View source for Prepchecking, Zero Question (SHSBC 620321)

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

'''Date:''' 21 March 1962

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

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How you doing tonight? Audience: Good. All right.

Okay. All right. Male voice: How you doing?

Bad. Okay. This is the vernal equinox of AD 12.

March the 21st for those who are unChaldean. If you've never had a past life in Chaldea, it's March the 21st. And if you've never had a past life in England . . .

You ever had a past life in England? Audience: Yes. Every time an American goes down to the Tower to sightsee, I always like to see them as they come out.

They're always going like this, you know. I never knew they had that many executioners at the Tower. Okay.

Now, you saw a demonstration last night. I'll make a comment on that before we get into the lecture. That was a very neat demonstration.

Very neat. you saw the pc trying to give me a lose. I – didn't even faze me, you know. That was fine.

And I think the class thanks you, too. We're going to find the other item you wanted. But let me call to your attention a phenomenon which is very interesting here.

And if you don't mind my making a comment, it's just that a pc's attention on the Goals Problem Mass can become so tied up and so concentrated on some portion of the Goals Problem Mass that they don't recognize that it has forty or fifty combinations in it. And trying to get the pc's attention off of the last combination you found and on to the next combination you found, sometimes has to be done with building jacks. And you saw that particular phenomenon.

The pc did not like letting go of some units that belonged to the last part of the GPM we found. Don't you see? Well remember, this is a characteristic of the GPM.

It's areas of stuck attention upon identities. And the pc ordinarily runs through this cycle: They didn't want it, and then they think it's fine. See?

Now, they're sometimes thunderstruck and delighted with the horror of it  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 2  all, but it takes them a little time for their attention to settle down into these. But sometimes some items you get are hotter than others. Sometimes they explain more to the pc than others.

But you have a tremendous number of items before you get down to the middle of the Goals Problem Mass. And that, of course, is the last one – the last ones that the pc finds. And they will be twenty or thirty combinations deep. you see, 3D Criss Cross bypasses and cuts through the running of items and it simply goes on selecting items, finding items; and by the process of finding them, getting the bank down to the point of what's holding the bank together.

And that is a rather difficult proposition because it's sometimes almost over the pc's dead body. you see? In fact, I would go so far as to say it is over his last few hundred thousand dead bodies. Fortunately, there are only a few of these items which are remarkable.

The pc has probably been, in actuality, any item he has – he ever puts on a list. Do you realize that? We're only trying to find the items he's stuck with.

And by the fact of listing, you get rid of fifty or a hundred items at a crack, you see. Because they key out easily. But then you get the one that doesn't key out.

Well, that's the Goals Problem Mass item, see? All these others are simply locks on that. Now, of course, what's holding the one in that's going tick-tick-tick-tick- tick consistently?

Well, that'll be a deeper, more basic combination. So you can go elsewhere in the Goals Problem Mass, and you pull out a few more pins and hinges, and don't be too surprised if items that checked out, when you go to run them, haven't got a twitch in them. See?

Don't be too surprised. They're not going to go on ticking forever. Some of them are.

Only when you run the central package are you going to get rid of some of them. But the most horrifying ones that the pc finds early on are liable to blow as locks. Oh, man, they really explain his whole case and he's right there, and everything is fine, and the masses move around, and the chills turn on; and if you were to run them, they would run quite satisfactorily.

And then you move on a little bit deeper in the case and these others cease to be that important. And you go on deeper, and you get these earlier items that were so important, deintensifying as importance. But it's an interesting thing that the reason an auditor trying to do Routine 3 was trying to do it and failing so often, and that it was so difficult to do – sometimes getting thirteen- hundred goals and things of this character, you know – was because Routine 3 is a much better – in terms of quality but not in terms of length of time of running or accuracy or easy on the pc, and it certainly guarantees no accuracy.

If you can't supervise the auditing and cross- check it and get the rudiments checked, and oh, my. It's a very difficult and complicated action to get a Routine 3 goal and then get its terminal. OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 3  But what do you know.

If you get a Routine 3 goal that is really a goal and sticks there, and then the terminal and it really sticks there; do you know that after you've run or found ten or twelve items of Routine 3D Criss Cross, that you'll start colliding with the original Routine 3 package? That was how deep Routine 3 went into the bank. In other words, Routine 3, if it could be done, was a very accurate method and reached very deeply into the Goals Problem Mass and reached very significantly deeply into the case.

Well, Routine 3D Criss Cross exists because auditors found this very hard to do, and if it was done inaccurately, it was absolute suicide for the pc to run it. It was deadly. It was worse than taking arsenic.

You get the wrong terminal, man; oh, wow! And then run it. Woooh!

Well, in Routine 3D Criss Cross, you can sort it out and sort it out. What I did actually – I won't go into detail because this isn't a lecture on this subject – but I just found about forty doors where we only had one door. There were several reasons – as you can learn in earlier lectures – there were several reasons why we stopped doing Routine 3.

And Routine 3D Criss Cross, of course, keeps affording all these doors. I don't wish to discourage your accuracy, but frankly, if you're only indifferently accurate, why, you will eventually wind up in the middle of the Goals Problem Mass by just the law of averages, see. And when you really got it all the way down, of course, it'll run like a startled deer and everything is fine, you see?

It's a much handier one to use, much better to use and the pc shows continuous progress all the way through running it. They're a bit different, they – but they oddly enough wound up with the same goal. I merely wanted to make this comment on old Routine 3.

It was auditor accuracy or inaccuracy that defeated it, rather than it wasn't arriving. Because, man, that really “arrove” when it “arrove”! Okay.

So you take somebody who was done on Routine 3, and then you take Routine 3D Criss Cross, and they're always just a little bit dissatisfied with some of their items coming up. They haven't quite got the punch that their original Routine 3 package had. And that was to some degree what you were looking at last night in that session because, of course, we were in contest with a Routine 3 item which is much more fundamental on the case than the item we found, don't you see?

But by finding more and more items, we will eventually find one which is much more fundamental than the Routine 3 item that we found. We'll go that much further. See, just as in Routine 3, you had to do another assessment, you know, and find more items.

Well, Routine 3D Criss Cross, you just keep on finding items, of course, and you get much more fundamental items than the original Routine 3 item just as you did in Routine 3. Okay? Help you to understand that?

I know you probably disagreed, most of you, with my meter reading. But did you – I want to make a comment on that: If you'll watch me reading meters, you should be – notice  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 4  one thing – that I'm not reading a meter on the basis of a bulletin. I'm being very careful of the pc.

Have you noticed that? Audience: Yes. Um-hm.

I'm very, very careful of the pc. And you should notice, too, that on a Routine 3D Criss Cross set of rudiments, and so on, I'm only looking for the instantaneous read. And if I don't get an instantaneous read on that rudiment, I don't fool with it.

That's mostly for the newcomers. Yeah, don't fool with it, man. Because when you're doing Routine 3D Criss Cross, you're supposed to be doing Routine 3D Criss Cross.

You're not supposed to be straightening out withholds and everything else. Now, a way to defeat auditing is while doing a Routine 3D Criss Cross session, do nothing but prepcheck under the guise of getting in the rudiments. See?

And then the other way to defeat it, which is what we get to tonight's lecture is, when doing Prepchecking, don't ever find any withholds. Now, if you can just manage this, nothing will happen with the pc. And nothing will ever be revealed.

But if you – just as a further comment on that session – you should notice that I just don't take any chances with the pc from the standpoint of meter reading If it bings 1 and 3, why I leave it in. And if I've got a question about it, I'm not so tied to the ritual that I don't find out whether or not it's still in or not. I go on and find out if it's in. you notice that?

And you notice when we really found the item itself, it was going pop-pop-pop. This is nice. Wasn't that – wasn't that beautiful?

Pop-pop-pop. And the pc saying, “Well, I don't know. It doesn't have anything to do with me, and so forth.” Pop-pop-pop.

Nothing else around there was going pop-pop-pop. Well, remember the horse came up and knocked out the gris – the polar bear. Thought that was interesting.

We had a rock slam on polar bear up to the moment the horse came up. Pc said, “I think there's another item. It's a horse.” Fine.

That was the end of the polar bear. And it's just puzzled me ever since. The dramatic scene which I can pick up about horses and polar bears.

They don't quite mix up, you know. But anyway, that was the way it went. All right.

Enough of that. This in essence is a lecture on. . . I could be very smoothly – and finish this off, you see, as a lecture on Goals Problem Mass, you see, and then do the other one on Prepchecking But my mind right now is on you and the sins and crimes which you were committing under the heading of Prepchecking and I want to set you right in a hurry.

So this is actually a lecture about Prepchecking, and I want to give you some data on the subject of Prepchecking which you probably do not have yet. OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 5  And one is: the object of Prepchecking is to find chains of withholds and release them on the pc's case. Now, I want you to get that datum, and so on.

I don't think it's been in any bulletins or anything. I probably omitted giving you this datum. But the object of Prepchecking, you see, is to find chains of withholds and relieve them on the pc's case, you see. you got that?

You got that? It's a new datum. A new datum.

Because when I look over your What questions or when I looked them over last night, after the air was no longer blue, I sat there and held my head in my hands for a few minutes, sighed deeply, and then threw it all overboard and audited Herbie. That was after the session, you see. That was a good session.

You missed the real good session last night. That was the good one. Anyhow, the datum which you're missing about Prepchecking is that you don't ask a What question until you have a specific withhold delivered into your lap by the pc.

Your What questions are all your Zero A questions. Now, the way you're Prepchecking is your What questions – what you're listing as What questions – are actually Zero A questions or Zero B questions. And in any folder I picked up last night, I did not find a single What question.

I found nothing but Zero A – Zero B questions. Isn't that interesting And on a little further inquiry, I understood what was wrong, and that is: you're not waiting till you get a crashing, smashing, nice withhold right on the button before you ask the What question. Now, the Zero A – the Zero question gives you a huge generality.

Your Zero A, why, it gives you slightly less generality. You could have a Zero B that gave you a little less generality, but I'll give you an example: “I says to this girl once, I says – I says, 'I don't think you're beautiful,' so I've damaged the beauty of women and so on. And I think I did that, and so forth.” “All right.” “Well, what about damaging the beauty of women?” Well, we probably don't even look at that first withhold he just gave us anymore, but go racing and call that a What question. “What about damaging the beauty of women?” “1.” With great triumph, you see, the auditor puts down, “1.

What about damaging the beauty of women?” Oh, thank you. No, no, that's a Zero question. A Zero A or a Zero B. don't you see?

Now from that, you get this generality. Let me give you a better example, more definite. Well, the fellow says, “I've often disconcerted women.” See? “I've often disconcerted women.”  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 6  And the auditor hastily puts down, “1.

What about disconcerting women?” See, these are all wrong ways of doing it. “Well, I just did. I just disconcerted them, I did.” “That's good. Oh, you disconcerted them, huh?” “Yeah.” “Well, all right.

That's fine. When did you disconcert them?” “Oh, the last few lifetimes.” “All right. That's good.

Think that's flat now? All right. That's fine.

That's null.” It isn't registering anymore. Wasn't registering in the first place. So we finally cleaned up that withhold, didn't we.

Heh-heh-heh. Well, now, I just wish to tell you, that is wrong. And I wish to plead with you, plead with you, to see the error of your ways and repent because the kingdom of heaven is not at hand for any pc that you do that to.

You haven't even really gone so far as to miss a withhold. And you know, I think that's wading pretty shallow in the pc's bank. Now, let me show you this.

Through chitter-chatter, metering, analysis, assessment – anything of that sort; through anything of that kind – we find out that this person has been making a habit of disconcerting women. So that's a Zero A. “What about hating sex?” was the Zero from which we came out, or something of this sort. Or “What about sex?” or “Why haven't you liked sex?” Well, we don't care what it is, but it had something to do with a whole dynamic, you know.

And we pulled it down to the fact that he was disconcerting women. Well, that is just a Zero A. And you're going to have lots of those, and you could put that down by any way that you arrived at it; we don't care.

You can go ahead and do it just the way you've been doing it, but don't think you're yet into withholds of the bank. You're not. See, you're just at some high generality of some kind or another.

Because what you've got to do now is go ahead and get the pc into a specific overt: a specific, clawing, screaming, acting overt. Not a “I thought an unkind thought about God.” No, we don't buy this sort of thing No. Disconcerting women.

All right. You've got to go at it this way. This is not a What question even though it begins with what. “What's this – what's this about disconcerting women?

You ever disconcert one?”  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 7  And the pc says, “Oh, I don't know. Lots of them, you know. I, just – thousands of them.

And so on, over, the last few lifetimes, I've been disconcerting an awful lot of women, as a matter of fact.” And you say, “Well, good. Well, just – just one, just one now, just one, see, one – one time when you did.” “Oh, well, one time when I did it. There's lots of times when I did it, you see.” “That's fine.

Yeah. Good. Well, just – just one time.

Just how – well, how would you go about con – disconcerting one?” “Oh, I don't know, scratching her eyes out or something like that.” And so on. “Oh, really?” Now, you see now, there you'd go with a wrong What, you see? “Oh, well, this person, you see . . .” You've got a suspicious What, you know. You've got just a suspicion there might be a What there, so you say, “What about scratching women's eyes?” You know, just because you've had tick on it. Oh, no, no, no, no.

Lay off of it. Just – just put your paper aside until you've done some work! Then you can write it all up and brag to me about how good you are at this sort of thing, but only after you've done it, you see.

Your paper – you haven't got anything to do with your paper or anything. You're just – you and the pc. We don't even really care whether we're doing too much with the meter at this stage, you know.

And he says, “Well, oh, well, that's just metaphorically speaking. I, as a matter of fact, probably never have scratched any, any women's eyes. That's just, you know, you know, that's the old cliche, 'Scratch your eyes out.' I could scratch her eyes out.

I suppose I've said that a time or two. Or women have said it to me, and so forth.” You just leave that paper alone and leave your ballpoint alone. Don't come in close to this now. you haven't got a What question yet. you understand me now?

And we finally say, “Well, now, scratching women's eyes,” and it goes clang you see. you say, “Any time when you have ever done this? Any time when you have ever done this?” “Well, I've – some past lives somewhere.” “No. Now, any time you've ever done this?

You know, scratching women's eyes. Any time you ever really have done that?” “No. Well, I hit a women – I hit a woman in the eye once.

I – I hit her in the eye.” “All right.” See, you weren't quite on, see, you weren't quite on with scratching eyes out or something like that. But hitting a woman in the eye. Ah, ha-ha, that was something else, see?

OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 8  And you can still make a little notation. Well, if you're going to make any notations or you can't remember it, put it over here in the margin someplace that you did get a reaction on scratching eyes, but the only overt you can find on this, to which the pc will stand up before the judge and plead guilty, is: “punching a woman in the eye.” But we want to find out if he can remember it and if it happened, and so forth. So he finally said, “Well, yes, she was instructing in the Academy, and I punched her in the eye, and that's – that's right.

That's right.” Now, “What about punching a woman in the eye?” Now you have your What question, and you write it down there: “1. What about punching women in the eye?” Which – which is probably the best phrasing for it, see. You're going to get a knock on that, too.

Now, you want to know when it was, and you want to know if that's all, and you want to know if – what might have appeared at that moment. (Your new 4.) You want to know who didn't find out about it, who failed to discover it, so forth, who he was hiding it from. Any way you want to phrase it, and so forth. And then you ask him when was it.

This thing is knocking like mad, you see. It's taming down now. And was that all of it?

And what didn't appear at the time, see? Run your plus and minus “is-not-is,” see. What didn't appear at the time?

And then who failed to find out about it? And so on and . . . You know, this thing isn't cooling off worth a nickel.

Now, this is how you tell, see. This thing is just not cooling off. Well, there's several ways to handle it.

The more – most accusative way and probably the most needless, early on, is to find out if the pc is telling you a half-truth or an untruth about the thing. But that's relatively needless. No, look.

The anatomy of change demonstrates that if that thing didn't cool off on a couple of rounds of When, All, Appear, Who, he has done it before. Now, get the idea of dramatization and habit pattern. If last year somebody socked a woman in the eye, you can absolutely guarantee that year before last he socked a woman in the eye.

And you can also guarantee that it'll go clean back to kindygarten, because that's what you do. you see? That's natural and normal. And that's why that withhold won't free.

And now, you just put your ballpoint aside and leave your auditor's report over there as far as any What questions are concerned. You can put down all of your tone arm reads and your times and so forth, but don't you do anything to that “1” question, because you haven't run it yet. You found one withhold before you got it, see. you found one overt and a withhold right there, bang.

Now you're going to ask for an earlier one. Now, that's the magic word. you want an earlier incident when he socked a woman in the eye. And you're going to run that one back, and you're going to find that there's an earlier one, and so forth.

And he says, “Well, no. I really never socked a woman in the eye” – the needle is falling off the pin – “but I kicked one in the shins once.”  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 9  Now, I will permit you at that time to pick up your overt, and if it's not working very well – ballpoint pens and overts. Have you noticed that they don't write on greasy auditor's reports and so forth?

They're always letting you down. So you can go over here on the margin and you can write “Kick woman in shin.” Understand? “Kick woman in shin.” you can write that down here over in the margin someplace. We don't care where you wrote it.

It's just a notation to you. It has nothing to do with your Withhold System, because that's a Q and A to leave that What question you got because, look, you didn't free it. And I guarantee to you ladies and gentlemen, that if it falls on, “Hitting a woman in the eye,” and you can't free it by finding, “1.

Sock a woman in the eye,” there is an earlier one last year when he socked a woman in the eye, and there's one earlier than that when he socked a woman in the eye. You got the idea? And I don't care if there were five hundred and seventy-five times when he socked a woman in the eye, you're going to run them all under that What question.

You're not going to put it down – any more Whats. You're going to run a whole chain, and that chain is going to consist of a hundred percent doing just exactly what you put down, which described a specific overt – on the . . . Because look, if it only happened that once in this lifetime, it will free on two runs around.

And if it doesn't free on two runs around of the “When, All, Appear, Who” – if it doesn't free – you got an earlier incident on the chain which is exactly the same incident. It's not some other incident. It's not kicking somebody in the shins, it's bopping somebody in the eye.

That's all there is to it, see. And nothing more to it than that. You've just got to find that earlier one.

Now, true enough, pcs can all be mixed up and they try to get off this, and they try to get off that and they dodge this, but you actually can stand in there because every time you run a “When, All, Appear, Who,” you've shaken up that chain a little bit and he can remember earlier, you see? And he all of a sudden will give you an earlier one and he'll give you an earlier one – that's all on the same What. See?

He'll give you an earlier one, “pop a woman in the eye,” earlier “pop a woman in the eye,” earlier “pop a woman in the eye,” earlier . . . And we find this one in kindygarten. He forgot all about it.

What you haven't learned is that a chain can't stand there in any one lifetime unless it has a hidden beginning. And it will wash out at once on your “When, All, Appear, Who,” if it has no hidden beginning. It'll wash!

You ask him, “When was that? Is that all there is to it? What might have appeared then?

Who didn't find out about it? What about popping a woman in the eye?” That's your test question. You don't get a quiver.

There was only one incident; there is no chain. You get a quiver, you don't get a substantial reduction of that needle read, ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, you've got an earlier incident. And that earlier incident is going to be part of a chain which has its  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 10  anchor point in the hidden unknown of his forgetfulness.

Actually, not really out of this lifetime. And that's the only reason it's stuck! Now, please get the anatomy of how a chain becomes a chain and how it gets stuck in the mind and how it gets charged up.

And that is because the first part of the chain is suppressed and forgotten. It is totally out of view and therefore you get a chain. And you don't have a chain that will react consistently or go on reacting, unless it's a repetitive series of incidents which have the first incident this lifetime out of view.

And that makes a chain! And nothing will hang up as a chain unless that is its anatomy. Don't look at it in reverse.

See, you're not putting these engrams in the pc's mind. you might think you are sometimes but you're not. He's done these things. And it's that earliest lineup that is missing.

And if you're really running hot as a prepchecker, you're running on actual incidents only. Generalities, never! And you're running back down the same chain of the same dramatization, because remember, that dramatization, if only done once, will wash.

My God, you've just taken an eight-gauge shotgun and an eighty-eight-millimeter antitank cannon – put it up against its temples and blown its brains out. I mean, this is no light thing you're doing to this withhold, you see. Well, do you realize that major engrams will key out on the early track by just finding exactly when they occurred?

Fellow blew up a planet and right afterwards they put him in a box and squashed him slowly, and then they held him in a trap for a thousand years and. . . Do you know that on lots of cases you find this engram, you see, and you say, “When did it happen?” And you date it down to eight trillon, seven hundred and sixty-five million, nine hundred and fifty-five – you know – zzaa-zzaa, at two o'clock in the afternoon. And all of a sudden goes phsssst.

So you're not doing any light thing when you're asking “When.” And then you are asking him to confide in you, all of it, you see. That gets any hidden scraps out of the incident itself, and “Appear,” well, and “Not Appear,” that's going to get the suppressor out of the incident too. And “Who didn't find out about it,” and you can do a – you know, you can do a whole Sec Check on “not-know”!

You know, “not-know” is one of the most powerful Sec Check weapons there ever was because it's the whole constituency of individuation. This fellow knows about it and the rest of the human race doesn't – you've got a disagreement on the subject of knowingness. Now, two or three of these – any one of them – well, if you said all about it and then ran it as an engram a few times, it would erase.

So any one of these things in the past – any one of that four has been powerful enough to take care of major incidents. And you're leveling all of this, for God's sakes against one little, tiny pebble that's sitting there, you know. Thing is totally capable of sweeping a whole mountain away, you see?

So you take this little pebble and you put it up there, and you range the eight thousand- ton gravel crusher above it, you see. And then you put fifteen, twenty sticks of dynamite  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 11  underneath the thing, saturate it completely in nitroglycerine, you know, wire it up to electro- cute it and then charge it with treason so it can be hung, drawn and quartered. And you go back over and you push the master button and there's a large explosion of one kind or another – it's gone.

You're using all the weapons necessary to shoot down a B-52 to hit a baby sparrow. And there it is. And look, ladies and gentlemen, if it only happened once, one pass through will find no charge on it.

But if it happened before, ah-ha, we've got an earlier withhold. That's the only thing that can keep that thing reacting. So we get the earlier withhold.

And we get the earlier withhold, and we get the earlier withhold. Well, if it's this much of a chain, it must have its tail – like a scorpion's tail – well hooked into the root in the sand. you see? And the fellow says, “I don't know.” This is typical of your recurring withholds.

Every time this fellow sits down, he says, “Well, I had a – an unkind thought about Ron,” see? And he goes to the next auditor, “Had an unkind thought about Ron,” you know. Next auditor, gets off this withhold, “Had an unkind thought about Ron, you know.” Next auditor, “Had an unkind thought about Ron.” Sooner or later, somebody ought to get the idea that he must have done something to Ron at some time or another.

Somebody might get that idea. See? And say, “What have you done to Ron?” And then he – then he'd say, “Well, I didn't answer a despatch he sent me once.” And you say, “Well, fine.

That's good. That's good. That's good.

That's fine. What about not answering despatches from Ron?” That auditor was working hard, wasn't he? You could just see the sweat pouring off him.

Now, let's not wade so shallowly. Let's find out some blood. And oddly enough, if you search hard for blood – this is another mechanism you should appreciate – if you search very hard for blood and you want to know about this, and so forth; the tiniest “what the pc has done” very often explodes in the face of he didn't do anything like that, you know.

I have sat and asked a pc samples just to give them a horrible comparison, see. Pc's saying, “Well, I . . .” Keep getting a fall on women, see. I'm trying to find out what he's done to a woman or something of this sort, you know.

Anything, but I've got to have a specific one. OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 12  “Well, have you knifed any women? Have you strangled any for just kicks?

Have you thrown any bodies in culverts? Have you stood by and seen a woman raped by four or five people?” And the pc's going, “Oh-oh, n-n-nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing like th-th-tha-a-a- a-t. I lied about one once, and she got, got a divorce as a consequence.

That's all.” “Oh,” you say, “well, thank you. Now, let's see. When was that?” In other words, we scare it out by order of noncomparable magnitude.

Blood running all over the place. You see. And the pc surrenders.

Begins to look like a mighty small thing he's done there by comparable magnitude. Get the trick? Audience: Yes.

So anyhow, if you're going to get a chain, the chain is all the same action and that is what a chain consists of. And a chain is not a similar generality; a chain is a similar action. In fact, it's not really similar.

It's an identical action. And that's what makes it a chain. There's a chain of scratching your head on the left side, and there's another chain of scratching your head on the right side. you get the idea?

See? And on some bruisers, there's a chain of kicking women in the left shin and a chain of kicking them in the right shin, you see? But ordinarily, we will simply accept “kicking a woman in the shin” as a chain.

And if you find one incident of kicking them in the shin, if there's a lot of earlier overts on the same woman, you'll have a little difficulty erasing it. The kick – the incident of kicking them in the shin – unless you go and Q-and-A with it and get off into Robin Hood's left field and forget to pay the rent, and so forth – just kicking them in the shin is going to desensitize. But that woman's name is not going to desensitize.

See? Or beating her up isn't going to desensitize or something like that, but kicking in the shins, you're going to lose that. All right.

Now, after we've gotten all of the chain up, and we've gotten finally his sitting astride the little girl in kindergarten and pounding her repeatedly in the left eye – after we got this one up, which he had totally forgotten about – you'll find that that whole chain of hitting the women – woman in the eye is now gone and will erase clear to present time, because it's identical actions. And then the pc is feeling so good, and he's all straight, and he's – everything is fine, and way back here, you found “kicking a woman in the shin.” And you didn't take it up. You then say, “What about kicking a woman in the shin, now?” See, he's all – everything's erased, you've got it all fine, and he's all straight, and he knows he's leveled with you, and will never have to take up being brutal to the female sex again, and you haul up this dead rat.

OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 13  “So what – what about – what about kicking a woman in the shins?” “Well, there was such an incident.” “All right. Well, all right. Give.

Give.” See, you're trying to make sure. You're not writing anything down yet. You're trying to make sure that there is an actual incident. “Well I, 19 – 1952.

Well, Josie Ann Marie. I kicked her in the shins, all right.” “Good. Now, what about kicking women in the shins?” See, there's a What question.

You haven't changed your Zero A, and you've gotten rid of that first What question, see? Now, you're going to find out they not only kicked Josie Ann Marie in the shins in 1952, but there's some earlier instance of this thing occurring and you're going to get a whole chain going on this thing. But, if this thing fell and then you ran your “When, All, Appear, Who,” questions, and asked the question again and it's gone, there's nothing earlier.

There's nothing earlier. You can take a little chapter out of my book and be very careful and ask that What question before you leave it, ask if nyah-yah and then ask if you've missed a withhold on the pc; and then don't buy anything he gives you because you're prepchecking him. And they say, “Well, yeah, you – you – you missed the fact that I – I beat up my mother.

Ha-ha-ha-ha.” Well, you don't sail in on this. You're trying to clear up this other chain. You say, “All right.

Well, do I know about it now? That's fine. Thank you very much.

All right. Now, kicking woman in the shins. All right.

That's very good. All right. Got that settled.

All right. N-U-L, null, L. Now, is there an actual incident of your beating up a mother?

I mean, you – you did beat up your mother?” “Well, I think I did.” Keep that ballpoint off the paper, man. Get an idea of an electric shield getting in between that paper and the ballpoint. Don't you write any What question. “Well, I actually didn't beat her up. she beat me up.” Ah, that's getting to be an awful sure sign, isn't it.

Ho-ho-ho. Oh well, all right. We don't do anything with that yet.

We don't write a word yet. And you say, “You did beat up your mother? Well, how old were you?” “About seven.” “All right.

You did beat her up?” “Yup.” Clang, you see. OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 14  “Well, what about beating up your mother?” Heh-heh. See, write your What question and you'll get a nice chain of it.

Last time he beat her up, she was seventy-two. . . You can run a whole flock of withholds off that What. And I don't care what you write in to refresh your memory or keep yourself picked up, but look over your Prepchecking questions.

And I look over this “I disconcerted my mother,” not as a What question, if you please; if you please. This – didn't have any incident. You see, it's only after you've got blood that you go down to the “1” question.

There's already blood dripping on the floor at the moment when you go into that. Until that happens, you're in the broad generalities of Zeros. And you can just call Zeros the world of generality.

And I don't care how many Zero As, Zero Bs, Zero Cs, Zero Ds – I don't care how many Zeros you've got sitting up there. You're in the world of generalities. You have not yet found an incident.

You're still in the field of assessment. You're still in the field of grope. I don't care what you write up there particularly.

But before you leave that area, may I please lay down the law on the subject of, “Don't you dare ever write a What question until you have an actual incident of the pc doing something. And don't ever leave that type of incident until it's freed up.” And then you'll stop missing withholds and you'll get the benefit out of Prepchecking. But you keep wading around in that little duck pond that you think is the pc's reactive bank, you see – here's this little duck pond up here on the beach, and you're going around there, and it's just damp on the bottom, you know, it wouldn't even support a goldfish.

And you're wading around there very carefully, and you're being very happy because you found a leaf floating in it, you see. I ask you to look over your shoulder because as you're wading around in this duck pond, that roaring, screaming, typhoon-ridden, surging, limitless ocean, that is just behind you, is the reactive bank you should be swimming around in. And I will state that it sometimes looks like that to you, and you think you'd better not go swimming under those conditions.

Sharks darting up in all directions, you see. Typhoons and waterspouts coming in from every horizon, you see. Wreckage strewn about, dead bodies, half-eaten women, you know.

The thing is untidy. And you say, “Well, I shouldn't be swimming in there. My mother wouldn't like it.” Now, if you're going to get the full benefits out of Prepchecking, why, you're going to find something the pc did, and then you're going to write a What question based on that something he did.

And then you're going to clean up that whole chain before you leave that. OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 15  Now, this is sometimes hard to do and sometimes your luck is out. Now, I will add this: sometimes you're just – your luck is out.

You hit a chain just like you used to sometimes hit an engram that wouldn't erase. You will sometimes hit a chain that just seems to go forever and disappears into the Stygian deep of past lives and it just goes forever. Unfortunately, you probably have hit something related to the Goals Problem Mass, and it's just going to go forever.

But that's no excuse not to run it because you could still run it all the way, but you might find yourself prepchecking the same question for three or four sessions. And sometimes your pc throws you an awful red herring Now, this is the other lesson I must teach you. The pc goes into control of the session with present time problems and missed withholds and things of this character in the beginning rudiments.

And you've got a nice chain running, of some kind, from yesterday's session. You walk into today's session and here are all these damned red fish lying all over the ground. And you try to get into the Prepcheck session, and you can't because you keep slipping on these kippered herrings, see.

So, you try to clean up the present time problem or the missed withhold or something of the sort and you find yourself on an entirely new chain that had nothing to do with yesterday's session. All right. Tomorrow, you come in – it's now tomorrow.

And you come in and you want to get this question – day before yesterday's question and yesterday's question flat – and so you go into the rudiments on this third day and the pc has an entirely different missed withhold or a present time problem and you find yourself now on a third chain. Now, the fourth day of the week comes around and you try to get into it and the pc has a present time problem about something else. you now have four chains alive. Nothing is settled.

And on the fifth day, of course, either you or the pc blow out your brains. You see how the pc moves into control of what is being run. A pc almost does this knowingly.

See? He's just gotten up to the point where he has to confess that he went to Leavenworth for five years for stealing automobiles, you know. He's almost there, you know.

And he says, “If this just goes any further, this one question that we keep running here about, 'Have you ever stolen anything,' goes any further, we'll – we'll get into that area.” He says this reactively. He hardly says it actively at all, see. He has a present time problem.

Ha-ha. Has a present time – best thing to do then is have a present time problem about your wife, isn't it? Ha-ha.

Nice and distant from the subject. It's a way to miss withholds, isn't it? And it's also a way to steer checking.

Now listen, aside from the fact that you must keep up – your pc has to be in-session, you do a minimal in-sessionness. You do a minimal requirement here of the rudiments. And if it looks like these rudiments are going to throw you over into the next county and on to a new  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 16  chain and you've got to finish up yesterday's chain, and that sort of thing – you know somebody saw me do it in a demonstration one day. “Do you have a present time problem?” Clang!

Instant read, see. “All right. What's that?” “Well, my girlfriend left me last night.” We're prepchecking “making saddles,” see. “My girl left me last night.” We'll say, “Good. Do you have a present time problem?” It goes clang!

And you say, “Well, what's that?” “Well, it's my girl. she left me last night.” You, fellow auditor, standeth there alone on a vast and limitless plain; a solitary intelligence with a large signpost. And on this signpost there are two pointers. And one says “right” on it and the other says “wrong” on it.

Now, we know that you cannot run a successful session with a present time problem in full restimulation. We can prove it time and time again, that this is the case. And we can also prove that cases blow up and go blooey if you continue to leave Prepcheck questions – What question chains, you know – unflat.

And the only thing wrong with that right and wrong crossroad sign above your head is, because you're straight under it, you can't read what either one says. Actually, that is the end of the lecture. Because you won't always win.

Sometimes you're going to be wrong Just try to be right as often as possible. Don't be deluded or dragged out of prepchecking by a brand-new chain of some kind or another that the pc keeps presenting; otherwise you're going to go too far afield. Sometimes it is better to ignore the out-rudiment and sometimes it is fatal to ignore the out-rudiment.

And that's what I mean. But the best datum I can give you about this, that you'll find the most valuable, is don't use withholds to solve any of your rudiments. “Are you withholding anything since yesterday's session?” And you get clang! You know – clang!

Ha-ha. “Now look. Since yesterday's session, yesterday's session – you remember when we ended the session yesterday? From that time until now, have you done anything that you're withholding” Not a motion. “Ha-ha.

Grrrrrw. That's it. Ha-ha.

Good.” Because that's the only thing that can louse up your session. That withhold he's given you, if it occurred earlier, also existed in yesterday's session too, and it didn't get in your road in yesterday's session, so it's not going to get in your road in today's session. OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 17  And when you do the present time problem, if you have to run it, Responsibility or something of that sort, or even Unknown, old Unknown – one of the older students here commented on to me that possibly it could be used in running a present time problem – the old Unknown method.

And don't try to run it by withholds. Keep withholds out of those rudiments and you'll be all right in a Prepchecking session. Now, a 3D Criss Cross session which has its rudiments out, once more you have the same thing, because the pc can continuously throw a 3D Criss Cross session into a Prepcheck session.

And you just don't get any 3D Criss Cross done. And the rule is when you're doing 3D Criss Cross, do 3D Criss Cross. And when you're doing Prepchecking, do Prepchecking And if you've had consistent trouble with the rudiments, then take off a couple of sessions and do nothing but rudiments – beginning rudiments, end rudiments, beginning rudiments, end rudiments.

You know, just do nothing but rudiments. Just long, drawn-out proposition, you see. Just bang the rudiments in one way or the other.

Take them all up and keep your Prepchecking sessions for prepchecking and your 3D Criss Cross sessions for 3D Criss Cross. And don't let the pc steer these things without rudiments, because it's been happening Hmm? When I see a 3D Criss Cross session of two hours narrowed down to thirty minutes of 3D Criss Cross and one and one-half hours of trying to get the rudiments straight, well, I say somebody is having trouble.

That's what I say. I don't say they're doing wrong or something of this sort, but they're certainly having trouble. And I can always say this with great truth: They're going to have far more trouble tomorrow.

And if they do it tomorrow, they're going to have five times as much trouble than they had today, day after tomorrow. And if they do it a third day, they're not going to have any pc at all, because it comes under the heading of no auditing The pc's sitting there quivering, you know. He's gotta get that item, and one more thing, it's quivering, you know.

And you start prepchecking him. Comes under the heading of no auditing And the more you try to put the rudiments in, the further you go out. The longer it takes to do and get a 3D Criss Cross item, the more difficult it is to get.

The third day is the borderline. You go over to the fourth day, and you're in trouble, and you'll be in trouble from there on out. If you go four days trying to get a 3D Criss Cross item, at two-hour sessions per day, I can guarantee you won't get it on the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, or eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth day.

You've thrown the pc out of session by just not delivering an item. The longer it takes, the harder it is to get. When you're real slippy, you get one per session.

That's really – that's really moting – one per session. Poppeta-poppeta-poppeta-pop. See, you won't get in any trouble at one per session.

You actually won't get in any real trouble, one every two sessions. That's pretty easy. Now, you're getting – that's awful easy – one every two sessions.

One every, see – three sessions – oh, I don't know. You'd have to spend half your time sound asleep in the auditor's  OBJECT OF PREPCHECKING 18  chair to do it that slow. But from there on, in actual fact, you're not going to get anything.

See, the rudiments are going to go further and further out. Now, I've handled a pc this way with some success. The pc says, “All right.

I've had present time problem, agraaa-agraaa, missed withhold, and so forth. And I'm all ARC broken. I'm very upset with you,” and so forth.

I've said, “Good. We happen to be doing a 3D Criss Cross session, and I'm going to get a list here, and we're going to carry on with this. How is that with you?” Pc says, “Huh?

Oh, you are?” And I say, “Yes, that's right. That's what we're going to do.” And the pc said, “Well, that's fine.” In actual fact, if I at that moment asked the pc “Do you have a present time problem?” “Do you have a withhold?” or do you have anything else, I wouldn't have anything at all. I'd have a blank meter.

See what the mystery of it is? Because I've said very forcefully, “All right. Now we're going to give you some auditing.” The pc then drops all of his excuses why he shouldn't have any.

Do you see? There's more to this than simply the crude slug. I have been known to make some rather interesting remarks in sessions.

You – on some of these you would have held your breath. But the funny part of it is, the pc never seems to get ARC broke. You saw me make a funny remark last night.

Didn't you? I said, “Come on, now. How are you getting these things?

Well, that's for the birds. Get them some other way.” So I thought, “Sure, that would ARC break the pc.” I asked for one right afterwards and I didn't have any reading. Did you notice that?

The pc thought that was perfectly reasonable. Because if you're being truthful and factual, you could never ARC break the pc. It doesn't matter how mean or cross or otherwise you sound.

I've boxed with a pc sometimes for five, ten minutes, fifteen minutes trying to get them to get uncoy on the subject of withhold and finally said, “Goddamnit! Listen here. There you are.

Here I am. I can sit here all night. Can you?

Because we're going to until you tell me.” Funny part of it is the pc doesn't ARC break. It's maybe never warranted. Maybe that type of approach never does any good at all. you understand?

Well, it keeps me from doing a withhold. Thank you. Take a break.

[[Category:Lectures]]
[[Category:Lectures SHSBC]]
[[Category:Lectures 1962]]