View source for The Prior Confusion (SHSBC 611003)

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

'''Date:''' 3 October 1961

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

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Okay. This is one of those days. What’s the date?

Third of October? Audience: That’s right. Yes.

And my watch stopped last night. How would I know? And 1961.

Special Briefing Course, Saint Hill. Now, Suzie’s been giving you an explanation up here as to the prior confusion. And I’d better give you some material on this and some other things.

I could give you a lecture on a brand-new series of discoveries, but you haven’t caught up with these. I’ll mention these in passing just to get them as a matter of record, however. There is a great deal to be known about mutual motion.

Mutual motion is a terribly interesting subject. It’s the motion of two generating sources. This has something to do with problems.

And mutual motion runs with great rapidity, and so on. There’s a lot more about that, but I just wanted to get this little slight note on record. You’re interested in the prior confusion, the hidden standard, because this puts into your hands what the hakim, the witch doctor, the bone rattler, the medical doctor, and all such ilk have been trying to do something with here, now, for a good many thousands of years.

This puts something into your hands. And if you grasp this, you’ve grasped something And if you haven’t grasped it, you’re stuck in one. Chronic somatic is a stuck moment on a time track which is the stable datum of a prior confusion.

A hidden standard is the stable datum of a prior confusion. Prior confusion. Now, in trying to explain this to you, you take a look at a chronic somatic, you try to look at the prior confusion and you swing back up into the chronic somatic again, and you don’t even know that you looked at the prior confusion.

This is a very, very easy one to forget. It’s a very easy one to slip on because it is, actually, the basic anatomy of how pictures and illnesses and concepts of one kind or another get very, very stuck. Now, the way they get stuck is the confusion and the stable datum.

Now, that confu- sion and the stable datum has been known to us for many, many years. And what we’ve done to it is add time to the span. The confusion is in one place and the stable datum at a later place.

So in all time track plotting, you get the confusion, and then you get, after that, the sta-  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 2  ble datum. So actually, they’re linear in time. In other words, you don’t have the stable datum and the confusion occurring necessarily – and certainly not very aberratedly – you don’t have these two things occurring simultaneously in time.

In other words, the stable datum and the confusion do not occur in time, if they’re going to become aberrative, which is the same time – you don’t have the stable datum and the confusion in the same instant of time. Now, by that we mean twelve o’clock, second of October 1961: There’s a confusion while a person is sitting at a table. Well, the confusion doesn’t make the person necessarily sit more solidly at the table.

That’s not the kind of stuck that we’re mixed up with. This is the way we get the person if the person is going to be stuck at the table: At eleven o’clock there was a hell of a confusion, and the person had an upset and had an upset stomach and so on at twelve o’clock, and sat down in the table – at the table to ease their upset stomach, and some- how or another it didn’t ease. Well, there was no confusion at twelve o’clock.

The confusion was at eleven o’clock, just an hour before. Do you see this now? In other words, the confusion is at an earlier instant of time than the stable datum that the person adopted afterwards.

But we find that the stable datum which is adopted afterwards is the sticker. Of course, you can always adopt a stable datum in the middle of a confusion. This is it.

But that isn’t the one that sticks. The one that sticks is where you have a stable da- tum adopted after the fact of the confusion. The United States goes to war with Japan; nothing much occurs as a result of the war – perhaps.

And then we all of a sudden have President Eisenhower talking about loss of face. Well, it’s very interesting to have an American president use a Japanese term. We give the Wehrmacht a hell of a shellacking, and during the war nobody is being the Wehrmacht, that’s for sure.

The 88s are going on one side and the 22s are going on the other side, and we have a good, solid, flat-out, knockdown-drag-out war. And nothing happens during this period of time that is at all upsetting, except people getting killed and buildings blown down, and so forth. But everybody is too interested to have any stable data to amount to anything.

And then after the war, there’s a discussion about “should American troops goose- step?” There was, you know? Now, we add in World War I to it and we find American troops wearing German helmets. It’s fascinating This gets more and more fascinating.

Now, we can understand the Confederacy all wearing Federal uniforms during the Civil War, because they didn’t have any but there were lots of Federal dead to take them off of That wasn’t much of a stable datum. But today we find the Confederacy is very stuck in the Confederacy. Now, we think that something happened, like the assassination of Lincoln or some- thing, and all of this.

Well, we certainly know all about Lincoln’s assassination. Well, how about a lot of the other people who got assassinated by bullets in that war? You see, we’re not  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 3  worried about them.

That stable datum isn’t sticking, but something that happened after the action is sticking like mad. This is a peculiarity, and it’s not necessarily sensible. It doesn’t necessarily follow any logic; this is an empirical fact.

By empirical fact I mean one that is established by observation, not established by theory or reason. This is true only because it’s observed to be true. Now, you can develop a lot of theories about why water doesn’t flow uphill.

There could be lots of theories developed about it, but you stand alongside of a river, and then you go find another river, and then you go find another river, and then you go find another river, and you observe all of these rivers, and you find out finally that the common denominator of all rivers was that water was flowing downhill. The points downstream are at less altitude than the points upstream. And we establish the fact, then, that water flows downhill.

We don’t have to have the theory of gravity; we don’t have to have any other theory connected with it at all. All we have to have is the observation that all rivers we are able to contact are flowing down- hill. That’s an empirical datum.

All right. Now, this “prior confusion” is an empirical datum, and that is all it is. It’s empirical.

It’s just observed that this is the case: that the person is not stuck in the marriage that they are complaining about but are stuck in the marriage because of the confusion that existed before the marriage; they’re not stuck in the marriage because of the confusion of the marriage. Now, you’ve always been assuming that the marriage got stuck because of the confu- sion of the marriage. All right.

Now let’s get down to workability – solid, sound workability. How many marriages have you squared up by knocking all the confusion out of the marriage? Well, it’s sort of a lot of little failed lines on that.

We’ve straightened up a lot about mar- riages, and so forth, by knocking out their confusion. We’ve done a lot about marriages by knocking out the confusion of the marriage. But the reason we couldn’t do it rapidly, and the reason we got bored stiff trying to do something about it, is if a person is stuck on the subject of a marriage, the reason they are stuck has nothing to do with that period of time but has to do with the prior period of time that predated the marriage.

And if you free up that prior pe- riod of time to the marriage, the difficulties of the marriage blow. Now, this is an empirical oddity, an oddity of magnitude. We’ve got somebody who has got to have their liver operated on, something wrong with their liver.

We find them stuck in an operation on a liver. They’ve got to have another operation on a liver. They know it’s their liver.

Their attention is stuck solidly on the liver, and so we go ahead and process the liver, but we never find the basic-basic on the chain of when their attention got stuck on the liver. When did their attention get stuck on the liver? Actually, it got stuck on the liver im- mediately after a confusion.

Immediately after a confusion. So the way to blow this operation  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 4  on the liver is to blow the confusion which preceded the difficulty with the liver. It’s so pecu- liar.

It’s sufficiently peculiar that this occurs when you try to learn it: You immediately think of your own chronic somatic. You try to swing your attention before you had the chronic so- matic, and you wind up with the chronic somatic. And you say, “Well, there is the chronic somatic, and of course, that is all there is to it.” And then one tells you again right away, “Now look.

Let’s look before you had that chronic somatic.” And you say, “Yes. Chronic somatic.” It’s just as though we’re trying to put your at- tention on top of a spring. And as you put your attention on the spring, it rebounds, and blows you back into the chronic somatic, do you see?

And your attention just doesn’t go on to the prior confusion. It’s quite remarkable. You say to somebody, “All right” – you’ll do this as an auditor, now, many times.

You’ll say, “Put your attention now on the period” – or “What happened” – you say in some other fashion – “What happened just before you got all upset with this marriage?” And they say, “Well, I got all upset with the marriage.” And you say, “Well, what happened just before you met this person and so forth?” “Oh, well, just before I met this person, um… uh… yeah, well, we certainly had a hell of a time in that marriage.” And you say, “Well now, look-a-here. We’re talking about just before you met the person. What was the date before you met the person?” Well, they’re liable to do something like “Well, I had an awful lot of trouble when I was a little child.” And you say, “Yeah.

But just before this marriage. Just before the marriage.” And they say, “Yeah. Well, I had an awful lot of trouble in that marriage.” What’s happening is, is the pc’s attention bounces to later periods of time.

Chronic somatics are always the result and solution of an unconfrontable disturbance which occurred immediately before them. Hidden standards and present time problems are always the result of a confusion which immediately preceded the difficulty. And when you get the pc to put his attention on the confusion, you are asking him to do what he couldn’t do, and why he pinned his attention just after the confusion.

You see? He looks at the confusion, and then his atten- tion, without his recognizing anything, bounces straight into the stable datum. Man has a broken leg And this broken leg has just been going on and on and on for years and years and years.

He doesn’t recognize it as a broken leg. The medicos say it’s a “ti- biosis of the filamoriasis,” and that he’s suffering from a decay of the tendon. THE PRIOR CONFUSION 5  Well, he busted his leg sometime or another.

Let’s get it down to simple language us folks can understand, and – you see, if you don’t know anything about a subject, you can get awfully fancy. As a matter of fact, the more fanciness and the more oddball opinion and crosscurrent of opinion you find in a subject, you can assume that that is in direct relation to the amount known about the subject. The more confusion in the subject, the more crisscross, the more learnedness, the more pretended knowingness there is in the subject, the less is actually known about it.

You can get a terribly complicated idea about life and the mind from fields where it isn’t known. You un- derstand? There’s a lot of invented, pretended knowingness on the thing.

For instance, I don’t know how many medical terms there are for a leg, and yet this leg won’t heal, and they can’t make it heal fast, but they can sure call it by lots of names and have lots of opinions on it, don’t you see? Well, they’re sort of bouncing off the confusion. All right.

So the person’s got a busted leg. Well, the leg should have healed up in five or six weeks and that should have been all there was to it, and that’s it – finished. But it isn’t.

Seven years later, like the children’s doc- tor, the fellow is still limping – I think two years ago. He kids me every time he sees me. You know, he comes in limp, limp, masking the limp very consciously as soon as he’s on the premises, trying very hard not to limp.

He was in a skiing accident a couple of years ago, and I told him I was going to process him, and it scared him within an inch of his life. And so he always has some kidding remark to make to me when he comes in to look at the children’s tongues, about whether or not I’m going to process him. But look, it’s been two years and he’s still limping Ah, well, then this isn’t just a skiing accident, because there’s nothing really in bad shape about the bones.

They were all put together by the very best orthopedic surgeons. He had the best of care; he’s a doctor. So what must have happened?

Well, he busted his leg in a skiing accident. And two years later it has yet to heal, really. Oh, well, the bones are grown together and it isn’t bleed- ing anymore, but it isn’t operating All right.

Now let’s take a look at that. Was it the instant of the accident? Ah, well, we know more about the mind than they do.

We know very well that before some fellow does a practiced action, if he’s in a smooth frame of mind – he’s used to doing this action – he goes down the slope and slaloms like mad, and everything is just dandy, and he winds up at the bottom upright and saying “Whee!” But if a fellow is in a disturbed frame of mind, and his attention is on many other things – he just received a letter from his wife or his girl saying, “Well, I’ve just gone out again with Pete,” don’t you see? And there’s nothing he can do anything to but himself. He can’t do anything to anybody but himself.

There’s nobody else around or he’s powerless or something like that. Then this practiced skier starts at the top of the slope, and he goes half- way down and he says, “This is a good place,” and wraps himself around a tree. THE PRIOR CONFUSION 6  Then they put him pathetically in the hospital and bring him home by ambulance plane and so on, and it goes on for years, don’t you see?

So the high probability is that the accident had nothing to do with the motions of ski- ing. Skiing probably has nothing to do with the confusion which resulted in a broken leg, mentally. Because we have to ask the question, how did he get himself bunged up, and why?

Now, a fellow doesn’t get himself bunged up by accident. See, it’s not by accident. That’s the first thing you have to recognize.

That there’s some kind of a postulate in there to bung himself up. And he’ll manage it every time. All right.

So this medico, all right, we ask him, “Now, what happened just before you broke your leg?” And he’ll say, “Well, the snow was flying all around, and the wind was going whee, and so forth. And then there was this condemned Switzerland pine tree, and it pulled itself up by the roots and moved over in the middle of the ski track.” And you say, “Good.” And we keep on running this. And at the end of many hours, we actually do get the thing to remove to a marked degree.

We get an abatement of the chronic somatic. Yes, we can do that. We have done that many times.

Well, how would you like to see that chronic somatic vanish? Well, that would be a much better procedure and much faster than that. Ah, well, we’d have to find out what went on before he went skiing that day.

Well, he was on vacation, we know, and we know that he felt he needed a vacation. Why did he feel he needed a vacation? An odd thing to need – me particularly, I never get one so I don’t dare need one.

He needed a vacation. Well, what was the randomity that preceded that? What was his mail like while he was on vacation?

Let’s search in this area. Let’s find out anywhere in the last six months what had been going on. And all of a sudden we wind up with the damnedest, knockdown-drag-out confusion.

If it was enough to make him break his leg, it will be sufficient to bar out his inspection of it. And at first he won’t be able to inspect the prior confusion. It takes an auditor sitting across from him to chunk his attention into that period and do an assessment of it.

And all of a sudden he finds out that he thought the broken leg happened last year, when it happened two years ago. And he’s completely forgotten that he broke the same leg when he was five; and all kinds of oddball forgettingnesses turn up. Now, what causes forgettingness?

It’s the inability to confront a motion. The inability to confront a motion brings about an occlusion of that area of time. Now, you’ve got postu- late – the first-, second-, third-, fourth-postulate theory.

The first postulate is not-know. The second postulate is know. THE PRIOR CONFUSION 7  All right.

So you’ve got a big not-know, you see? He had a big lot of mysteries and a lot of confusions he couldn’t confront, and nothing he could do anything about of any kind whatsoever, and he got himself a know which immediately succeeded it in time. In other words, this not-know area, this confusion area, is followed by a know area later in time.

Now, this is quite interesting because he follows a not-know by a know, and the know might be quite stupid, and it might be quite painful, and it might be quite destructive, but nevertheless it’s a knowingness. Some fellow who is gimping around with a bad leg certainly knows something: He knows he’s got a bad leg. You might say all psychosomatics and hidden standards are cures for mystery.

They give themselves a knowingness, following a period of notknowingness. Now, people can get stuck in relief, and very often when your pc feels better, he will feel better momentarily and quite artificially and not feel better at all. Now, for instance, sup- posing we were all sitting here and we heard a high whine and a dull thud out in the park, and an airplane full of screaming passengers had apparently just crashed, you know, and we could hear the whole works, sitting here.

And so we in a big flurry crowd out the door and rush out- side to see this airplane that’s crashed, and so on. And it’s just Peter left one of his record players on. See?

Quite a feeling of relief, but the relief followed a period of confusion. Now, I’m not saying this is very aberrative. This would be so light that it’s very easy to face indeed.

Then, you see, we’d have a little period of relief, and it actually would stick slightly on the track. See, it’s a period of relief. It’s a period of know.

Now, you see, at the moment we heard it crash, we didn’t know what was happening, so we’ve got a not-know. And then we go out and we find out what happened, we find out nothing happened and that it’s all all right, so we know. You get this.

This is just in vignette. What I’m talking about is not at all aberrative. It takes much greater volume of magnitude to make one of these things.

All right. Now, let’s go into what Mary Sue was showing you here just before I came in. And we have ourselves a period there, which we see as a big, white chalk mark up at the top, and then there’s a little chalk mark down the line and we’ve got a vertical time track here; and it’s got a big blob of white chalk at the up part, and a little blob, and then below that a big blob, and then below that a little blob, and some more little blobs.

All right. Now, I’m not making fun of her cartooning here. But anyway, taking a look at this now, we see the time track plots linearly.

Now, she’s got herself plotted from a zero at the top to 1961 at the bot- tom. Well, all right. We’ll take it that way because time tracks don’t run in any direction.

All right. Now, we take that little tiny, last, bottom white blob, and that’s a chronic somatic. The person has a chest wheeze, and every time you process them, they look at their chest to find out if they’re still wheezing And they know the auditing command worked because the  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 8  wheeze is less, or they think the auditing command didn’t work because the wheeze is more.

This is how they know, you see? This is how they know. Well, isn’t it interesting that this know would occur in connection with a chronic somatic?

Now, a person must have a hell of an avidity for knowingness if they have to find out if their back’s still broke or their chest is still caved in or if their rib cage is squashed. What kind of knowingness is this? Well, it must have followed one God-awful confusion, man!

If that’s the acceptable level of knowingness, wow! What must have happened before that? So we take this pc, and we say to this pc, pointing to that last white blob there, “Well, what was going on in your life immediately before you noticed this difficulty with your chest?” And your first, usual, immediate response, if this is a hot subject, is “Well, my chest has always hurt me.” It’ll be something intelligible like this.

They haven’t answered the question at all. You say, “No, no, no. Just before you no- ticed this – before you noticed this – what happened in your life?” And they say, “Well, um… I don’t know.” That’s right.

There you got it hot. That’s hot and heavy. And, boy, they never spake more sooth than that.

They were spaking sooth with all front teeth. They didn’t know, that’s for sure, or they wouldn’t have this chest difficulty. All right.

So we punch it a little harder – you see, it’s the auditor compelling the pc’s attention into that area – and we say, “Well, when did it turn on? What period of time was it when it turned on?” “Well,” he said, “well, it must have been – must have been the summer of ‘59 or something like that. I know I had it then.” You see, they haven’t said anything “before” yet, you see?

They know they had it in the summer of ‘59. You say, “Now, that’s good. Now, just what happened just before the summer of ‘59?” “Well, I had it in the spring of ‘59 too.” See, they haven’t answered your question yet, you know?

All right. But you see what’s happening here? You’re plowing their attention back toward an unconfrontable area.

So you say, “Well, all right. What happened before that? Well, what was going on before you noticed this chest somatic and so forth?” And they say, “Well. oh, well, uh – yeah, well, it uh…” (And we notice this little up- per white blob here, see?) They say, “Yeah, well, it turned off for a long time.” Haven’t an- swered your question yet.

See, it’s off from the first white blob to the second white blob, see? Well, it’s off. “Yeah. Well, I wasn’t troubled with it then, and uh… I remember – oh, yes!

Yes, that’s right. I recall in ‘56, I had medical treatment for this.” See, they’ve told you nothing  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 9  about “before” yet. But they’ve got it stretched back in time.

And then all of a sudden they’ll come up and say, “Well, let’s see, ‘56.” (And we’ll call that earlier blob there 1956.) They’ll say, “Well, let’s see.” You say, “What were you doing in ‘55?” “Well, I… ‘55. That was when I was down at camp in Cornwall. No.

No, no, no. Come to think about it, that was ‘52.” And they’re liable to come up with the adjudication that they don’t know what happened from 1952 to 1956. This is a curious blank period.

And they figure it all out, and they say, well, it must have been this and it must have been that, and it might have been this and might have been that. And then all of a sudden they say, “Well, the truth of the matter is, I was… Well, I’m not sure. I’m not sure.

But do you know, I had this when I was a child?” See, way back now. Way, way back. Boom! “Yes, I had this when I was a child.

They thought that I had consumption and so forth, and I… actually I hadn’t remembered that, but I had a lot of consumption, and I remember I was living with my grandmother, and so forth. And they – they had me to the doctor a lot of times, and that sort of thing And I just had overlooked this fact.” Now we’re up at the first white blob up there, see? You say, “Well, what happened just before you were living with your grandmother?” “Well, I wouldn’t know.

I was awfully young. I was eleven.” “Well, yeah. Well, where were your parents at that time?” “Well, let’s see.” And brother, we’ve got another blank spot, and we’ve got a nice, big, juicy blank spot.

Now, we keep plowing into this blank spot, and we finally find out that Mother and Father had agreed to separate just before this, and there had been a lot of domestic difficulties, and we think we’ve got it now, and we’re trying to really pin it down – we think we’ve got it. And they were trying to separate, and this was happening, and that was happening; it was all very clouded up, and it was all very this and that. And we’re just about to get a touching short story about this whole thing, when suddenly the pc remembers that he burned down the house.

And that will be the end of that chronic somatic. Just by assessment only. See?

That’s just by assessment. But your assessment is, doggedly, to find out what happened before they noticed this. Now, perhaps it’s a bad thing to say “for the first time” because this is always a lie. one of the stable data of auditing is always make your auditing question as truthful and as factual as possible.

Don’t make auditing questions that are nonfactual. So you say, “Well, what is the first time you remembered this?” or “What is the first time you noticed this?” Of  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 10  course the pc cannot answer this because he’s going to give you fifty more first times after he’s given you the first time. So it’s much cleverer to say, “What is a time that you noticed this?

When did you notice this? What happened before you noticed this?” And then just keep chugging it in. Now, it’s not a repetitive command, and this is actually getting rid of chronic somatics by assessment.

If you are very clever at assessing, you can just go on and assess and assess and assess, and you finally find out the confusion; and you pin the confusion down to such a degree that you’ve made the pc confront the confusion, the confusion will as-is. Right there. Bang!

And everything else will blow after it, and that is it. You can do it by assessment only with an E-Meter. That requires a rather clever auditor to do the whole job by assessment only.

Now, here’s an easier way to do it. We finally spot the area of confusion by assess- ment, and then we put together Security Checks to fit that area. We find out that this person had this when they were eleven: Well, it’s some kind of a childhood activity that is all messed up.

Well, you can actually take the child’s Security Check, and bend it around one way or the other, question by question, and add your own questions to it, and so on; and you’re going to get yourself some interesting data that this pc has never seen before. And you’re going to blow out those zones of confusion, and you’re going to find the dissipation of the hidden standard of the chronic somatic. That is a more standardized method of going about one of these things.

All right. Let’s take another example. This girl finds that she has headaches.

She finds she has lots of headaches. And in auditing, she’s always sort of aware of this headache, and she knows the auditing process is working because the headache turns on or turns off, and if nothing affects the headache, she of course doesn’t think the auditing process is working That’s her hidden standard. That’s by which she finds out whether or not auditing is working That is the definition of a hidden standard.

Well, naturally, your rudiments are out as long as the pc has this condition. Why? Well, the pc is viaing the auditing command.

Now, in all cases where a pc is not making progress on Routine 3, you can bet your bottom peseta that the pc has not and is not doing the auditing command. They might be doing the auditing command plus, plus, plus, see, or they might not be doing it at all. I do remember back in Wichita, long, long ago, a pc coming around to me after a twenty-five hour intensive and bragging to me that they had succeeded in not answering an auditing command once, and they thought this was awfully clever of them.

Yes sir, the pc was really bragging about it. What was the matter with the auditor that he didn’t find it out? Now, here is the more usual thing: The pc does the auditing command and applies it to a certain area of the mind or body in order to find out if it has affected something else.

And  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 11  they do the auditing command by applying the auditing command to something in the mind, and then they look over here to see what is going on and if anything happened. And they do this continually. They’re not just doing the auditing command.

They are doing something else. Now, they know they did the auditing command right or they know they did it wrong, or they know the command is right or wrong, in direct comparison to how much happens to alleviate this difficulty. You are auditing a pc who has an attention fixed, not on the bank in general but on some particular, peculiar activity.

And they’re doing something peculiar with every auditing command. You feed them the auditing command, they do something peculiar with it. Even though they verbally answer it and so on, and apparently have executed it, they do something else with it.

And when a pc is not making progress, you can say his attention is stuck someplace. Well, that’s a shortened form of saying the rudiments are out. one of the rudiments are out. The pc is not really in-session.

The pc is on auto. The pc is not under the auditing control, the pc is under his own control. He’s under his own control to this degree: You say something, then the pc takes over as auditor and executes the auditing command, and then gives the ses- sion back to you.

And you ask the next question, and when you ask the question, then the pc takes the auditing command, goes on auto, audits the auditing command on himself and then gives the auditing session back to you. Have you got the idea? And the pc, during the entire period of execution of the auditing command, is not in-session.

Any pc who hasn’t gone Clear in 150 hours is doing it. Pc has got a hidden standard. What is this hidden standard?

Maybe he’s got six hidden standards. Well, every one of those hidden standards is totally this stable datum stuck after the fact of the confusion. They all have the same anatomy.

Pc takes the session away from you, does the auditing command, finds out whether or not it moves this electronic, then sees whether or not the electronic is affecting whether or not he’s a boy or a girl. That’s right. That was how we moved into this, with just that action on the part of a pc.

We knew about this for a long time, but we’ve never really seen it in action to this flagrant degree. This pc had been audited for about a thousand hours, and had applied every single auditing command ever given to the pc to the resolution of an electronic incident which the pc was convinced, if it were run out, he would turn from a man to a woman. Thousand hours – no progress.

Well, why? The pc was never in-session. So the rudiments are out.

The basic rudiment that is out is present time problem of long duration, where you have a hidden standard. All right. Very good.

Now if we take ourselves a pc, and we audit along with Routine 3, we can find the pc’s goal, we can find the pc’s terminal; oh, yes, with some difficulty, but we can find them in relatively short order, certainly under twenty-five hours of auditing, if  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 12  we’re really in there. We keep the most flagrant rudiments in, don’t you see? But we haven’t noticed this hidden standard yet.

And then we assess the pc on the Prehav Scale, and we run the pc on the Prehav Scale, and we run the pc and we run the pc and we run the pc and noth- ing happens. Well, there’s where it’ll show up. See, we can do the action of finding a goal, because the pc’s attentions are very, very solidly on goals.

We can certainly find the action of a terminal, we can find this terminal, be- cause we actually haven’t really asked the pc to do an auditing command. It’s all between you and the meter, see? We can find the assessed level of the Prehav Scale very easily, but now we go into the repetitive auditing command and the pc goes on auto.

Why does the pc go on auto? Well, the pc’s got a hidden standard. The pc is auditing himself on making his nose well.

Pc is not running – not at all running the terminal of a rail- road engineer. He’s running a nose. And so he doesn’t go Clear.

Now, very often, in worse cases, the pc will be very resistive toward an auditor’s in- quiring questions. The auditor says, “What are you doing? What did you do with that auditing command?” You’ve all of a sudden got a knockdown-drag-out fight on your hands.

Pc does not like you inquiring into it. The first time you ever notice anything like that, you say to yourself, “This pc has a hidden standard. Let’s find out what it is.” Now, although you can find the person’s goal, terminal and level, you actually can’t run the pc on that in the presence of hidden standards.

It is a waste of time. Now, there’s one earlier action that can be taken with the pc, that the pc will do and that will produce results. But there is only one earlier action can be taken before a Routine 3 assessment, and that is a Security Check.

This can be done without knowing the pc’s terminal and will produce lasting, excellent results. There is no other process – now we have all the facts in over the years – will produce easy and lasting gains on a pc. No other process will produce easy, good, solid, lasting, positive gains on a pc.

You have a Security Check and you’ve got the assessment and you’ve got the running of the assessment. So, this leaves us with a Security Check as a very powerful auditing weapon, because it will operate whether you’re running the goals terminal or not. The Security Check will op- erate, and those gains you make with a Security Check will be lasting gains.

Hence, we divide up auditors into: Class I – run any process on which they have a certainty. This will probably be some kind of a control process, by the way. It’ll be some cousin to the CCHs, if the auditor is wise, because that at least works out the control factors of the pc, and you do make a sort of gain.

You’re running in order, and something is going to happen with this pc, and it doesn’t come under the heading, however, of a fast, easy gain. It is not a fast, easy gain. It is a lasting gain, but it is a hard, long gain, and that’s all you can say for it.

That’s the CCHs, SCS – all these various things. They are long, hard, arduous things to  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 13  handle, and they do produce a lasting gain, but at what cost! So it doesn’t come under the heading of a nice, easy, stable gain achieved by the auditor at all.

But Class I Auditors had better be employed, even though it is very hard to achieve a long, lasting proposition. No matter how arduously, they had better be put to work doing some auditing, because any auditing is better than no auditing, and this type of gain will be quite beneficial in the long run, and so forth. And this argues that a Class I Auditor is doing some- thing, as long as he’s doing one of these types of processes.

All right. We move up to Class II Auditor, and a Class II Auditor can security check. All right.

Security Checking produces a lasting gain, and it is very easy. It is very easy to do. It is very nice.

It is very – very fast, and it is a lasting result. So we have the Class II Auditor doing Security Checks. And actually when we’re talking about the hidden standard, and that sort of thing, we can envision that a Class II Auditor would have set up a pc on the basis of having gotten rid of all of his hidden standards.

And that’s what we look to a Class II Auditor to do – not just to sit there and prate off a Sec Check 3. We’re asking him to do something else. We’re asking him to sec check in the direction of getting rid of all of the stuck points in this lifetime.

We’re asking him to get rid of the con- fusions of the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth marriages. We’re asking all of the… We’re asking him to get rid of that crooked neck. We’re asking him to get rid of the odd habit he has that every time you say something to him he goes drvvvvkh!

It seems rather odd this person would do that, you know? Because you haven’t asked him to smell a thing. In other words, these things all surrender to Security Checking.

All of them, now, the lot. But what kind of Security Checking does it take? Well, it takes a standard Security Check.

That is al- ways a good thing to bang into a case. The first and foremost thing you do. That’s a good thing – just go on and pick out the probable Security Check.

Let’s take an old-time auditor, he’s been knocking around and into God knows what. Well, the first Security Check we want to shove into him is the last two pages of a Sec 3, plus Sec Check 6. There’s no reason to do the first many, many pages of 3 or do anything very fancy, because he’s not going to get any benefit of something that he has overts on, and so on.

So let’s get that out of the road. And now having done this, let us get clever and apply this data about the stable datum and the prior confusion. Now, this is different than the stable datum and the confusion – the idea that we get all of the stable… we get all the confusions off the case and we will of course knock out at once all of the person’s activities, and so forth.

No, isn’t quite true. We have to knock them out selectively – has to be very selective. So after you got the last two pages of a Form 3 and all of a 6 done, you should roll up your sleeves at about that point, and let’s go for the hidden standards.

Let’s find out if there’s anything by which this person measures gain or no gain. THE PRIOR CONFUSION 14  “What would have to happen for you to know that Scientology works?” That’s the clue question. And you get these things, and sometimes these things are detached things.

Sometime these things are “Well, my mother would have to get well.” Well, he doesn’t really mean – perhaps he does, but he really, probably, doesn’t mean – that his mother would have to be sold on Scientology and brought to an auditor. No. The auditing command which he is doing, if applied to himself, would have to cure his mother.

You see, he often means that, too. So this idea, this… he says, “Well, my mother would have to get well.” Well, this is marvelous. It means his mother is a stuck – a stuck chronic somatic.

Now, the way you would have handled this in the past – the way you would have han- dled this in the past is not the fastest way to handle it. You could have handled it in the past, and it would have worked out all right in the past, but that is not the fastest way to handle it. I’m just giving you a much faster method.

When did this occur that Mother became a stable datum? And what confusion pre- ceded it? Ahhh.

In other words, we don’t run O/W on Mama, and we don’t security check Mama, and we don’t have very much to do with Mama. We want to find out what happened before Mama became a chronic somatic. Because Mama is a stable datum for a confusion before the fact of accepting Mama as a stable datum.

There’s some confusion prior. Remem- ber, it’s always prior. Let’s reorient your thinking on this.

Now, the fellow says, “Well, uhhh… I just have to get over hating my father. That’s what would have to happen. Yes, sir.

To know Scientology worked, I’d have to get over hating my father.” “Well,” you say, “that’s good.” So obviously you can do something about that. You do a Security Check about his father. That’s obvious, isn’t it?

This is past thinking on it. And you get all of his overts against his father, and all of his withholds from his father, and you clean up Father. And what do you know?

You could do it, too – I mean, you could have gotten a long way in this direction. Ah-ha, there’s a much faster method. Let’s find out what happened before “hating Fa- ther” became his stable data in life. “Hating Father” must be an activity he can confront, as a retreat from earlier activities he can’t confront.

And they probably have nothing to do with his father. Hatred of Father was much more acceptable to him than the tremendous confusion he had with, who knows? Probably not Father.

Who knows who it is? Lord knows. So, what do you do?

You assess. And you find the area of prior confusion to the hatred of Father. Now, at first the pc is going to tell you it’s something that Father did, and it’s something that had to do with Father.

But remember, it can’t have anything to do with Father if Father is the stuck somatic. Can’t have anything to do with Father, you see, if Father is the stuck personnel. If Father is the broken leg on this case, it hasn’t anything to do with Father,  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 15  because he can confront Father.

Well, if he can confront Father and he’s spent all these years confronting Father and so forth – it hasn’t got him well – why do you, in an auditing session, put in more hours confronting Father? Waste of time, see? No, let’s find out what happened before this occurred.

So you’d want to know, “When did you notice that you hated your father, and what happened before that?” First answer, well, inevitably, “My father did this, my father did that.” And you say, “Good, fine.” Give him a cheery old acknowledgment and then find out what happened before that with other people. Oh, you find out his old man hasn’t been any- body – man, his old man has been nobody in this fellow’s life. There is some kind of a person on a broomstick that has been flying around in this person’s belfry.

You know, as a child, why, this person would see – well, maybe it was his father’s mother or something, you know? And the child would see her sitting there quietly knitting and rocking in the rocking chair or something, and he absolutely just couldn’t resist, you see, spilling the cat on her, or you know, or pulling up the ball of yarn, or somehow or another stealing all of the bread dough, or putting salt in the plum pudding – just anything, see, any- thing. And you’ll find that these are overts, but they won’t come through that way at all.

He will finally recover the character on the broomstick, see? Total occlusion. Recover this character on the broomstick, and you will try to do a Security Check on this, and “She beat me and she socked me and she used to hold me over the well and say she was going to drop me…” And he’ll just go motivator, motivator, motivator, motivator, motivator, see?

Of course. Why? Because he can observe the inflow, but he can’t observe his outflow.

Yeah, but what did he do? That’s what’s getting interesting here. What did he do?

Did he steal her broom? Because you’ll find inevitably that this is what happened. So you make up some kind of a roster of the personnel involved prior to the stuck personnel.

And you make a roster of the “missing persons bureau.” And your little list is a “missing persons bureau.” And boy, you’re really going to find missing people. Pc doesn’t even know they exist. There’s going to be sections out of his life he don’t know are gone.

And you’re going to find those sections and find out who is in them and then write up a Security Check – any old kind of a Security Check – to find out what he did to them; these other people, not Father. Skip Father; he was a confrontable character. Why bother with Fa- ther?

Just a waste of time. That’s what the pc is complaining about. Now, whatever the pc complains about, do something earlier.

There is your stable da- tum. Whatever the pc complains about, you do something earlier. And don’t pay any attention to handling the object about which he is complaining.

You pay attention to his complaint. But if you continue to handle the object about which he’s complaining, such as his big ears, why, you’re not going to get anyplace. He’s complaining about big ears. “Well, I’m seeing… Every  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 16  time I…” You find out every time he answers an auditing command that he finds out if his ears shrunk.

You’ll find stuff weird like this, man. Well, did his ears shrink? Okay. “Now, when is the first time you ever notice…” oh, par that would be wrong “When did you notice that you had big ears?

When did you notice this?” “Oh, well, I have had big ears for some time,” you see? That’s your inevitable reply. Now, if you get a reply of this character which is a non sequitur, you know you are on to a hot area of disturbance, because the pc’s attention went onto it, and then flick! – came right up the track to the big ears.

Your effort to put his attention on the area of confusion re- sults in putting his area on the object. Whenever you try to put his area on the confusion, and then you only succeed in putting his area – attention on the object, you know you’ve got it made. You know you’re looking at one God-awful area of occlusion.

You say to him, “When did you first notice that you had big ears? Now, what hap- pened before you first noticed you had big ears?” Any such question. And he says, “Well, I’ve just worried about it for years – my big ears.” Well, now, you see the mechanism at work?

You asked him about a time before “big ears,” and he answered “big ears.” So it’s obvious that his attention deflected from the area you tried to put his attention on. You have located a hidden springboard. He doesn’t know it’s there, but you now do.

He coasts right up the track to it. Every time you put that hull in the water it goes straight to that particular dock with a crash. It won’t head out to sea.

It won’t go anyplace, you see? You just put it in the water, and it hits this dock. “Father” or “ears” or something, see? Bang!

And there it is. You say, “Well, now in your – in your early life, what went on there? What went on in your early life?” Now, this would be just asking for a whole bunch of balderdash.

Now, it’d take an aw- ful lot of millions of words for the pc to tell you every single, horrible thing that’s been done to him in his early life. There’s no sense in having much of a synopsis on it. It’s up to the auditor to continue to direct the pc’s attention where he wants the pc’s attention directed, not to listen to a recount – a blow-by-blow recount – of all the beatings the dock gave him.

See, that’s silly, because that’s all he’s going to tell you. He hates his father – this is his hidden standard – he doesn’t feel better yet about his father, so not feeling better yet about his father, he knows the auditing isn’t working. And you say, “Well, tell me about your early life.” So he says, “Well, my father… and he used to take me out in the woodshed, and then he did this to me and he did that to me.

And he did this and he did that, and my father this and  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 17  my father that.” Well, are you doing anything for this pc? No! No, you’re not doing anything for him at all, because you’re leaving his attention stuck on a refuge.

Any chronic somatic, any stuck personnel, anything of that nature is a refuge on which the pc can put his attention. And you are not doing your job as an auditor unless you get his attention eased over onto what makes him stick his attention on it. And you do that by a gra- dient scale, and the pc can get very restive if you jump your gradient too hard.

So you say, “All right. Big ears. Now let’s see.

What happened just before you noticed that, or when did you notice that you had big ears? Tell me a time you noticed you had big ears. What’s some early period when you noticed that?” And the pc says, “Well… uh, well… uh, well… uh, well… uh, well – well, I was working in London for an attorney’s firm.

I used to notice it.” “Good.” You say, “Is there any earlier time than that?” “Oh, well… no. In the attorney’s firm…” Oh, well, hell, you got his attention stuck there. And you say, “No, earlier – earlier than the attorney’s firm.

What’d you do earlier than that?” “Oh. Oh, well, what did I do earlier than that? Uh… I don’t know!

What did I do ear? Let’s see now. I went to prep school, and then I went to college, and then – so on, and that was 1952.

And I got out of there, and then ‘52 and then 1955… 1955, and I went to work. Yes, it must have been ‘55 I went to work – I remember that, yes. It was ‘55.

Went to work for the attorney’s firm in 1955. And I got out of college in 1952.” “Good,” you say, “well, what did you do between ‘52 and ‘55?” “I just don’t know. Now let’s see, what did I do?

No, I – I met a girl. Ah, yes, I re- member now. I met a girl, and she… uh… yeah, I met this girl and she had a boyfriend.

And we had an awful… No, that was ‘58. Let me see. No, no.

I – I’ll get it in a minute. It’s 1952, 1955. Now, there’s a period of three years.

Now, let’s see. After I got out of college, I must have gone home for a little while. And then I must have done this, and then I must have done that, and I must have done something or other – probably.

Yeah, I’m sure I must have done something like this, because, you see, you just wouldn’t ordinarily just go from college to an attorney’s firm. “Now, let me see. Oh, I know. I had an awful fight with a fellow.

Yeah. Oh, that was pretty terrible. We met down in this bar, and he had some kind of a criticism of me one way or the other, and we had this hor – .

No, that was ‘57. No, no. That wasn’t ‘55, that was ‘57.” And that’s the way he’ll go on.

You understand? And you say, “Well, what happened in this period of – anything that might have occurred between 1952 and 1955?” “Oh, uhh-uh, ruh, ruh, ruh, ruh-ruh, ruh, ruh-r.”  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 18  “Well, did you ever think about big ears before 1952?” “No, no, no, no, no, I didn’t think about that before 1952,” and so forth. “Well, did you – you think about big ears after 1955?” “Well, yes. Oh, yes, oh, yes, all the time.

Used to sit there at my desk with ink all over me, and I used to sometimes get it on my ears, and they used to call me ‘ink ears’ sometimes, and so on… That was probably it. Actually, the firm really hated me. And the senior part- ners…” this and that.

You say, “That’s good. Thanks! Good!

Good! Good! Fine!

Thank you! Thanks. Good.

All right, now. Good. Now, we want ‘52 to ‘55.

Now, who did you know in that period?” “Well, I must have known my father and mother.” “All right. Well, who introduced you to get work at the attorney’s firm?” “Ah… must have been some connection with my father.” And you know, you’re liable to find some damn-fool thing like a marriage? You’re li- able to, man.

You’re liable to find anything. But you will find something, and it’ll be a period there of total occlusion. What you’re trying to do is not necessarily solve the big mystery of it all.

If you were very clever, you could do the whole thing by assessment. On the meter, one of the ways you do it by assessment is “Well, ‘54. Did you have a long vacation there after you left college?

Was it two years? One year? Six months?” “Oh, I went to work, something of the sort.

I was doing something I’m sure I was do- ing something I must have been doing something Over a period of three years a young man doesn’t do anything, you see? And I went up… I’m sure. Yes.

Yeah. I’m absolutely sure. No.” You finally dredge up a name, Agnes.

Ohhhh, Agnes. Ahhhh. All right.

Now, in es- sence, as much as you can find out about Agnes, you just do it on an interrogation basis and assess “The worst confusion you ever had with Agnes. When is the worst time you ever had with Agnes?” and so forth. And this finally peters out and you find Agnes is just a red herring.

She’s hardly a girl at all, and in actual fact it was Isabel. Isabel turns up along about this time, and now we have got a honey by the ear. And we find out that she used to stand there constantly, and say what she said, and she used to do this and do that, and she was the one who got him arrested.

Arrested? Where – where – where the hell did this come from? Don’t you see?

We don’t find out, usually, anything about big ears. Agnes never said anything about big ears, nothing of this sort, but she went off with a be who had big ears. And Isabel – Isabel, she went off with a boy who had big ears.

Something stupid like this. So big ears got to be something in here. And in some of the wild, devious way that  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 19  all of a sudden works out and becomes completely sensible, we find out how he wound up with a stable datum of big ears.

This person says, “Well, I have a ball of light and it is just back of my eyeballs, and when the ball of light glows, then I know the auditing question worked. And when it doesn’t glow, it didn’t work.” you want to find out “When did you notice this?” And then you want to find out what happened before that. “Now, what happened be- fore that?” And the person said, “I… well, I haven’t got the faintest idea. I’m… Let’s see, now.

What happened before that?” And we run into some kind of a blank period. Then all of a sudden, marvel of marvels, we find out that between 1945 and 1948 the person was deeply immersed in the Temple of Black Magic, someplace or another, and all this seems to have dropped out of sight. And what they did, really, there, was “see the light.” And he’s been seeing the light ever since, but it was one awful confusion.

Because after the police raided the joint, you see… It wasn’t so much that, it was being sued for being the father of the child. That was what got him. But all of this has been fantastically occluded, you see?

And all of these stable data that the person has lead back to a prior unknown, and it’s just the not-know followed by the know. It’s the confusion followed by the stillness. The confusion, then the stillness.

All right. Now I’ll give you something I’ve got some kind of a reality on. It works like this: You find the bird… This works out on a broader track basis.

You find this pc standing on a rock in the middle of the sea waiting for somebody to pick him up. And he has this pain in his stomach, and he had that pain in his stomach for many lifetimes. Many, many lifetimes he’s had the pain in his stomach.

And you say, “All right. Let’s run this out.” So we run him standing on the rock in the middle of the sea. And we – I guarantee you – we can run it and we can run it and we can run it and we can run it and we can run it, and he will still have a pain in his stomach and still be standing on a rock in the middle of the sea.

And this is the old engram that wouldn’t resolve. And this is why finding the earlier on the chain resolved the later engrams – the en- grams that wouldn’t erase: Because, of course, in finding the earlier engram you accidentally went across the confusion, and you got the confusion knocked out. Well, there’s nothing pre- cedes that incident that’s hardly worth recounting, except mutiny, shipwreck, sudden disaster, halfdrowning seven times, and there’s something kind of strange and spooky about the whole thing.

And then we finally find out that he’s standing on the rock without a body and hasn’t noticed he’s dead. And this finally resolves the whole thing. THE PRIOR CONFUSION 20  Up to that time he knew all about it.

But trying to get his attention immediately before the incident when this occurred will be one of the tougher jobs, because you say, “All right. How did you get on the rock?” And he says, “I was just standing there. Well, I must have gotten there some way.

Uh… oh, I get a picture now of the surf. I must have come to the rock through the surf.” Well, any fool could tell that, man. He didn’t land there by helicopter, that’s for sure.

But he’ll make these suppositional actions. Now, a person trying to do this, all by himself, begins after a while to appreciate an auditor, because his attention is pinned in a certain category. And as it tries to go back to areas that are unknown to him, it of course deflects onto the chronic somatics.

So he tries to put his attention back on this and then comes up into the chronic somatic, and then he’s stuck with the chronic somatic; his attention is on it, so he starts auditing the chronic somatic, and he never does put his attention back on the earlier incident, see? So he leaves himself stuck with chronic somatics. See, his attention goes back up, and he needs an auditor sitting there to tell him to put his attention back again.

You know? “What happened before that? What’s the worst kind of motion you possibly could experience on a ship?” “Well, it wouldn’t be a ship. It’d be a submarine.

I don’t know why I said that.” “Well, what’s the worse kind of motion you could experience on a ship?” “Well, being torpedoed by a submarine. Let’s see. Or torpedoing a ship by submarine?

Being torpedoed by a submarine. Let’s see, torpedoing a ship or a ship torpedoing you? No, a ship wouldn’t torpedo you, you see?

And the ship… It’s the worst kind of motion… worst kind of motion… Be standing on a rock waiting for a ship to come in.” That’s exactly where the attention goes. Then he’ll get all interested in the thing. “Worst kind of motion. Let’s see.

Well, what might have preceded that? Must be some kind of bad motion.” “What kind of a bad action could a person perform that that would pay for?” You know, asking him for a direct overt – just suppositional. “Oh, oh, oh, well, you’ve really asked one now, you know? I get a picture of a fore- deck of a galley.

And all the galley slaves are there. And they’re all chained and their blood is running down underneath the fetters. And the overseers walk up and down the ramp, and the whips go wham! you see, and so forth.

And in a battle, in a battle, when they start throwing Greek fire in amongst the galley slaves… No, that was much earlier. That isn’t the same pe- riod at all. I got that.

That was much earlier. Much earlier.” And you say, “Well, how much earlier was that?”  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 21  “Well, that was another lifetime. That’s a completely different lifetime.

I don’t know what I was doing in this thing. It just seems kind of blank, the whole thing seems sort of blank. There’s this sailing ship, you see?

And it’s sailing along, and I think I actually stood on the rock, and I managed to coerce a ship to come in and wreck itself on the rocks. Or maybe… or maybe…” And we finally find out that it wasn’t very dramatic. He just got dead drunk as a Cap- tain of a ship and ran it square aground on the rocks and killed off all the crew, and they all died in the jagged reef, and they were all screaming around him and so forth.

But it wasn’t so much that. He had stolen the ship and was guilty of barratry. Oh, we’re getting someplace now, yes.

Actually, he had murdered the owner’s agent the second day out of port. Now we’re getting someplace. And the next thing you know, he isn’t standing on the rock anymore.

See what happens? You get the overts and that sort of thing off on the prior confusion and it blows. And that is the end of standing on the rock.

But the more you Q-and-A with the pc and let him stand there on the rock, the less you’re going to get done. It get pretty obvious? The less you’re going to get done.

Now, you can keep chasing a pc’s attention back, back, back, back, back, back, back, and wind him up at the beginning of track, probably. Of course, that’s a kind of a Q and A too, because that’s a method of not confronting He puts his attention on an incident much ear- lier that he can confront, rather than confront the incident immediately before. We’re much more interested in that span of time just before, that seems so mysterious, and that keeps landing him back on the rock.

That’s the period we’re interested in. We’re not necessarily interested in his whole career as a space commander. We’re not interested in that period, be- cause space commanders very seldom take ships to sea.

All right. So what we’re interested in is the period which we have encountered. Now, you’re going to find this technique very interesting in the handling of engrams, just to branch off on to something else.

You’re going to find this very, very interesting. When you’ve got a person’s hidden standards and he’s been running well, and he’s running his goals terminal on the Prehav Scale, and you get up to Class IV-type auditing and you’re going to run some engrams, you find these are usually very easy engrams and you ha- ven’t got to resort to very much trickery to run them. Because the pc, with the rudiments in, he’s in valence, he’s already contacted these pictures many times as he runs up and down the track; and you find out they kind of run like hot butter.

Take about a half an hour to run one of the things, an hour and a half. Three hours is the longest I’ve had so far. And they run very easily.

But let’s suppose in some peculiar way that we didn’t really get this thing wheeling, and the person seems to be stuck in it, and there’s a hell of a “burp” someplace in this engram we’re running, you see? And the person goes… every time they go through this area, they go  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 22  “burp.” And every time they go through the area, they go “burp.” And we’re having trouble running the engram, we should assume that something confusing happened just before that, and try to get that up rather than try to knock the burp out. Get the incident just before, and he will blow whatever is hanging.

Now, of course, the whole engram is hanging up, isn’t it? Now, how does a person get stuck on the track in the first place? Oh, let’s ask a much more important question than that: How does a person get on a time track in the first place, and what are you doing on the time track in this universe?

That’s an interesting question. Why are you plodding along the time track with such orderliness? Could it be that there’s a confu- sion at the beginning of track that you can’t face?

I find that a very fascinating question. I won’t bother to give you any answers to that particularly. But what is time?

Time very possi- bly could be retreat from a confusion we cared not to confront. So we retreated en masse and have been going ever since. But that gives you, now, a basic rundown on the prior confusion – trying to find the prior confusion to find the stuck datum.

A person’s ability to confront confusions, improved, of course will blow a lot of chronic somatics. But I wouldn’t count on it. I wouldn’t count on just improving their ability to confront and then having it all work out magically.

I would much rather that you just sawed into it from the word go and picked up these things and blew them selectively, one by one and very intelligently. Because a goals terminal run on the Pre- hav Scale will give them lots of confrontingness and it’ll give them lots of changes and that sort of thing, and you’re much more interested in that. Trying to run a person, though, with a present time problem of long duration – one special kind of which is a hidden standard – trying to run a person on the Prehav Scale with five-, six-way brackets and that sort of thing is highly profitless, because the pc never does the auditing command.

When analyzing whether or not a case is running, look to find out whether or not the pc is materially advancing, the sensitivity is coming down and the needle is getting progres- sively looser. All right. That all betokens advance of the case.

Now, we go just a little bit further than that and we say, if the case has not gone Clear in 150 hours of Routine 3, which includes, of course, Security Checks and assessment and runs, we’d better say to ourselves right about there, this case has never done an auditing command. This case has done something else too, or has done something else, or has not done it at all; and before that time – that would be the ne plus ultra of being kind of stupid to wait that long, now that we know this. But if it did reach that time, then we would say, well, there’s hidden standards here, and we would determine what they are.

And determining what they are, we would get rid of them on this basis of a prior confusion or any refinement thereof. We’d blow these hidden  THE PRIOR CONFUSION 23  standards. We’d straighten out these things.

We return to a goals run. If the case still hung up, we would suspect another hidden standard. We would blow that and go on.

So it might be a very good idea to blow all the hidden standards that you could blow on a case before you do very much worrying about the case getting on the way with a goals run. In other words, by all means get their goal. By all means, get their terminal.

By all means, assess a level on the Prehav Scale. By all means, give them some running on this sort of thing. But on a Security Check angle, first, let’s get off those last two pages of Form 3, and let’s get off all of Form 6 on an old auditor.

On new people, let’s straighten up Security Check in general, let’s get this pretty well ironed out, and then let’s find out if the person has any hidden standards. And then let’s undercut those by finding the prior confusions; let’s fill in these blank spots, at least in this lifetime. Let’s get them sailing so that they can actually do a straight auditing command.

And then, doing that, you’ll find you make very rapid progress with clearing. All summer and all last spring, I’ve just been working on speed of clearing. That is all I’ve been working on.

And this is another seven-league-boot stride in that particular direction. Thank you.

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