going into and through. Now, he isn't going to get very restive, if every time you do this, you do something And look at all the doingness you've got in this P section. This is fascinating the number of things you can do as a finished product or a finished action.

Well, look them over. you do a whole assessment; you can do a whole assessment. It's not going to take you very long to do an assessment, so therefore you can short-session an assessment. All right.

Now let's look at the next point here. We say, “What problem existed immediately before – “ clank! – whatever the occurrence was. you write down the problem the pc gives. And now you could just turn loose and you could simply run, “What was unknown about that problem with (whatever descriptive word it was).” Get the tone arm  PROBLEMS 9  action free on the thing, in pretty good shape.

You find that this twenty-minute test will get in your road sometimes on one of these things, but I'd leave it in for Class II Auditors. But you could finish up that problem, see, just neat as a package, you know. Finish it up.

Dust it off. Might not last long. It also might last for three sessions, but end your session, give him end rudiments, give him a break, something like that.

Now, if they've got a new auditing period coming up in the afternoon, take up something else, don't you see – which is of course what? You've got to locate the confusion before that change. Now, I call to your attention, by the way, in passing and discussing this activity, it's the confusion before the change.

It is not the confusion before the problem. Now, you must be very sure that that is what is asked. The confusion before the change.

And you may get some entirely different period than existed – that the problem existed in. The problem also might have drifted out of that time area while you were running it and is no longer the confusion before that change. It is a problem he has had for a long, long while.

Now, if you ask him “Confusion before that problem,” he will say, “Well, actually, the soldiers of King Henry VIII were after me because I had written a brochure criticizing him for his number of wives.” Violates the Problems Intensive, see, because that problem went a long way back. Now, to understand that fully, you must realize that the only reason people move slowly, get parked on the track or anything else is that problems become timeless. The timelessness of problems compose the reactive mind.

A timelessness occurs. Whenever you are having difficulty in dealing with companies that do business, in getting them to answer your letters, in getting them to despatch any goods, in getting them to this, in getting them to that and you just can't seem to get anything done, think of this: They are slow to the degree that they have problems they can't solve. They are inactive to the degree that they have problems they can't solve.

So most of their actions, then, are reactive. They are not as a result of thought, but they're drifting in the timelessness of problems. Every new action adds into the old problem and it gets to a point where “Nothing we do will resolve the problem, so it doesn't matter what we do, then, does it?” And you'll find more business firms get in that frame of mind.

They've had terrible problems of some kind or another and so on. Well, I'll give you a better objective view. The bailiffs in US – the sheriff, has just moved all one's goods out of the house and Aunt Isabel is being upset because the table was not polished that morning.

And she goes around and tells everybody in the house that she is very upset because they have forgotten to polish a certain table. It's going to be sold at public auction. Now, can you get the sort of attitude people would have toward Aunt Isabel?

Well, do you realize that a person who is totally overwhelmed, whose head is half cut off by the guillotine or something of this sort – he just feels totally overwhelmed by life – you come  PROBLEMS 10  along, you give him something that is so trivial compared to these enormously important problems he's worrying about. . . See, this is 1961, and he's terribly worried about having his head cut off in 1789, see. He's so concerned about it that, really, there's nothing you can do about it and it's a terrible problem and that is so big in comparison of magnitude of what you want him to do, which is maybe wipe his shoes before he walks in the house, that anything you say is stupid.

Do you get how this could work the other way? And he has this same attitude toward other people that the whole family would have had toward Aunt Isabel at that particular moment. He just sort of looks at them apathetically.

They're talking in another world about another subject that has no bearing on any reality. Something on the order of “Come to dinner,” “Let us go to the show,” “The car has run out of gas” – anything that you want to say to such a person, no matter how immediate it is, maybe he's standing in the rain, you know, and you say, “Well, let's walk over and get under the porch.” The suggestion you have made is as silly, you see – it's as silly as Aunt Isabel having to have the table polished. And sometimes you can get these things in some kind of an order of magnitude in an attitude and you can see how some people do that or see how people react.

And such people react to everything in life this way. Everything in life that comes up, such as you ought to go out and get a job so that you can earn money so that people can eat, you see. And they are gripped in this tremendously overwhelming problem of some kind or another and their immediate response is saying, “Oh, well, you go.

It doesn't matter really, you know. Eat? What?” What you see is an apparent apathy.

Actually, the person in actual apathy is really not in apathy at all. He's just apathetic toward everything. He himself is in a fantastic foment.

He's in agony, but his attitude demonstrates one of apathy. And when people have problems of such magnitude that nothing could possibly solve them and everything i8 trivial compared to them, then they give this response of never doing anything, never communicating, never acting, never solving any problems and they kind of go along and they just hope it'll all somehow work out – somehow. But they couldn't say how.

But, of course, none of that has any influence on this tremendous, overwhelming problem which they have. The odd part of it is, is they don't know what the tremendous overwhelming problem is. They can't articulate that either.

And you get the state of mind of people who are stumbling around in life. And the ineffective – where you see a person being terribly ineffective about existence and so on – they've got some state of mind like this. They are not easily and calmly in an apathetic serenity.

No, no. They – volcanoes going off would be a better order of magnitude to describe how they feel about things. PROBLEMS 11  So that if you ask them to take their attention off these tremendous problems, they know they're going to get et up.

So they have no attention to spare you, see. And they know that if they get their attention off of this thing or if they get handled a little bit roughly or if they get twisted around or they get an ARC break or if something is wrong with the session, they know what's going to happen to them – their attention is going to shift and the whole world is going to fall in on them. There is some tremendous problem that's about to eat them up.

And you've asked them to shift their attention too hard or too fast and it is painful; it's extremely painful. All right. You get a person who is in this state of mind.

They can't spare you very much attention for auditing and you get the rudiments in and they can spare you a little bit more attention. And you run something that's effective, it illuminates their case immediately, directly on the heading of a problem, see. Like, well, “What was unknown about that problem?” is what you're going to run.

And now you're going to assess the confusion before the change. All right. All of these things are right what they're stuck in.

They're very meaningful. They – your assessment will put them right there where they can put their attention. They know you are with them.

They know they're being audited because they know where their attention ought to be. And their attention can be there comfortably, if you've done a good job of assessment, you have found where their attention is stuck, on what problem their attention is stuck. And having found on what problem their attention is stuck, you then can go ahead and audit them.

But they pay very little attention to your auditing unless you follow some of this stuff. So you get your rudiments in. Make sure that the environment is as dressed up as it can be.

Then, to handle one of these bad-off cases – I mean, a case that is having trouble, is getting no advance; not necessarily bad off, but it just isn't getting advance in auditing – and then handle problems and confusions within this illuminative fashion as given in this Problems Intensive. What immediately is going to happen? Well, the individual's attention is being traced right where his attention is.

The reason he can't doing anyth- do anything effective with your auditing command is his attention is all tied up on something else. Only what little attention he has left in present time is either tied up on something else also or trying to find out what his attention is tied up on. And he very often thinks that his attention is tied up on something in his environment.

So he's quite restive. He's quite nervous. Now, almost any pc is difficult to audit.

If you think pcs are easy to audit, you'd better change your mind because you're looking at the wrong standard and you'll never as-is the situation. Pcs are never quiet to audit unless they're in total catatonic apathy. Pcs do things about auditing Sometimes they are a good response, sometimes they are a bad response, but  PROBLEMS 12  pcs respond to auditing.

And if you think that when you audit, nothing ought to be there responding, then you should change your ideas about auditing because something ought to be responding And if you don't get any response at all from a pc, you start worrying. If there's no change being registered in the pc, you start worrying like mad. The pc is just sitting there and the pc is just answering the auditing question. “Yes.

Well, how have you endured a poker in a king's eye or something, you know. And how have you not endured it or something And how has a king endured a poker in your eye? You see.” And the pc is saying, “Well, I've endured it so on and so on and so on and so on and so on.

And so on and so on and so on.” And you say another question and he says so on and so on. And you say another question. He says so on and so on.

Another question, and he says so on and so on. And it just goes on like that, hour after hour! Well, your rudiments aren't just out, they're in the next county!

There is something really wrong, because there's no change occurring. Actually, to audit a pc in that line, you are in violation of the Auditor's Code. You're in direct violation of it, which says you audit a pc – audit a process as long as it produces change.

Well, what's change? Well, change is registration or action on the E-Meter. But where a pc has tremendously heavy problems, these problems are of very, very long duration.

And all you're getting, ordinarily, are harmonics on the main problem and you've got to cut him back to the main problem. He'll get there eventually. Sometimes he gets there, splang! and almost blows himself all over the ceiling The first time you ask a certain proportion of cases – I don't know what that proportion will be – you put him in Model Session; you've got their Problems Intensive all done right up to the point of the first assessment.

You put them in-session. You assess it. And you ask them a question, “Now, what problem existed immediately before that change with – ?” you know, whatever the occurrence was. “Eyaaaooor' And with a pale scream, his brains practically spatter all over the ceiling You're going to get that every now and then.

Pc's going to look at you with some horror. He going to flinch. They're always glad to find out.

Sometimes you're going to turn on wild somatics. And they're awful, awful glad to have them. “Oh, that's what turns on these somatics,” they say. “Oh, you'll – that's what this is worried about. Yes, the whole back of my head is off.

Ha, I can feel it, you know. It's missing except for the horrible, excruciating pain that is going through the middle of my head. So that's what's been turning that on.” You know?

Whatever it was. They got the problem, they didn't hardly hear themselves speaking, you know. And all of a sudden a terrific cognition.

You'll also get a totally different response. You have to take the top of it off so lightly that they give you, “Well, what was the  PROBLEMS 13  problem that existed before that change about buying sugar? So let's see.

I guess it was how much sugar to buy. Ohhh.” I'm afraid I would follow that through at once with, “What was the confusion that existed just before that change of buying sugar?” “Well, trying to figure out how much sugar to buy.” I would say, “Thank you very much,” and go back and do a right assessment this time. That's just a total miss.

But sometimes the pc is so worried about it that he can't confront it, that he can't differentiate it and you'll get a lot of little, tiny problems. And your first few runs on this thing will be little, tiny, microscopic problems that he guesses he must have had. That's as close as he can get to this area, you see.

He guesses he must have had them. Now you ask him, “Well, now, how did you arrive at that?” “Well, I just figure it must have been so.” And you say, “Was it so? Did you really have that problem?

What was the problem you really did have there?” “Oh, well, I really wouldn't know what problem I had. Actually, I could just guess at what problem a person in that particular circumstances might have had. you see, there was a change. I bought a new car and I just guess that a person who was buying a new car, he would have to have – he would have to have some kind of an idea that he wanted to buy a new car.

So I guess his problem would be what kind of a new car to buy. Yeah, that must have been it.” You're going to run into that one, too. And that's about as profitless as swapping pounds for Chinese taels.

This is totally profitless. What are you going to do about a situation like that? Well, handle what he gives you if he can't get any better.

Handle what he gives you. Do another assessment. See if you can come closer to it or take it up.

It might really have been a problem. Maybe that's just the way he talks while he's having the problem. But in the presence of tremendous problems you get a freeze of time.

Time is – doesn't exist. Time just doesn't exist in a problem. It's just something that goes on and on and on.

How else would you account for the fact that people still have problems they had several thousand years ago? And you start tracing back one of these problems and the common run, when you hit the jackpot on one of these questions, the common run is saying, “Well, yes, and I – so on.” “What was unknown about it?” “Well, the color of the ladies' hats.” And out of curiosity, you say, “What ladies' hats? You got a picture there or something” so on. “Oh, yes, I got a picture here.”  PROBLEMS 14  “Well, what kind of hats are they?” Thinking, you know, you got something in the seventeenth century, you know, something like that. “Well, it's these – these priestess ostrich hats.” “Oh, yeah.

Oh, where is that? You got any idea about it?” “Well, priestess ostrich hats, you see, that was on the planet Zimbo, and so forth. And there it was and so on.

And we all had that problem there. Everybody had the problem.” The funny part of it is there was nothing unknown about the problem on the planet Zimbo. Everything was known because everybody knew what the problem was.

Everybody knew you had this problem. No, there wasn't any unknowns about the problem at all. Man, have you hit the part of the track where the problem was the know.

You know? You see, a problem itself can become the total knowingness. Can you think of any problems that are in that category?

The problem itself is the total knowingness? Let me mention something to you. And of course, there are no unknowns about the problem because everybody knows the problem.

Well, those things run way back along the track. And in the normal course of running, if you were to ask a person on the next line, “All right. What confusion occurred just before that problem?” “Well, everybody in disagreement about buying new hats on the planet Zimbo.

Yeah, there was a hell of a confusion.” Well, that isn't what we're trying to straighten out with a Problems Intensive. No, you've got to ask before that change, and your change has got to be very specific and you must have your rudiments in some kind of shape at the time you ask that next question, because it's another assessment, only it's just in a verbal assessment, you know. You say, “What – what confusion existed just before that change?” “Oh, well, oooh, yes, well, no.

That was eight years before that. No. No.

Tha – tha – . Yeah. That – yup – confusion and so forth.” And now you're going to go off onto a list of persons.

Now, to get any kind of thinkingness on this subject at all – you see, it's a species of assessment, so you had certainly better have your rudiments in some kind of shape. So when you're sorting out pcs, do the rudiments, do something of this, do the end rudiments, give them a break. Do the – do the rudiments, do something about it, you know, do the end rudiments, give them a break.

And you'll find out if you're handling particularly wild cases that have been stalled, you'll really get places – even though the person appears to sit perfectly happily in that chair hour after hour and say, “Well, I guess I'd put out a king's eye. Yeah, well, the king had put out my eye. Yes, that's right.

Yeah. Let's see. Other people would put out the king's eye.

Yeah, that's right, and so forth.”  PROBLEMS 15  And he's – evidently on like this and you're fooled; you're fooled. Actually the person is just frantic and they're sort of given up and they're sort of asking it anyhow, even though it doesn't do any good. See?

That's their basic auditing response. Well, you can queer that pitch by short-sessioning them. Well, I didn't mean to overlabor the point, but I'm trying to give you some kind of a design of the thing and what happens.

Now, the problem floats, but the confusion didn't. So it's the confusion that got them oriented. The confusion won't float.

That confusion you're asking for, that occurred and then you nailed it down to a specific dramatis personae: Mama, Papa, Aunt Agnes, Uncle Bill, the schoolteacher, George and, of course, Mamie. Now when you start security checking that area of the track, it's a sort of a “Hey, son. You've really got to confront this.

This one you've got to confront.” Because it nails an area of track and therefore that isn't going to float anyplace. It's going to stay right where it is. It's going to have an immediate and direct influence on present time.

You very often will have a pc who is escaping present time by being in the past. And you make a mistake sometimes when you're auditing a pc by believing that the pc would audit better on his terminals line. And you could just skip rudiments or any problems he's having in this life and just skip those things because it's much more significant and you could undercut it much better if you went back on the line.

No, the pc is back on the line because it's safer and one of the symptoms of that is the pc who never gets a picture. Pictures are dangerous. Well, when did they become dangerous?

You trace it back and you find out a pc had some pictures at one time and then in auditing something happened. On the special course which is occurring right at this moment in Los Angeles, they have responded with enormous enthusiasm to these new rudiments. And one person, one student on the course, they were just getting the rudiments in, ran into the ARC break process and promptly and instantly had his pictures turn on for the first time in six years.

They had turned off during an auditing session. They'd been off ever since and all of a sudden they had turned on, on that process. They were good and bright and clear and he was sailing beautifully.

Everybody is quite happy on that course, apparently. But there is an example. There is an example of response to getting a rudiment in.

All right. How about just getting the rudiments in on somebody that never had any processing before? Well, you'd be surprised how much there is to get in on the person and what you're doing is showing him that life is solvable, life is solvable, life is solvable.

It's solvable at these little finite points. Now, it's a characteristic of a pc who is in apathy, that he's got to solve it all at once. That's a characteristic of a pc in apathy.

That if he's going to solve it at all, it's got to be solved all at once, now. you very often, working in a Central Organization or running a great many  PROBLEMS 16  pcs, will have a pc who has got to have it solved by this afternoon or they are going to die; that's going to perish the lot. Got to be done by this afternoon. Their case has got to be resolved is what I'm saying, you see, by this afternoon.

And that is a symptom of the most severe apathy backed by a terrific franticness and sometimes you'll move this little gauze of apathy off and you'll expose some of this franticness and then they all of a sudden have got to solve all the problem, right now. They won't do an available auditing command. They will take the auditing command you give them, which is the available command and then they will make it into a right now command.

This command has to resolve their whole case by one answer. Well, why is that? That's because the whole track has collapsed.

The fact that problems are timeless and problems join to problems and it all makes a sort of a timeless strata, also makes a very explosive strata. And of course, anything that is that explosive about which they would worry that much, of course, has to be solved as explosively as that. They have a look at it the way sometimes soldiers or something like that – they're trying to fix something and they're all standing around trying to fix this thing, you know, and all of a sudden, one will haul out a gun and shoot hell out of it.

Or they'll kick it or they'll throw it away, you know. It's just got to be a huuugh! It's giving them trouble so, boy, are they going to give it trouble, you know.

It's just a straight Q and A. Nothing to do with solving the thing. It has to do with we must have a desperate solution by which to get rid of it all at once, now.

And of course, we know “all at once now,” “get rid of it” is going to add up exclusively to just one point: we don't get rid of it; we get rid of the pc, if we had such a thing. Every once in a while we look for one button that just on – when I say one button, it is often interpreted as one command given in one unit of time, one expression and that one expression is very explosive. You see that, we just give one command, not repetitively, just one order to the pc.

We say, scaroooow, see. And the pc goes Boom! Rrrrrrr goes Clear.

Have you seen this around? Do you recognize some of this? All right.

Now, that becomes necessary to the degree that the pc can't. If a pc can't do any of the little things, he then in desperation will have to do one of the big ones and all auditing is done by gradients. All auditing is done by gradients.

And it depends on this kind of thing, successful auditing: It depends on reaching a reality the pc can tolerate. It's getting to a picture the pc can see – that the pc can see at this moment of time in the auditing session. It's not what the pc should be willing to see or ought to be able to see.

It's what the pc can do and what they really can do are little gradients. You could possibly confront building a house if you thought of it in terms – I mean yourself, with your own paws. you could probably confront it on the basis of the fact that, well, you could work on it a half an hour every Saturday. That'd seem all right, you know. you could go out and scrape some mortar and bricks together and cut a little grass and so forth.

That would seem all right. PROBLEMS 17  I'm sure that you could confront building a fairly large house, if you thought you could do it at a half an hour every Saturday. You can afford that much time, don't you see?

And it wouldn't take too much exertion and the amount of bricks and things you'd have to carry, you see – you certainly could carry them for half an hour and you start adding it up, that'd seem pretty reasonable to some people. Other people, you say, “All right. Now, building a house from scratch . . .” And the person gets the idea of “Well, building a house from scratch – uhm – oh, look why can't you just put it all there right now?

You know? Why do we have to go through all of this – this you know, nonsensy little steps and all of these doodle-dads and so on and so on and construction of things and building things. Why can't we just say house, you know, and there it appears.” Well, they're on a lower harmonic of OT, you see.

But the reason why they say that – the reason why they say that – should be of interest to you, an auditor. It's because they can't confront spending a half an hour every Saturday. That'd be too much.

Oh, brother. Now, we have to carve that down and we have to get something that is real and we will eventually achieve it on the basis, “Well, what is it that if every year we go out and move one brick one half an inch, could you tolerate that much action toward building a house?” You see, it carves down from the gotta-be-here-right-now – you actually carve it down, you find out the pc has a reality of this. Take money.

There are a lot of guys running around – I know some of them personally, that are running around on the subject of money the like of which I never heard of Their wives and they are just in some kind of a wild mess on the subject. Because they've got to have a million dollars or a million pounds now, see. There isn't even time for it to be carried in the door sack by sack, see.

It's got to be now. And every idea and plan they get, you see, and that is to say, “Well, you see, if we took the North Pole and connected it with the South Pole and put a subway between them and charged the penguins eighteen-million dollars a penguin for using the subway and so forth, why, then our profit on the matter would be so- and-so.” And you'll find them sitting around with some highly impractical stupidity of this particular character and you know, they just seem to sit back in their chairs further and elevate their feet higher and smoke more slowly. But these structures that are going to happen right now and the amount of money that has got to be made by tomorrow, you see, keeps increasing.

All right. We take such a person and we say how much money could you have? “Oh, millions” is the first response. “Millions. I could just have millions and millions and millions of dollars.” Read it on the E-Meter.

You start taking it down million by million and try to find the reality of how much money they could actually have. And the first thing you know, you meet the other side of the circle which is how much money they really can't have. And you'll  PROBLEMS 18  find out that it is two cents or a farthing or that nobody makes a coin quite small enough.

And that's the amount of money they could really have and they could really have that. And if you gave them that much money, they would know they had some money. But they think in terms of millions.

All the time, you see, it's got to be millions and millions. They get poorer and poorer and poorer, you see. But they – the only money would be millions.

It's very interesting. I'm only bringing that up – just one point. I'm trying to show you something about a case.

The case that has got to have the total change now, the case which makes no change now, are almost the same case. Now, the case that just sits there apathetically knows that there cannot be a big enough change or a big enough effect right now to solve his problems, so he's given up on the idea of millions. He's given up on the idea of the huge explosion.

He's given up that anything is going to happen at all. He's cancelled all this out and he's on a lower rung than that. He can't have a change because there is no change tiny enough, until you figure out what it is.

Well now, how does he get into that state? Well, he got into that state by having problems that were so overwhelming that he must keep his attention on them all the time. And he knows nothing could be done about them, but they're terribly important.

But you have to do something about them, but there's nothing can be done about them, so that everything else that's going on in life is trivia, including your auditing command. Your auditing command has nothing to do with his problems – nothing to do with his problems unless you have the exact problem. If you've got the exact problem, your auditing command will have something to do with his case.

If you've got the exact confusion which made him get that problem, your auditing commands will have something to do with his case. But up to the point of that, even though you can find his goal, even though you can find his terminal, even though you can do other things to him, even though you can run processes of one kind or another on him, you couldn't find a gradient tiny enough for him to do. The case, actually, cannot do any of your processes except find the problem he is stuck in because he – but you're not finding any problem.

You get the misnomer here. He's sitting looking at it, so all you have to do is just kind of shake it. you don't have to put him back on the track because he's there. You don't have to move him around.

You are not moving the pc anyplace. You're just trying to find out what's the pc looking at and the whole of this Problems Intensive is just dedicated to that. Where is this pc stuck?

And what problem is this pc overwhelmed with? Now, the trick is, is he doesn't know or they wouldn't be. He can tell you, then, a lot of problems glibly.

But a proper assessment on this thing does give you exactly what his attention is on and an improper assessment will give some offbeat. So that's why he gives you such “I figure-figure” problems sometimes. PROBLEMS 19  You say, “What problem existed immediately before that change?” “Well, I – it must have been, I guess . . .

Well, one could say . . .” “Now, how are you – how are you getting that now? How are you figuring that out?” “Oh, well, it just seems to me that a person in that condition would ordinarily have this type of problem.” You haven't got it, because he's asking from what he conceives to be a different time band and the first clue to any of this is, the problem is the time band of the pc. It is the moment in time of the pc and he wouldn't be saying, “a person who would have had a problem like that way back then, so on and so on.” Because he isn't way back then.

He is in the problem he is in, and he's in no other problem. And you will find him sitting square in the problems, if your assessment is done properly. And if your rudiments are in, your assessment will get done properly.

You haven't got any difficulties if your rudiments are in. And if you keep your rudiments in, your assessments and questions and that sort of thing will, perforce, fall right out in your lap, because you've said the one magic question that attracts his attention instantly to where his attention is. And then he conceives that to be instantly now and when you hit this phenomenon exactly right on the button, the pc's attention is not being dragged off of any- thing.

You never drag his attention off of something to the problem. Well, he doesn't have a present time problem. He doesn't have an ARC break.

He doesn't have an immediate withhold. The room is all right. The session is in progress.

All right. You're already eliminating anything that might get his attention off of this problem and you've got his attention not in-session, but on problem. And now you say, “What problem existed immediately before buying sugar in 1948?

What problem existed immediately before that?” And if you've done it very smoothly, his attention will be sitting right there and he just goes off brrrrrrrrt, there it is, see. And you will very often get an “Oh, my God.” Now, you don't get a “What do you know.” It's much more heartfelt expression. Now, a pc who is ARC breaking while you're trying to do a Goals Terminal Assessment is ARC breaking or getting apathetic because you're taking his attention off of what his attention should be on and it is violating his idea of what's safe.

The only thing that is safe is to keep his attention on this problem. That is safe and nothing else is safe. So you're trying to drag his attention off of the problem and he knows that's not safe, so he's flying back in your teeth.

So he's ARC breaking. He's flying off this way. He's making extravagant statements to you.

He is upset. He is caving in one way or the other. He is upset!

Now, exactly how does he get upset? PROBLEMS 20  Well, he moves his attention just huh-huh-huh-huh. You're asking him something now. “What goal would you like to – if you think that you had when you were a small child?

What goals you had?” He's saying, “Huh – huh – huh. Do I dare look? Let's see.

Let's see, all right. Oh, well, it's safe enough. When I was a small child, let's see, I had a goal of playing with trains.

Yes, I had a goal of playing with trains.” And he knows he's doing something pretty adventurous. What is he doing? He's actually putting his attention on a different part of the time track and he knows that's not safe.

But he is doing it, for your sake. And if you've got the rudiments very heavily in and they're very well in and he's very smoothed down and he's lots of confidence in the auditor, you can do this. you can actually get his attention off of his main problems and get an assessment and it all runs off and he doesn't get ARC broke hardly at all. And everything is fine.

And you wind up – and you've got his goal. And you've got his terminal. And you can actually do it.

And it's a good thing to have because all of a sudden he feels swell about it. He feels fine. Marvelous, he's got his goal and terminal – can still have his attention on this problem.

He got away with something, you see. That's great. Now as we start running him level by level, however, we start getting into something else.

He's got to keep his attention on the auditor, and he's got to keep his attention on this terminal. And he's got to keep his attention on and do the auditing command. And that is just too damn much mental doingness.

He goes, then, by hidden standards. He resigns from the auditing session. Runs it all on a circuit.

He tries to get by with it. He vias the auditing command so that he can still put his attention properly on the problem. And boy, does he ARC break.

He ARC breaks and he gets upset, or he's just apathetic and just grinds – which is a level below ARC breaking. A pc who just sits there and grinds is very often not up to getting ARC broke. Remember that. “Well, I see, you got – I guess you could put out a king's eye with a poker.

And a king could put out your eye with a – with a – with an order. And somebody else could put out a king's eye with a – I guess uh – uh – uh – put out a king's eye with a . . . I've forgotten the auditing command; what was it?

Oh, how could you put out the king's eye? Well, you could put out a king's eye with a . . . oh, just put it out; just put it out. That's all.

Just put it out. Yeah. Just put it out.

That's it. Yeah, well, thank you very much for the session.” You watch that when pcs – they don't even have to run in that tone of voice. It's just grind, grind, grind, you see, nothing occurring, nothing much changing on the case.

Ah, pc has got his attention on some horrendous problem of some kind or another, and so he gives you this little attention over here which is monotone. And any time a thetan's attention is monotone on the lower ranges of the Tone Scale, you can just bet your bottom kropotnik that the most of his attention is absorbed in some tremendous problem that if he looked at it  PROBLEMS 21  squarely and if it looked at him squarely and it was all solved, the whole universe would blow up. Attention is all absorbed over here because that's not a natural action.

One of the things that speeds up my auditing of pcs and that sort of thing is because I look at them and I see them drifty-eyed and dreamy and so forth and drifting off and getting apathetic and they're grinding and I say very forthrightly, I say, “All right now. What are you looking at? What are you doing?

What are you thinking about? What are you worried about? Where's this going And where's the ARC break?

And how – when did the havingness start to go down? And what is this and what are you looking at? And what are you worried about?

And oh, well, that's what it is. All right. Now you can tell me.

It's okay.” And after five or ten minutes of pleading with them, they will get their attention off of the problem enough to actually say what it is. See, because that requires an effort, too. See, it'd be too much effort to say what the problem is, so it's kind of all operates as a withhold.

You see how a pc would act? Every time you have an ARC breaky pc, you would – you have violated to some degree fixation of attention on problems. It isn't just fixation of attention; you have violated his fixation of attention on problems.

You've asked him to do something he doesn't consider safe. It is not your auditing he is finding fault with. He is actually, merely finding fault with having his attention shifted.

And when a person is in this condition, you have to work like mad to make sure that you keep his attention centered where it is centered and not shifted around. So therefore, a Problems Intensive is just about the hottest thing you can do with a case because there's where his attention is sitting. But now what we've done is add up a way of getting backtrack problems, not present time problems.

We're getting backtrack problems which slide up and become present time problems of long duration. But we're getting the problems which underlie the hidden standards and then we're getting the prior confusions which made the hidden standards and the problems necessary. In other words, we're turning loose machine guns, howitzers, hedgehogs and a few atom bombs loose on this same problem.

But all of it can be turned loose because his attention is right where his attention is. His attention is right there anyhow, I mean, so you haven't asked him to shift his attention and he'll run a Problems Intensive like a lamb whereby he'd blow up in your face and explode all over half the universe if you did anything else. you see? Therefore, it looks like very calm, safe, productive auditing – which it is, of course – but it looks like, well, it looks like anybody could do it.

It gives that very definite appearance, you know. Well, anybody could do this. It's rather a sloppy process, rather wide and so on.

It actually isn't a sloppy process. It actually isn't wide at all. You're just being assisted like mad in running it by the fact that you're running the pc only where the pc's attention is obsessively  PROBLEMS 22  fixed and you never ask him to move his attention very much.

The only attention you're asking him to do is just improve his attention so that he can feel confident and not have to worry about sitting there in session. He can go ahead and worry about his problem all he wants to. And you'll find out you don't have ARC breaky pcs if you bust in on cases to this wise.

Now, we do need a Problems Intensive that covers the whole track, that doesn't just devote itself to one lifetime. Whether I will ever dream one of those things up or figure out a way to do that and so on is neither here nor there. You have this one now.

Be happy with that. I would like to say one more thing I've done a lot of talking here which may or may not have assisted you. It may – might not be meaningful to what you are doing But auditors blame themselves because of ARC breaky pcs.

They think they must be doing something wrong. There is some self-blame of some kind or another attached and pcs blame themselves because they ARC break. So that if you can get a certainty as an auditor on exactly why a session goes wrong, if you can see the exact mechanism and its exact magnitude, if you can see exactly where a session is detouring and why a session detours just in terms of a person's attention is on a fixated problem of such magnitude, his attention is on this problem to such a degree, it must be on it because of the tremendous importance of the problem, that he doesn't dare have any other attention for anything so that anything else that disturbs him causes him to go into – through this phenomena you know as an ARC break and the only thing you have done is disturb his attention.

But let me make one more comment on that which I think you will find of great interest. You very often – as this Problems Intensive will eventually demonstrate to you in running it on a pc – you very often have been running pcs with present time problems without recognizing any part of it. And very often a pc has, unknowingly to himself and unreceivedly by you, stated to you many times his problem.

He has stated many, many times his problem and you have never heard it as a problem. You never hear it as a problem; you go ahead and solve it. And yet he has told you this problem over and over.

And he ARC breaks when you're auditing him. And he gets upset and so on. And yet he's actually telling you the problem in one way or another over and over and over.

It is actually quite vocal. It's quite out loud. You're hearing it with both ears, but it's not going any deeper than the drum.

It's fantastic. A problem is a problem. It is what the pc is worried about.

That's what a problem is or it's the problem of unresolvable long-parked timelessness of conflicting forces which the pc can't do anything about or which is – he feels he ought to do something about or somebody else ought to do something about, but it's a big problem. And he will sit there in the auditing chair very often and tell you over and over and over again his present time problem of long duration and you never hear it. PROBLEMS 23  And when you're running this Problems Intensive, you're very often going to have a pc come up and give you something and something is going to go, if you've been auditing before this, you say – go clink! “Now, wait a minute.

This pc's been saying this all the time.” Well, don't feel silly. Don't feel silly about it. You're going to run into problems that pcs have talked about and talked about and talked about.

Because you've never recognized them as problems, usually on the basis that everybody has them or something of that sort. I wouldn't actually – shouldn't actually generalize any further than that, but I will give you a classic example of a problem that went on for a very, very long time and actually neither the auditor nor preclear in this particular instance recognized it as a problem. The problem was how the pc could get some auditing and the auditor always solved it by giving him some.

Only, it was totally goofy because the pc was basically worried about whether or not he could be audited! That was the problem. Was he auditable at all?

And the auditor always just audited him to show him that he could have some auditing And they went on for a long time with the problem and solving the problem and it interrupted every session and it upset every session and it went on for the longest kind of a time. why would it go on this long Well, that's just basically and flatly and positively the auditor never recognized that any problem is a problem and there aren't certain problems that become solvable targets. There aren't certain problems you should solve and certain problems you should run. I'm sure that nearly all of you at some – if you'll think it over, there are certain problems that you feel should be solved, not should be run.

The pc has these problems and he doesn't recognize they are his problems and then you do something about the problem as a problem. Now, we go reductio ad absurdum. The pc says, “I am hungry.” You say immediately, “That is a problem,” and so instead of feeding him, why, you give him a big rundown on it.

Well, what you've missed at this particular point, you see, is it isn't a problem with the pc of long duration or anything else. He's going through a repetitive cycle and he long since has become totally submerged into the mishmash of this universe, so he no longer considers any of these things problems. It isn't a problem.

He gets hungry every few hours, and that's just the way it is, you see. It's not a real problem to the pc, so of course you wouldn't take it up as a problem. You'd tell him, “Well, go on.

Have something to eat.” But there are other ones. They're much more definite like this. They're much more positive.

Is there's the fellow with a problem of, well, “Can auditors audit?” You know, he's an Instructor in an Academy and he's been teaching a lot of auditors and he – something of that sort and he sits there and, “Well, do you have any problems?” and so forth and he, well, tpling! you know. “What problem was that?”  PROBLEMS 24  “Well, I was having a little problem with the students and 90 forth,” and about the third session that you get a pling! and he's having a little bit of a problem with students, why, you'd better get busy, you know? He's got a problem. He's got a present time problem.

What is this present time problem? And you start searching it out. you find out by this time that it's with these – with students. Well, all right.

And, “What is this problem with students? Now phrase this problem with students. What is this problem with students?

Now, all right, how would you describe that? All right. State that as a problem.

All right. Give me another version of it. Now, what is this problem?” And all of a sudden the fellow says, “Oooooooh, well, can – can – the problem, actually, is not with students.” “Well, what is it with?” “Well, it's why I became an Instructor.” “Well, why did you become an Instructor?” “Well, I became an Instructor because I wanted to find out if people could audit.

And I don't think they can, you know. And uh – it's – it's – the problem is how to get audited by people that I know can't audit – including you.” You get the idea? So you very often take the matter-of-fact problem that you think is just – you should just go right ahead and solve and it's actually right in there.

It's a real present time problem. It's a real, honest-to-goodness, dyed-in-the-wool, got-bronze-stars-on-it present time problem. There it is.

And if you say, “This is ordinary. This is usual. This is natural.

This is like eating so, therefore, we don't have to take it up.” Well, I'll call something to your attention: A problem on the subject of Scientology is of the order of magnitude of a withhold on the subject of Scientology. Now, you've seen a withhold stop a case cold, haven't you? Have you ever seen a withhold stop a case cold?

Do you have any reality on that at all? Hm? Audience: Yes.

All right. Now can you imagine a present time problem on the subject of Scientology stopping a case cold? Right?

Well, that doesn't mean that you should pay attention to every present time problem the pc has, just making eight sessions out of it or something like that. But watch this pc and if he starts coming up with problems about Scientology, then for heaven sakes get it stated, measured, so forth. “Have you got a present time problem?” Cling! And it's something about  PROBLEMS 25  Scientology and so forth, give it the same order of magnitude that you'd give a withhold on the subject of Scientology.

And this fellow says, “Well, I got a withhold. I didn't phone my boss from the country club be – and tell him I was not coming back to work on Monday. I had a withhold from him.” You know, that's the bing you get.

Well, man, you could run the case weeks with that withhold and nothing would have happened. “Well, I made an appointment to be audited yesterday and then I didn't keep it.” Now, try to get over that one. Because the withhold is on the subject with which the pc is dealing at the instant he's being audited. So, therefore, the auditing itself and the presence of the subject matter itself are a restimulator to the withhold or to the problem and everything you are doing is a restimulator to the withhold or the problem.

He can forget about his boss; his boss isn't here. But he can't forget about Scientology; he's being run on it. So you give present time problems on the subject of Scientology the same order of magnitude you'd give withholds on the subject of Scientology.

When you're assigning somebody to do a Security Check, always assign the last two pages of Sec Check Form 3. The last two pages. You'll find, there, they outweigh all of the earlier pages.

If there's anything wrong there, it'll just park the case in its tracks. Well, similarly a problem. And because you're an auditor and the pc says, “I have a problem about auditors.

I just don't ever seem to have an auditor, to have a problem.” Get him to state it, for heaven sakes. Don't solve it by being a better auditor than he's had before. Get the idea?

Because you're running a pc who has a continuous, constant present time problem and the case will behave just like a case with a present time problem. And it will ARC break and it will get very upset and it will blow all over the place and it will be very critical of the auditor and it will do all of these things. Why?

You're running a case with a present time problem. How did you miss it? Well, you ran a case with a present time problem and missed it because the present time problem is something you're solving.

That's the most usual course of human events. You don't look at the problem the pc's got because you are doing the solution to it. The solution to it is right in his hand.

So, therefore, there is no particular reason to handle as a problem. The problem I just discussed with you just a moment ago was in existence for eleven years before it was contacted. Now, smile over that one if you want to.

It was in existence for eleven years. Could the person ever get any auditing? That was the problem and it was eleven years before it was suddenly detected.

The pc, of course, had never gotten any auditing in all those  PROBLEMS 26  years, because he was being audited over a present time problem of could he ever have any auditing during those eleven years. How do you like that? Interesting, isn't it?

So a present time problem – and the only thing I will give you is a passing note on all of this Problems Intensive – a present time problem in rudiments, a present time problem in the produ- in the Problems Intensive is not what the auditor would like to think a problem is; it is what the problem is to the pc and what the pc thinks the problem is and what is a problem to the pc. Whether the auditor is solving it or not solving it or what he's doing about the problem or how intimate the problem is to an auditing session or any of these considerations have nothing to do with it. A problem is simply a problem and it is a problem to the pc.

If it is a problem, it is a problem to the pc. It may be a problem to you but not a problem to the pc, you see. It's “What's the problem to the pc?” The problem is yours.

Every time you give him an auditing command, he coughs in your face. No problem to the pc. you could keep – you keep running him, you know. you keep running him on “What part of that cough could you be responsible for?” Doesn't do anything for the cough because it isn't a problem to the pc. And you can't solve problems for a pc who doesn't have them as problems.

I know I've said something that sounds terribly obvious, but it's true. You can't run and solve and clear problems to – in a pc if they're not problems to the pc. It sounds an awful obvious statement, but very often auditors have made up their minds what's a problem to the pc, dive in immediately, run that because that's a good, hot, juicy problem and it's the fact that the auditor – the auditor misses the fact that the reason he doesn't like – well, there is something about coughing.

He always has a problem about coughing What is it? Well, it's how to wash pocket handkerchiefs. “Well, it – what about coughing?” “Oh, there isn't anything about coughing It's handkerchiefs, though. My poor mother, you know. you know, she might have had to have gone out and taken in washing to support us children.” “Well, what's the problem here?” “Well, there isn't any problem.” “All right.

Do you have a present time problem?” No, he doesn't have a present time problem. Skip it! See, no matter while it should look to you dramatically that the thing ought to be the problem, the problem is what registers on the meter and what is a problem with the pc.

And a problem is what it is no matter how idiotic you think it is. PROBLEMS 27  See, don't edit problems, because you can miss problems. And problems that have directly to do with auditing have more weight on the case in slowing it down than any other type of problem.

Just like withholds that had to do with Scientology have more stoppage value on a case than any other type of withhold. Okay? Well, I hope some of this information about how you do a Problems Intensive is valuable to you.

I see that you are sailing into them now and you will be doing them left and right and I think a lot of fur is going to fly and you'll probably have lots of questions to ask about it next week. In the meanwhile, thank you very much.

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