View source for The PE Course (SHSBC 640901)

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

'''Date:''' 1 September 1964

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

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All right, then this is the what? Audience: First of September. One Sept.

AD 14 Saint Hill Special Briefing Course, 1 September. Well, the Research Department slipped, I don’t see any lecture lying here on the desk in front of me to be read calmly. I don’t know what to talk to you about today.

You know everything there is to know and some of it true, some of it not so true. I’ve been recently sorting out PE. And I’d better give you a bit of a talk about it and I won’t say this whole lecture’s about it, but I’ll just give you a few thoughts in passing here.

And I found out some interesting data out of the field of study that particularly relates to PE. It naturally follows that if all of the students who come to a PE course are given incomprehensible words, they will then go away and that will be that. And I think that is really the sole and total loss of new people into PEs.

That’s just all there is to it. I mean, it’s a simple little package that you can put a red frame around and hang it up on the wall in the PE Instructors office or across from your own desk and you’d have it made. You’re going to think there are lots of reasons.

But that is the reason why you start in on Monday with fifteen people and wind up on Friday with two people. You see? Or no people.

It’s just to the degree that you have not found or used or given them words they didn’t understand. It’s as simple as that. That we should learn this with all of our technology and numerous nomenclature in Scientology is quite fabulous but it just shows that I’m laying a foundation for being an honest man.

Self—criticism is a virtue. And we have done this rather consistently and I now find out that it is a glaring and terrible error. Only it is not an error necessarily in our framework.

It is an error in general in the whole field of study. Now, what does this—what does this bring about here? Now, this brings about a datum that you would not expect to find in a lecture on a PE course because I’m not lecturing to PE students.

It says what has been discovered here is the prior act to the overt. This gives you a brand—new piece of that very, very important thing called an overt—motivator sequence. The overt—withhold sequence.

All of that data is suddenly illuminated. Before there is an overt there is a noncomprehend. Anytime you find an overt you’ll find a noncomprehend preceded it.

It’s preceded. So it’s as elementary as that. So an overt sequence goes, in exactly this fashion: A noncomprehend and its commonest, most usual form is simply a misunderstood word—a noncomprehend that can usually be traced to a misunderstood word.

So you’re going to get into some sequence, that’s something like this: a  THE PE COURSE 2  misunderstood word, a noncomprehend, a belief that it’s okay to commit an overt, a commission of the overt, the withhold of the overt, an attack or a withdrawal. Now, this can be in magnitude or this can be slight. In other words, you—an overt sequence can go with exclamation points or it can go in light print, you understand?

It can mount up to a big overt, it can mount to a little overt. But the final analysis of the thing is it amounts to a blow or an attack. It’s as simple as that.

It’s very elementary. So, we have a new illumination of the overt sequence. Now we know this: that when the auditor sits down and asks somebody for an overt act, and the pc gives him a critical thought, the auditor thinks he’s got an overt act and so buys it and so never gets the overt.

Do you follow that? That is a common auditor error. All right, so let’s trace it back from that error in a session and let’s see where we wind up.

The pc is asked for an overt act and gives a critical thought. He thought something critical. All right, the auditor that lets it sit there has not pulled the overt.

Because that critical thought is a symptom of an overt having been committed. All right, now, let’s back it up one and the auditor then says, “All right, fine. I heard you.

You’ve thought so—and—so. Very good. Now, what overt have you committed?” The pc, you see, has not answered the auditing question.

He’s been asked for a committed overt. And he has given a critical thought. And believe me, that’s not an overt.

So, we trace it back to that point of the overt and he dropped a flatiron on the person’s foot. All right, we pull that. Now, that produces a sufficiently salient result that we as practical practitioners, in this particular field, would be rather satisfied.

But interestingly enough, that just prior to dropping the flatiron on somebody’s foot there’s a noncomprehend, and just prior to the noncomprehend there’s a misunderstood word. So you’ll find that those four steps are present in any overt you find in any pc. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Now, let’s examine something else. Let’s examine something else here. We’ve got a situation where a psychologist sits down in a Scientology course.

He can’t learn. Actually, I’m now giving you a datum, not a criticism. This is just data.

This has happened over and over and over. They have the hardest time of anybody you ever had anything to do with. They come in and one poor girl who was a major in psychology—actually had her doctor’s degree, sat in an Academy course, in the Comm Course, for eight weeks and managed to get up to TR 1—eight weeks—TR 1.

So it is not a criticism that I’m giving you here, but actually just the plain, bald data. This has happened too often. Well, let’s look this over.

You say, well, Scientology is so far afield and adrift from the things that she studied—look how we can rationalize, see. Just like an auditor sitting there saying—saying this, that and the other thing, the auditor has given them the business on criticism. You see, “I’ve had a critical thought,” and so on.

Well, you get a big rationalization and the auditor says, of course, that’s very reasonable, and then we do a figure—figure—figure on how it is so reasonable, and so forth. Well, we’re—it’s a disease known as reasonability. can pull it in this one too: There was a real reason why that person sitting in that Academy course couldn’t learn and you couldn’t have gotten it on a—being reasonable,  THE PE COURSE 3  “Well, of course, of course,” because no matter how reasonable you get you don’t solve anything. That’s very important about—to know about being reasonable about it all.

It really doesn’t solve a thing. When you’ve got somebody who is totally civilized and totally this and total effete and totally gone and he’s long wound up and so forth, why, his final stage is being reasonable about everything. He can’t do anything about anything, but he can be reasonable.

And you fall into that trap, see. Guy’s run over by a truck, see, because the careless driver and the bad licensing in the—in the traffic office and so forth, so he’s run over by a truck and he lies under the truck wheels and is reasonable about why he’s been run over by a truck, don’t you see? That’s—it’s fascinating, but this is a sort of a disease that a civilized person gets into.

They’re reasonable about everything. Now, because we can be so darn reasonable and say this psychology student of course is having trouble in Scientology because it’s so different than the terminology and so forth they used in psychology, that we wouldn’t look for the real answer. And the real answer is in the field of the associated subject.

This is all, incidentally, germane to PE but a lot of other things it’s germane to, too. Ah, there have been subjects which have been associated, which are associatable with Scientology. Oh, yes.

Healing, education, religion, psychology, these things always—all have an associative point, you see. It’s—they’re related. You’re dealing with cousins.

And it didn’t do any good being reasonable about this psychologist because it wouldn’t have trained him. We forget the end view—person who can’t make his goals anymore, he can be reasonable. All right, well, if you really find out what the score is with regard to this thing, why, he no longer has to be reasonable, he can do something about it.

Psychology is an associated subject to Scientology and you must assume that when that person sat down in the class and couldn’t understand Scientology that they never understood psychology. And when you’re trying to cure this person up and teach him Scientology you’re wasting your time, because the misunderstood word is in psychology. We don’t care if they went through to the end product of a degree and so forth in psychology.

This didn’t guarantee anything because modern education does not require that one does anything or accomplish anything. One simply is reasonable about the subject matter and can regurgitate it properly on an examination paper and one immediately gets his degree. In other words, no practice or action is ever demanded.

The engineer does not have to build a bridge before he’s labeled “bridge builder,” see? That’s that hole in education. So they would never notice this.

The person could say the right words and give the right answers somehow or another and so he got labeled and so forth. But this didn’t mean that he understood the subject. All right, let’s examine this field of psychology.

What is there to misunderstand in the field of psychology? Now, we’re tracing this fellow down so he can understand himself some Scientology, see, and we’d have to go about it in a processing session in this fashion. And it’d have to be processing, I make that point.

You could never do this in training, because this is auditing. THE PE COURSE 4  You can tell the fellow to do some certain things, but realize you’re—tell him to go back and look up the words in psychology which he didn’t understand and look them up and find out what those are, it’ll brighten him up. Oh, yes, but that would be assigning him self—auditing, which is perfectly okay but remember, you’re assigning him auditing.

The second you depart from the immediate field on the clay table in training of the exact nomenclature the student is being taught, you are into processing. Because you have departed from this. When you get somebody to define the word memory in the Academy, you is doin’ wrong!

Because that is not a Scientology technical word. You understand? The way you do clay table training is you take this word as—is because it’s in an Axiom.

You take this word Scientology and you take this word engram, you take this word facsimile, you understand? And you don’t take such words as mind because that’s a general term, not a Scientology particular term. So in training somebody on a clay table in Scientology you would only take up the particular terms of Scientology.

It’s just Scientology. And clay table training is entirely different than Clay Table Processing. Clay Table Processing is done, “Yes, yes, yes, of course, all right.

Represent the object.” Session, see? Clay table training is, “Make up the word Scientology in clay.” Maa, maa, maa, maa, so on and so on, makes a little blob and throws it down in the middle of the table and writes “Scientology” on the top of it. This is not an auditing session, this is a training session.

He hasn’t got an auditor, he’s got a coach. And what does the coach say? The coach says, “Flunk.

Flunk.” “Well, I don’t see why you’re flunking me and so forth. I understand a glob of clay is Scientology and rrrrrr.” “Well, nevertheless I’m flunking you.” “All right. Why are you flunking me?” “Look, I don’t understand how that represents Scientology.

Now, let’s go at it again.” The guy—so on, so on, so on, so on, so on, so on, he finally makes something that’s just a test of whether or not the coach understands it. Coach finally understands it, why, he figures out the guy probably understands it, so he says, “All right, that’s fine. Good.” That’s not an auditing session—training is mainly evaluation.

In training you tell the guy what’s wrong with him, in training you tell him what the definition is—not in auditing. Auditing is a different approach. We unfortunately are in two fields simultaneously, see, and we’re asking the same guy that trains to also audit occasionally.

Well, he’s got to learn to shift his gears. An auditor never sits there and when the pc has got his representation of so—and—so and so—and—so the auditor never says “Flunk.” The auditor says, “Fine, fine. I don’t quite understand that.

Could you show me a little more, tell me a little more about it?” And of course, the thing shifts around, the guy realizes he hasn’t done it. It’s a different guiding principle entirely. All right, so teaching this psychologist what he missed in psychology, by definition of clay table work, is auditing, because you’ve immediately departed the field of Scientology, you got that?

You’re gone. So you’re into an auditing session, you’re on his backtrack, see, you’re way over the hills and far away. So if you haven’t got an auditing session going to handle this you’re just going to lose him.

THE PE COURSE 5  All right, let’s see what there is one is not capable of defining easily in psychology. And we’d audit this on the person. We could assign it to him as a self—auditing session but—and you would in PE.

You just say, well, this guy’s natter—natter—natter all during the first day, you know nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah. And you’re teaching him and you’re teaching him some fabulous thing like the definition of Scientology, and he just doesn’t understand it and so on, nyah, nyah. You’ve seen them in PE.

The right gear for the Instructor is, “Sir, what—what—what similar field have you studied to Scientology?” “Oh, uh—well, uh—I had three years in psychology.” “Very good. Well, look, could—could we realize something here? That actually, it’s—you’re not having any difficulty with Scientology, you’re having difficulty with psychology.

Would you realize that please?” It’s a PE course. Now, a course can assign auditing. But it doesn’t audit. “All right, you’ve been in psychology.

Very good. All right, now, could we request, could we please request that you look up some of the words in psychology which you did not understand and write them down on a sheet of paper and go down to the local library and look the things up and see if you can’t get that untangled.” And you’ll find out that handles it just like bang. You can be very polite about it. “Now, for the minute can we lay that aside,” you’ve already told him it was psychology he was upset about. “Can we lay that aside now and get on with Scientology, which is really a different subject?” And you’re not going to hear another word out of that boy.

You’ve assigned him self—auditing, see, which is, “Make a list of words you didn’t understand and go and look them up.” See, that’s a self—audit. But you can assign him that. And you’ll find out that forcefully shuts him up.

And you no longer have to contend in a PE with the natterer. That ends him. This you do.

Now, when I say a natterer I mean a person who’s just consistently uncomfortable, who seems to be trying to—you can tell him, they say, “Well, what does this have to do with theosophy?” Well, man, ask yourself what—what good is it to know this point? This point has no validity, it tells you that he’s stuck in theosophy, he hasn’t understood telekinesis or something, see. He’s flying around on cloud ten.

And I’d just take this boy who is busy nattering and “wloo—wlff—wlaa I can’t.. .” and I that’s—I’d just assign him that self—audit, see, like that, and the steps are very precise; they’re not cloudy—is “What similar field to Scientology have you been studying in the past?” And he says, “Well, I was in theosophy.” “All right, would you please realize that you’re not really having any trouble understanding Scientology, obviously, because I haven’t taught you any. You must be having a great deal of trouble with theosophy and would you make a list of the words in theosophy which you did not understand and between now and the next time you come to class go down to the local library and look them up and get their definitions straight. Would you do that for me please?

Thank you very much. Are there any more questions?” That’s a precise action, see. That runs off, brrrrrr—phonograph recordwise.

And you’ll find out that just handles that right now. THE PE COURSE 6  All right now, let’s differentiate between that bird, and the fellow who says, “Scien—Scien—Scientology?” Different time period, recognize it as such, this guy is dealing with a term right here in the course which you are teaching. He’s dealing with that term right now and he’s grappling with it, and he’s trying to understand it and the answer to that again is a one—two—three—four—just like this.

You say, “Now, what word have I used, sir, on this course, that you haven’t understood?” And he sits there and he thinks. “Huh. Oh yeah—yeah, permissive. Yeah, what’s permissive?” You say, “All right, it’s an English word, it means without force, without duress, let him do as he pleases.” “Oh, is that what it means?” “All right, very good.

All right, now let’s get back to Scientology here.” And he’ll find out, “Scientology, yeah, well, that’s scio, yeah, I got that.” You got it? See, that’s a different drill. All you have to be able to differentiate is the difference between the bird who is saying nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah because he hasn’t had time to gather this against Scientology so it must be against some other target.

See, and the bird who is—who is trying to—trying to dig it. The bird who’s trying to—trying to—trying to dig it up one way or the other. Got it?

So there’s two different reactions. Now, actually there’s a third reaction, there’s a third reaction that’s very important—is the “nodder.” Hasn’t got a clue! And is just going on, you know, “Yes, yes, yes.” And the Instructor in a PE always overlooks this person.

Because this person causes no trouble, this person is the perfect student. Could probably put it all down on a piece of paper again too or something but really hasn’t a clue. Now, we get over this in PE by asking for written illustrations of the points made.

And this is the backflow which we should get. So they keep a sheet of paper, and during the term of the instruction there, periodically, every time you’ve made a big point, something like this, then they have to sit there for a very few minutes—don’t make it too long—and scribble down an illustration of that point taken from existence, from real life. And this lets them participate and backflow.

And at the end of that period of training, that is to say the evening instruction, at the end of the lecture and so forth, you get that back. You collect those papers and you’ll be able to spot the nodder. Because they could tell you almost verbatim sometimes what you said, but to apply it or associate it to the real universe is quite beyond them, and you don’t have to look at those papers very thoroughly.

You just look them over for the reality of an example. Look at about the third example you have asked for. If it bears any resemblance whatsoever they’re doing fine.

The nodder will give you one that bears no resemblance; particularly that deep into the hours of lecture. It will bear no resemblance. You’ve given them a big point here, you see.

You’ve said that “A thetan is taken from the Greek word theta which means thought. And the Greek word theta—out of the Greek letter theta stood for the Greeks for this thing thought. Now, give me an example from your experience of the word thought.” Well, “worrying” is good enough, see, so he writes down “worrying” or something like that.

Well, they’ve got the idea, you see. The nodder will say “being kind,” or will say something else that’s ... How, how ... ?

All the Instructor would have to do is, “How the devil  THE PE COURSE 7  does that exemplify it?” And then having gotten that clue out of it you examine two or three others, and you’ve got this person cold. You’ll find out that it’s just a total unreality and they have not connected with something there somewhere; they’re lost. So you write on the paper, “Give me a list of the words you have not understood since the course began.” And you take these, when you get these words back and so forth, you use that as your instructional or seminar type thing.

It’s the words they haven’t understood. You simply redefine them, you simply define them again—you take it up. In other words, you just go in very heavy on the subject of words.

You get the cycle here now? The person—all the students are asked to write down examples, and at the end of each period of training—such as an evening—you collect all those papers with the student’s name and so forth on it, you see. And then the Instructor, all the Instructor has to do with these things is glance them over rather rapidly to see whether or not those examples are applicable and have anything to do with it, and if he finds anybody whose examples are just for the birds, then when he hands the papers back, why, he gives a special assignment to this person to write down all the words in the course which this person has not understood.

That’s just—that’s your drill, see, that’s the drill—zzzzzzt. Now, when you get that list back, you use such lists as that. You say when do you do this?

Well, you can actually skip a night or two with it, it doesn’t matter, because this person’s going to come back because they’re waiting to hear about the rest of the assignment, see. And you take these words up. You’ll find out that probably somebody else had a hazy idea of them too.

And this means that a PE course has one of these cracking, great, big, unabridged, two—ton dictionaries. Don’t teach a PE course out of the Bible, teach it out of the dictionary. And you’ll find out that that’ll be very successful; and you won’t lose people.

All you have to be is alert to this one point. It goes back to the first definition I gave you, and these are just the ramifications of what you do when you run into it, see. Be sure that every student understands every word he’s given.

And your very, very backward student has failed to understand a similar subject. The natterer, the guy who’s going to give you trouble, and the person who’s just having immediate trouble right here, right now, he’s hung up on not the word he thinks he’s hung up on. He’s hung up on a word that happened just ahead of that word.

And you’ve got to point this up to him. And he’s got to give you what this is. You understand?

It—he’s not necessarily—you don’t exp—you can get into just endless upset by continuing to explain the word the student is asking about. Go ahead and explain it, but don’t get to running on a treadmill on it because that isn’t the word the student misunderstands. So you and the student have gotten into a gay minuet that had nothing to do with the ball.

Because that student is hung up on this word because the student had an earlier word he didn’t understand and that’s why he can’t get this word. And he isn’t mentioning the earlier word because he hasn’t noticed he didn’t understand it. So you’ve got to point this point up.

Do you see how this is taught, then? I notice some of you look a little blank. It’s actually pretty easy.

You’ve just got to be sure that you don’t then ever get involved in one of these floor discussions with the PE course. THE PE COURSE 8  The natterer is going to cut the whole class to ribbons and distract all this attention. The person who didn’t understand this particular term that you’re using, or principle, he probably goes over to an understanding, he didn’t understand this concept.

No, it is not a concept he didn’t understand, it was a word. And he’s going to talk and the Instructor is going to ruin his vocal chords trying to explain this one concept or something to the student and the student doesn’t understand it more and more and it gets more and more ... Well, it will get more and more involved because that isn’t what the student misunderstood.

It’s something that happened just before that, that the student misunderstood. There’s how you handle these various aspects and don’t forget the nodder. All right.

Now, you get a PE course rolling along, you just keep up this cycle, and as long as you’re just teaching them very straight, highly defined Scientology, you’re all right, you’re all set. And you can just keep it rolling. Now, I will make this comment about a PE course.

What would you think of somebody who told you to come to a course so that you could understand all about the automobile and of course you didn’t know anything about an automobile, you’d really never seen one but you’d heard dimly about automobiles and you thought this was kind of an interesting subject. Something that ran along the ground at tremendous speeds. And you’d like to know more about this thing, and see if—this fellow said he was going to teach you a course and you were going to come in there and he was going to tell you all about this automobile.

And so you happily went over to this course. And then he spent the next five nights telling you why you should know about this automobile. How do you like that?

How good it was to know about automobiles or any other ramification. The direct forte is, of course, to know about an automobile. So in a PE you teach them about Scientology, not how good Scientology is or how bad Scientology is or arrrghorso whether Scientology’s big or small or anything else.

You teach him just about Scientology, see. And you’re all set. Don’t get into these other involved arguments.

Look at this fellow who’s going to teach you about the automobile and he gave you everything else. No, no. But look at how happy you would be with a course that was going to teach you all about the automobile, you didn’t know anything about an automobile, you thought that was a good thing.

So you go in, the Instructor says, “Those are the front wheels, front wheels, they go around—wheels, see. And they go around and they got tires on them. And that travels over the ground and that cushions the shock and these are shock absorbers under here to keep the wheels from bouncing up the passenger too much and those are the back wheels and that is the bonnet.

And that is the hood, see, and we’re all set, see. And there’s the engine, and this is the steering wheel.” You’d be perfectly happy about it. You wouldn’t even demand that he show you where the starter button was.

You—he could keep you all involved with this. It’s just with this—this is the automobile, this is how it runs. The engine goes around ‘ this way and it turns the wheels around that way and there’s gears in there and here are the way the gears go and so forth.

And you’d be very happy with that course, man. And he’d say, “That guy sure teaches you about automobiles.”  THE PE COURSE 9  “Now,” he says, “Now, if you come back next week, I’ll show you how to drive one.” Brother, you’d be there! And when you arrive for the course about how to drive one he says, “This is the starter button.

This is the ignition key. There’s the brakes. Here’s the way you work the brakes.

Now, get in there and work the brakes. Good. Turn on the ignition key on and off.

Good. Work the brakes. Good.

Turn the steering wheel. Good. Work the brakes.” You’d leave after some kind of—the first night or two of that kind of training, boy, you’d be pleased as punch.

You’d say, “Boy, right down there—know their business down there on the subject of automobiles. Next week, next week, I’m going to get a ride in one!” Don’t you see, right direct on the subject, right on the groove, see. Now, that has a tremendous liability to teach a course like that because, look, you’re handing them nomenclature all the time, all the time, all the time.

And it’s terrible not to have nomenclature. Instead of cursing your Scientology nomenclature because of its numerousness, just thank God that you don’t have to stand there tongue—tied. Now, how are you going to teach a fellow about automobiles if there is no word front wheel?

Well, if you had no nomenclature for an automobile and you’re going to teach somebody about automobiles, you couldn’t teach them any nomenclature and they could never communicate on the subject of automobiles. There’s got to be nomenclature. But they’ve got to start out learning the language of an automobile.

And although they were being taught all about an automobile they’re actually in that first jumpoff being taught the language of the automobile. Now, you—if you were teaching automobiles that way to a bunch of people that had never seen them or had much to do with them and so forth, if you could figure yourself down in the middle of the Congo or something like that and you were going to run this course on automobiles and so on, actually, you’ve just” about got it taped because there you sit with an advanced technology that this civilization knows not what of or any part of it. And it’s falling into problems consistently.

And you’re just all the same—in the middle of the Congo. And you’re going to tell people, “It’s very nice to know about the mind.” Hell, they know that. They know all about that.

What about the mind? Well, it has parts; it runs on various rules. First place, you’re not specializing in the mind, you’re teaching them about the universe and you’re teaching them about a being in the universe.

And there’s a body and there’s walls and there’s the planet and there’s the sky and here’s a being who lives in the midst of all this and we call him a thetan. See? And we just tape it, see, and never let him miss a definition, and you’ve got a PE course there that, well ...

I taught a PE course like this one time and I taught it sufficiently well that eighteen psychiatrists attended the first lecture, which was repetitive. In other words, I always gave the first lecture again every night and then gave an advanced lecture in another room. There weren’t nobody being charged in the other room, but there were new people coming along all the time so I’d keep giving the first lecture.

I always gave the first lecture. I’m not advising you to do this, it was just a freak of the situation. And then I’d give the people who had heard the first lecture the remaining lectures.

And we had , quite a few people there. But amongst them there were eighteen psychiatrists—nineteen. And they came to nothing but the first lecture.

And they were some  THE PE COURSE 10  of the leading names in psychiatry, and they turned up just as regular as a clock every night, man, to hear that first lecture all over again. And they sat there, nodding, nodding; trying to figure it out. And one of them finally got into action on the subject, he took a dangerous schizophrenic and put him back into childhood using Dianetic techniques, and then instantly realized that we really had something in Dianetics, so with the person returned on the track, psychoanalyzed him.

Told him, “Now you know why you hate your father—he didn’t change your diaper.” Of course, I wouldn’t say they had absorbed very much, but—but the funny part of it was, is it’s simplicity that holds people. It’s terrible simplicity. People do not like a totally new subject.

They like the familiarity of the old and that isn’t just because we’re in England talking about English jokes. English jokes are partially nostalgia. It’s a good—was a—been a good joke for a long time, he’s glad to hear it again, see?

But you get the idea. Yeah, I was looking at an old pal of ours, Frankie Howerd, on the TV the other night—he told the same jokes. I actually was very happy to sit there watching him tell the same jokes, you know.

He’s the bird that has the aged pianist who is hard of hearing and he makes cracks to the audience about his aged pianist. And she once in a while will comment to him that it’s chilly in there and he will turn around and say, “Yes, chilly. Poor old so—and—so.” All a very 1.1 type of act, see.

Well, he’s been doing that just for years and years and years and years and he’s a headliner. And I don’t think he’s had a new joke or a new line in all those times. Trouble with an American comedian, he knocks himself out all the time.

That’s why he passes into oblivion, too—he never develops a nostalgia. Now, here’s an interesting point then. As long as you’re teaching somebody absolu—something absolutely new, they’re going to feel like they’re in totally strange territory all the time, all the time and therefore, it’s very, very strange to them.

My apologies for the crack about English humor. I can always make the English laugh, I have no trouble with English humor. I’ve learned to wait.

Now, the public goes for and likes the old and what they like to see occasionally is just a little bit of improvement. They like to see a little bit of improvement on this old subject. They don’t like new subjects.

So you’d better represent Scientology as what it is, which is the only conservative study in the field of the mind. Truth of the matter is, when you look it over very carefully, a lot of things happened. Before I get too far ahead of my story, let me—let me give you what happens to these students who don’t—let me—let me get that in because I might forget to tell you.

The student that YOU don’t handle as I’ve just described to you in PE will get the misunderstood—look at the cycle they run—see, the misunderstood word, the misunderstood concept, then they go into either the critical thought or the overt. And they will commit an overt against Scientology. And it gets all right to commit an overt against Scientology because that’s the cycle.

They have to justify not having understood. And that is what this is all about. It must be strange and they have to justify not having understood it and so they commit an overt against it.

Shows that it’s no good, do you see? THE PE COURSE 11  So it’s—they’ll rig it that way, in spite of anything you can do, and then they go out and give you bad public presence. The second they don’t understand that first word—the first word they don’t understand is liable to start this cycle, so that is what you prevent.

If you just prevent that all up on the line and they all go away feeling fine and everything’s happy and so forth, and furthermore you’re doing a more honest job and you’re showing them exactly what they came in to find out—that you know the answer so you can do it. And let’s see why psychology got off to a bad start. And this hooks in with what I was just giving you now.

Scientology is the conservative study. It is the traditional study. It follows the traditional patterns of philosophy, religion and the mind.

It may be one of the reasons why your own interest in it is deep—seated, because you recognize in it the familiarities of ancient Greece. You recognize in it the philosophy of Rome, the philosophies of the Middle Ages. The work of Saint Thomas Aquinas—all of this material as you roll on forward—faculty psychology.

You’d feel very comfortable in amongst the big religious universities of 1500, 1550, with the faculty psychologist—that’s the psychology of the faculties, of the senses and perceptions. Faculty used in the line of sense and perception. You’d feel very comfortable with these boys.

You’d be talking about the same things, only you’d have answers to what they didn’t have answers for and boy, they would fall around your neck like mad, because you’d be talking the familiar to them. They’re talking about such things as attention. They’re talking about such things as seeing.

They’re talking about such things as hearing. The faculties, you see. And they’re talking about these things and how they relate to things—and sort of foggily.

And of course, you could say to them, “Why gentlemen, you’re talking about communication. You’re talking about communication between the individual and the physical universe around him or to other individuals through the medium of the physical universe. And therefore sight and sound and so forth are means of communication with the physical universe or with other people through the physical universe.” And they would say, “Holy smothering Godfrey, Gadzooks!

By Jove, the chap’s right! You know, that’s true. Never realized that one person was ooowa and that’s what perception is and that’s what sound is and so forth; it’s a method of communication.” And you would have been right there, brother!

But you can’t talk to a psychologist about this. Do you know why you can’t? Oh, the answer is absolutely fascinating.

There isn’t anybody there. There isn’t anybody there. The whole universe and the people in it are sort of a delusion of machinery.

In the absence of sensation and association there is no perception. That’s a stable datum in the field of psychology, of circa 196064. I know I’ve given you that and you’ve glanced over the top of it and you’ve said, “Well,” and so on, “the psychologists, so I don’t have to understand it.” No, I invite you to understand this.

Perception depends completely upon sensation and association. And after you’ve looked that over for a little while you begin to feel sort of creepy as though somebody had walked over your grave. Because that tells you a volume.

It says a machine in the absence of somebody tickling its gears, and in absence of certain gears meshing with certain gears is incapable of noticing anything is happening. You  THE PE COURSE 12  see, perception depends upon sensation and association and that is the psychologist’s definition of perception. Now, of course, you look at that as a Scientologist and you say, “What the devil is going on here?

You mean I’ve got to have association between a wfff and zfff before I can see a blap?” No, that is not true. That is not true. But a machine—it would be true.

A machine would have to have little cogwheels that wizzergood with the cogwheels in order to tell you that the wizzergoo was on the other side of the wazzergoo and therefore it should take some notice. Knowledge is totally evolved out of the results of perception, but is individually evolved by a sort of a funny computer, that then tells a person what to perceive. By the time you’ve drawn this up on a drawing board you’ve got a machine and there’s nobody there.

You get what I’m talking about, don’t you? I know—I—if you don’t grasp it, don’t blame yourself Because I frankly, the other night, spent over an hour looking at the words out of a text written by one of the leading God—help—us psychologist who—of the United States—on his definition of perception. And it was that sensation with association brings about perception.

And that was what perception was. And I looked at this and I looked at it and I looked at it. And I finally understood the frame of reference on which he was viewing this thing.

And he’s viewing it on the basis, you have to understand that a psychologist considers that everybody is a brain, a piece of meat, see, which vanishes with death and so forth. You have to understand all of these peculiar things. And then you understand what the devil this means.

It means that once you’ve tickled the gears of the machine in some fashion or other and showed them which gears was being tickled, why, then it perceives what’s ticking, see. It looks in that direction, but wouldn’t otherwise. Of course, this absolutely violates your own concept of yourself You say, “Before I can look at a field of hay I’d have to receive—have received a sensation from the field of hay and associated it with my childhood.” Well, the reason you don’t understand it easily is because you wouldn’t think of yourself as a machine.

And naturally a machine—think of rolling a robot out there now. Now, you roll a robot out there and of course, field of hay, it’d have to have some kind of an associative memory situation, see. It’s got a sensation of heat waves and some kind of a sensation of pattern, and that brings it up and so forth—and then the memory sorts out as the eons race around, and it finally associates this with fields and then with hay and then it says, “Ah, a field of hay.” And this to the psychologist is a man.

Well, why does he think this way? Because he’s a wild—eyed radical. He is the revolutionary; he’s the Johnny—come—lately.

Fifteen hundred and fifty, you would have been perfectly understood by the faculty psychologist in any great university of the world. He would have made much out of you, man. He would have had you out for tea and invited you to the—to the local hop and made much out of the situation.

You walk into a modern classroom of today and you say “perception is engaged upon by the being himself as a means of communication with the universe around him and other beings,” they’d throw you out on your head. What do you mean? You have introduced  THE PE COURSE 13  volition.

You’ve introduced volitional and nonvolitional acts, to use a couple of fancy words. Acts that are willed, acts that are not willed. You have set up an individual as seeing what he wants to see and not seeing what he doesn’t want to see.

You have set up the whole mechanism of power of choice. And you have set up the dignity of the individual. And that they want nothing to do with, because they, of course, in not understanding man have gone the route of the overt.

And that’s why psychiatry cuts out brains. They’ve got to make nothing out of man because they haven’t understood him. And that is the whole genus of it, those poor luckless boobs.

And what word does it go back to? It goes back to the word psychology. I’m now quoting man, I’m quoting the leading psychologist textbook writers, and they define psychology as: “Psyche once meant the soul;—ology means study.

We do not know what the psych or psyche is, we have no idea, we don’t even know if it exists.” And that is the definition of psychology. You mean, we’re going to take off from anyplace then and go anywhere? No, brother, we’re going to go straight into an overt against the mind and that is where those birds went.

So they’ve got to sell man short. And there isn’t a one of those birds who isn’t in the frame of mind of a con man. They are the frauds.

They know it’s a swindle. They’re ARC broke with their own subject. They know their subject doesn’t work. “Us con men together, if we band together right and hold ourselves up high enough and sneer enough at anything else, we’ll eventually be able to triumph over these poor boobs.” Those are hard words, but I’m afraid that is the dominating idea.

If you’ve talked to these birds as much as I have—I had an awful hard time understanding where comes this idea of this contempt? Where’s this terrible contempt I see? What’s the genus of this thing.

What are these odd and peculiar ideas about man, the degrading aspect of them and so forth? This worried me frankly because they’re dominating thought in the universities and schools of the world today. They’re teaching everybody man’s no good.

He’s just a machine. Well, naturally, your leaders of the world have got to have some kind of a philosophy of this character, they think. Look how dangerous this philosophy is, however.

If you just ordered thirty million men killed, you want a philosophy that teaches you men are no good. Hm—mmm! You’ve got to justify that overt, man.

If you’re busy firing people and ruining people all over the place, why, naturally you’ve got to have some kind of a demon that stands alongside of you and says, “It’s perfectly all right, they’re no good. Perfectly all right, they’re no good.” And they found their perfect demon in psychology and psychiatry. Man is no good.

He’s ninety—seven percent—cents’ worth of chemicals. There is no dignity of the individual. The man has no power of choice.

He has none of these things. He’s not capable of personal volition; he’s just a machine. You push a button with your modern advertising, he whirrs—clicks, reaches into his pocket and pulls out the sixpence.

And it’s perfectly all right to pull out the sixpence completely illegally and fraudulently because actually, he’s no good. And that’s where you have to have a philosophy, you have to have a philosophy that man is no good in order to go on committing overts. THE PE COURSE 14  So it isn’t that man has degraded.

It’s that man’s mental subjects first didn’t bother to understand anything about man and so then began to commit overts. And then employment was found for these blokes, by fellows who had to have their overts justified. And naturally, the guys who had to have their overts justified—the Hitlers, the other guys, the Stalins, the birds that have really backed up this particular field of psychology—naturally, these birds are going to put those fellows in the driver’s seat.

And so there’s where the degradation of man comes from. Actually man is not more degraded than he was before. He’s only degraded the mental sciences because he has departed from the traditional which had to do with the dignity of man.

And you’re in the Tradition. It sounds wild. I’ve studied this very carefully.

It’s not some new con pitch I’m giving you. Our teachings and facts would have been revelatory, straight through from the ancient medicine man through the wise man of Persia, through the philosophers of Greece in the days of the first universities and so forth—that you called such around 1200 A.D., through all the great periods of the Renaissance and so forth. The ideas which we are moving along with and have—make no mistake about it—enormously improved and clarified are nevertheless those ideas.

They had to do with attention, they had to do with perception, they had to do with power of choice. They had to do with the dignity of man, they had to do with the motivation of behavior. All of these things.

And not on a vicious basis of how rotten and wicked everybody is and how they all ought to be shot down in their tracks. But just what’s this all about. And we are to a marked degree preserving the dignity of man.

And we’re carrying forward on a basic Tradition which has come up through the ages. But in 1879 in Bavaria, Leipzig University, a fellow by the name of Wundt must have fallen asleep in too damn many classes. And he missed the boat.

And there are too many words he didn’t dig. So he had to figure out that men were animals and that’s exactly what he figured out. Men were animals.

And he advanced this as a philosophy as recently as 1879. Completely departing, madly departing, from every traditional level of study there was in this field. And this was carried forward with great enthusiasm by the early Russian student in this field, and which culminated in Pavlov.

Criticism of the Russian, circa 400 A.D., is that they made very good fighters because they became quite merciless and were—associated man with animals. And to them everything was animalistic. And therefore they could drive forward in an animalistic fashion.

They thought of man as being animals. They thought of animals as being animals. They lived amongst animals and so, therefore, their cavalry was pretty good and pretty vicious and so forth.

These are commentaries on Russians, moving on forward. Same commentaries we hear occurring along about 1000. Same commentaries around Timur Lenk, around 1300.

Same commentaries around Pavlov. The dog hasn’t changed, his ears still flop. Yeah, that pattern hadn’t changed at all.

So Pavlov and psychiatry rushed on the scene. Man is an animal. Man is no lousy good.

We should kill everybody. What you do with a city is level it until a pony will not even stumble being ridden at a full gallop across its ruins. What’s the difference?

There’s no difference. It’s out of the steppes, straight on forward until now. They’ve always had the same idea that you could condition an animal.

That if you beat a horse enough he would then do  THE PE COURSE 15  what he was supposed to do. Animal training. Pavlov.

No difference. He just carried forward the Russian Tradition for animal training. Only this, my God, somebody accepts as a study of the human mind!

Ha! Somebody must be in an awful need of justification for their overts. You see, it was always there to be bought.

You always had the idea there that men were beasts and so forth. The idea was always there to be purchased by anybody who wanted to purchase it, but it’s interesting that it didn’t get purchased until after 1879. Those are all Johnny—come—lately.

You see the point I’m trying to make here? Well now, I don’t think—I don’t think the—Germans are okay, I use their Rolleis continuously with great success and I wish they’d stay just building cameras and things like that. But the German has no enviable reputation for humanitarianism.

I will say he has contributed music to the world, and that’s dandy. But if he’d just stayed with music and cameras we’d all be a lot better off. Every once in a while he gets careless with guns, and for some reason or other he’s got to go out and kill everybody; for reasons best known to him.

And he authored modern psychology. Modern psychiatry was authored by the Russian and modern psychology was authored by the German. And by nobody else, don’t let anybody kid you.

That’s exactly where they came from. You should read a Russian textbook on the subject of psychiatry. And every technique they know of in psychiatry is in a Russian textbook.

Today, I will tell you, that when the czar went on the skids and lost his head, it was very interesting that the revolution began to frown on psychiatry. It was only Stalin and his fascist impulses and so forth which kept it going any length of time at all. And we have the completely weird subject of the Russian now having lived through all of these cycles of what we call modern psychiatry and now having nothing to do with it.

So here’s all the Western psychiatrists that come in, you know, with their hands dripping with blood, to this conference up in London the other day and the Russians standing around and saying, “But we don’t operate on people’s prefrontal lobes anymore. But we don’t give them electric shocks anymore. But we don’t use these treatments anymore, because we found out they were ineffective.

We don’t do this anymore. We’re good boys now,” and so forth. And the Western psychiatrist saying, “What’s the matter with you jerks?” you know, “What’s the matter with you guys?” Well, what’s the matter with these birds?

These birds are now in a reform cycle. Too many overts. But that’s where it came from.

Pavlovian psychiatric responses. There’s more to psychiatry than just Pavlov, of course, but not much. And that’s a radical school.

Those are both radical schools. You heard me say these things before, but I’ve never put it to you from the point of view that these are radical schools. Relatively uncivilized, rather degraded and very new.

And they have not been productive of results. And my point of view is I think we should return to more traditional methods. I think these fellows have had their chance—they’ve had their revolution.

And they didn’t get anyplace with it. And I don’t think that they should be permitted to stand in the road of traditional study in the field of philosophy or religion or psychology of the field of the mind. And I don’t even think they ought to be left with the word “psychology” because they can’t define it.

THE PE COURSE 16  I think in actual fact that psychology is a portion of Scientology. And I see no reason to give psychology a modernistic, razzle—dazzle, mod—rocker spelling, like p—s—y—c—o—l—o—g—y, I should think it should be spelled properly, which is p—s—y—c—h—e—o—l—o—g—y. Psychology.

Put the “e” back in it. Of course, psyche means spirit. And is the Greek symbol for spirit.

I don’t know why we have a sudden psych, I don’t know what this thing called psych that suddenly arose, that occurs in both psychiatry and psychology, because it doesn’t mean anything and it never has meant anything. And they don’t think it means anything, so forget it, skip it. Of course, we should return it to a more proper state.

In other words, the familiar. And the old is really what we’re studying. Somebody comes in to learn about the mind, you say, “Very good.

We’re glad that you came in to learn about the mind. The whole field of the mind embraces, of course, the other fields of knowledge and the field of philosophy and that sort of thing. The field of philosophy, religion and so forth, and a study of the mind is actually not too disassociated from a study of a human spirit.

And we’re glad you’ve come over here to study this because we’re happy that people take interest in more traditional and conservative ways and we’re happy to have people studying the more standard psychology. And you came here to learn about psychology, well, you came to the right place. Now, this is a body and this is the physical universe and you are an individual.. .” You got the idea? “And the eyes see, the ears hear. . .” See, you teach them about the automobile.

Now, why do the eyes see? Well, they don’t see because somebody is a machine, they see because there’s something there to be perceived. Now, the eyes can actually see by somebody putting something there to be perceived as well as something being there to be perceived.

For instance, you simply—we don’t now see this black crayon and we put it there to be perceived. Now, you think of a cat. Very good.

Now, some of you got a picture of a cat. Well, you saw the cat, didn’t you? Well, we won’t worry about whether or not you saw that with the eyes or not because it really—it isn’t absolutely necessary to have eyes to see.

In other words, you see what kind of a PE you could conduct that would look a little bit different, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t be “Here’s this great brand—new subject and it’s all different and so forth and these conservative fellows who are there in the university and so forth, those are the fellows who are actually the authorities in the field and so on. And we’re new, we’re brand—new and we’re doing something very, very strange and we’re doing something very, very peculiar and ...

These fellows object to us and they’re just a bunch of bums really,” see? That’s—this is a different course. This is a different course.

It says, “Well, we’re very glad you have come to the people who know about these things. And we’re very glad that you have resumed a traditional study of this particular thing and are having done with radical approaches which have not resulted in any good effects. And you want to study the field of Scientology, of course, that’s composed of philosophy, and religion, psychology, what makes men do what they do, why men act the way they act, what life is all about.

And you’ve come to the right place. Well, of course, you shouldn’t mind being taught old answers along with new answers, and there’s a great deal in Scientology that is new but the breakthrough is all in the traditional field, it’s not a radical breakthrough.”  THE PE COURSE 17  Where does that leave psychology? Where does that leave “Old Man Wissergoo” with the eighteen letters after his name as the head of the department of “psyrology” of Chicago University or Illinois University.

What’s that—where’s that leave him? It leaves him in a gibbering fit, that’s where it leaves him. “Well, Hubbard’s done it again! This does about enough!

Now, we’re a part of Scientology! You know what that Hubbard’s done? He said we’re a part of Scientology.

Isn’t that terrible?” And the public at large says, “Well, really, are they?” Because they’re all reasonable. And this is the way the wheel is going to turn. And the wheel has already begun its slow inexorable spin.

They are about to become a more radical element of Scientology. And we’re about to become the conservatives and they’re about to become the revolutionaries. They’re the Johnny—Come—latelys, the cowboys in the black hat.

And we’re the old homesteaders, been there a long time. And they’ll give us all the propaganda we want to drive this point home, because it will outrage them to such a degree that every time they pick it up or hear it they will go into a complete scream. They will help us.

In every university they will help us. They’ll explain to all of their classes, “Hubbard is crazy because he says actually Scientology is a very broad subject that psychology is just a part of, ha—ha—ha!” None of the students are laughing. Student can understand a radical offshoot, or a Johnny—Come—lately type of an approach that says all men are animals. “Oh, yeah, that’s—yeah, we understand that.

That’s German protocol, see.” And the professor starts gibbering because he doesn’t really dig how he would feather the wing straight in our direction. He couldn’t serve us better than the way they will serve us. “Yes, Hubbard has gone to the last straw now. Hubbard has gone to the absolute last straw.

That’s the—that’s the end. That’s it. Now, we are all part of Scientology and a very small part of it at that.” I can hear them now at a conference, you know, out in the anterooms.

They gibber, you know, about some of the things we do. They have fits and so forth. They are—they’re mad at us right now, you know, just for one reason, actually just one real reason that they’re mad at us is everybody who is operating in an—charlatanism in the fie—as a charlatan in the field of the mind, is calling himself a Scientologist these days.

They have not reached the—they have gone past the point of saying, you see, now, that we are bums. They’re saying the reason we’re bad is because other people can call themselves Scientologists. Other people who are bad can call themselves Scientologists.

You get this? Well, that’s—the American Medical Association Journal has made that rather astonishing remark very recently. Well, they know that man is no good because they can’t do anything for him.

An auditor who would have a hard time with people might wind up in this direction. You could ask why more auditors don’t wind up embittered and mean and vicious and so forth. But they don’t.

So we must not have done too bad a job amongst ourselves in defining the parts of the mind and existence and the various words which are associated with it. We couldn’t have done too bad a job amongst ourselves, because there’s so many of us still here. And there’s so many of us that have a kindly attitude toward man and so many of us that’s—still capable of understanding.

THE PE COURSE 18  So we couldn’t have done a very bad job, don’t you see; proves itself But because we are capable of understanding, and capable of making sense out of the problem, and capable basically of doing something about these various things, we of course, are in the favored position. And we don’t really need to do anything very strange to make capital out of that favored position. We’re in the favored position of the people who know how to do something about it, you see?

We’re in the favored position knowing our business. Well, knowing our business we of course would win over somebody that was just a fake and didn’t know his business and didn’t even know what his subject name meant. See, this is very easy.

Well, the wheel is going to turn anyhow. The fun I get out of life is just making it turn now and then a little faster. I remember learning how to drive a Jaguar.

You always take the Jaguar down the road, you never let the Jaguar take you down the road. And then you can drive a Jaguar. If you want to ruin your driving sometime, why just try that.

Just go out and practice taking the car down the road. Take—you take it around corners. You take it up the highway.

You take it here, there and everyplace and it’s very fascinating. Your driving goes all to pieces because the machinery starts breaking up, don’t you see? It’s a, “Now I’m going to turn this corner, yes, and I turn the corner, you know, and all right, now we’re holding it on the straight, now just go straight, you know, hrrmmm, just straight.

All right, now we’re going to stop. Yes, and so on . . and all of a sudden your machinery goes whoooo! I wouldn’t try it in an exciting driving situation.

But after you’ve done it for a few days your driving improves enormously, and all of a sudden you realize that for years the car has been taking you everywhere, and all of a sudden you have a completely happy attitude toward cars and things; your whole driving aspect will change. So I don’t like to just sit and watch the wheel take us someplace, don’t you see, I like to also coax the wheel along. Well, there—although that’s a very technical dissertation which I’ve given you along the line of PE, you wonder why I injected psychology and psychiatry into it to the degree I should—I probably should make my point with great clarity there, for people who are coming in to your PE and so forth have to some degree been reached or indoctrinated by this other field but are already dissatisfied by it and you don’t have to curse very hard.

But you have to know the relationship of psychiatry and psychology to the field of the mind and to the history of the mind. And their relationship is not different than I have told you, their relationship is very exactly what I have told you. This isn’t just my idea of it.

But they have given another facade. They have given the facade of “We are the authorities and we are the conservatives and we are the big boys in this particular field.” They’re a lot of fakes. They’re not.

They’re Johnny—come—latelys that are following a very, very radical line of thought, calculated to degrade man. So when your people come in for PE they are actually looking for something which is more relaxed, less degrading, which is better calculated to bring about a happy frame of mind toward existence and your best way of handling it, of course, is just tell them, “Oh, you want to know about philosophy and religion and the mind and that sort of thing? Psychology?

Well, we teach it here. You’ve come to the right place. And here is your first lesson.” And the best  THE PE COURSE 19  you would do about psychology or psychiatry or something like that is explain occasionally to the student, patiently, perhaps even a little sadly, that there is a long Tradition in the field of the mind which culminated with Scientology and that it is the longer, more conservative Tradition and there have been new discoveries in this Tradition which revived it.

And these discoveries were rather terrific, and they’re very interesting. But they are discoveries in an old Tradition. They are not discoveries in a new Tradition.

And that the old has enormously improved, improved enough to revive all over the place. And so we’ve got something that amounts now to a very good breakthrough, and therefore we needn’t go off into radical lines. That’s just cutting up people’s heads and that sort of thing.

Sounds rather barbaric to us. And discuss the relationship with the class, just to that degree, and from that particular viewpoint. And you would find out they’d be with you all the way.

You see, man is basically good, you can do something about the situation. People become better people when you handle their problems and aberrations. All the various things which you know about Scientology, they all fit into this frame of reference.

Scientology is not an effort to degrade man. The student would very shortly recognize this and he wouldn’t even have to have it pushed to him very hard by the very definitions and Axioms and things like that which were being given to him. He would recognize very clearly what he was looking at.

And then, if you never let one of those PE people get away with a misunderstood word, then you have not started a germ of revolution against man. Not against Scientology, but a revolution against man himself. Disgust with man.

But more intimately to you, dis—upset about Scientology. They’d just stay with you because, you see, their best reasons they would stay with you is there is something there to know. We can do things, you see, there’s all the good reasons why they should, you see.

So the fact that they don’t is really unreasonable. And that unreasonability comes from the early word which is not defined. And where a fellow is incapable of studying Scientology as a subject or confronting it—he just comes around to mock it or something like that—you must realize that that person has already been in trouble with another associated subject earlier and you’ve got to handle him, then you’ve got to handle the fellow who—not get involved all the time with the fellow who doesn’t understand what you’re saying.

Don’t get involved with him to the degree that you’re trying to explain what he’s asking about all the time. No, do it once, explain to him once what you’re—what you’re talking about. Explain to him carefully.

That doesn’t handle it, all right. Right away you know that there was an earlier word which he didn’t understand and you ask him for that earlier word. “What word have I used—what word has been used here that you didn’t understand?” And he says, “Uh—clay.” “Well, what about clay?” “Well, in Kindergarten they called it Plasticine and clay’s different. This is messed up, see, because uh—clay—why do you say ‘clay’?”  THE PE COURSE 20  Well, there’s a pat explanation for that, too. “Plasticine is a trademarked word which you would be forbidden to use if you did use it, but clay will always be with us, and many substitutes for clay will come and go, so we just use the basic word.” All right, this clarifies it for him and he says, “Cheers, oh—uh—that’s the way it is.

All right. Cheers!” See, let’s go on with it, see? But you’ll always find the fellow who persistently can’t understand what you’re talking about, you see.

You try to explain it to him and he can’t grasp it and so forth. Well, you could keep this up, you see, for the next half—hour of class time with no production. What you’ve got to find is the word he didn’t understand just before that and handle that situation.

You will find that word, explain that word and go on. And then don’t forget your nodder and catch that nodder with the write—back. “Give us an example. Give us an example of what I’ve just told you.” Then look over those papers and you’ll find the nodder, sitting there, but not a clue.

And that person you’ll also lose eventually or overwhelm completely. And the subject matter of a PE is under development at this particular time, and I can’t give you the entire rundown of a PE, but I am giving you as much of the PE as I consider very solid ground and very solid form for PE at the present moment. I’m not talking to you about what words to teach, I’m just talking to you if they came there to learn about the field of the mind and the spirit and philosophy you jolly well better teach them about the mind and the field and philosophy, and not tell them why they should know about the mind and the field and philosophy cause they already decided that.

So, you just go rat—a—tat—tat, rat—a—tat—tat, and if you treated the PE as an area where they learned the language and they learned the parts of things, and they learned the nomenclature of things, and they learned what was there, these are all the same things, don’t you see? You can’t show a fellow a front wheel and say the word of this is “front wheel” with also showing him the fact that there was a front wheel there, see? You know, he’s got to have appreciated the existence of the front wheel as well as the definition of the words “front wheel.” So you get these two things in good balance and all of a sudden these people will come up smiling.

And believe me, this is a very successful line of teaching, because there are many people—read some of the earlier texts on Dianetics and Scientology, understood them with great clarity and recovered in some cases from very serious illnesses, just by clarification of existence. So if your end product there in the PE was a clarification of existence by the demonstration and teaching them nomenclature in a new language so they could talk along this line, if that was all you succeeded in doing, providing you left not one student with a word improperly defined, then you would have succeeded all the way. And your batting average would be not 10 percent or 5 percent in PE in organizations and in private practices, but it would be much closer to 98 percent.

There’d be the lady who fell off the bridge and broke her leg and couldn’t come back to the PE course. She would happen every once in a while. But—so it couldn’t be a 100 percent, but it could be awfully close—be awfully close to a 100 percent, it would wind up at the end of that week with you.

Now, any PE that you have ever run or any course you have ever run or any series of talks you have ever given that found less people attending than attended the first night is  THE PE COURSE 21  assignable, not to your diction, not to whether you wore a blue dress or a green one, not to whether or not the surroundings were easy to reach and attractive: all of these things are beside the point. The people that didn’t wind up with you the second night missed a word. They didn’t get the word.

They missed a word, that’s all. They missed something. They heard this—they heard this word, “overt acts,” and they couldn’t get it and they didn’t hear it, and they did hear it but they didn’t hear it, and they don’t know what this thing is and they just don’t wrap their wits around it and they don’t come back the next night.

But now, because they haven’t misunderstood—they haven’t understood—they haven’t gotten this word you see, now they don’t understand the subject. And not understanding the subject it’s perfectly all right for them to perform overt acts against Scientology. And if there’s any hostility against Scientology in the world it’s derived from that point.

See? So we therefore are actually, building our own opposition to this degree. I’ve just given your orders for America on the subject of, “Don’t leave anybody over there who has any words misdefined on the subject of Scientology and that’s your campaign.

And you’ll find out that’s going to make a big difference.” But those are the concentrations and the points of PE, and that’s what kind of a course they’re attending. They’re attending it—rather a traditional course that has a great many new developments in an old and conservative line. You know, they’re taking a course at Rolls Royce.

Now, they could go and get one of these two—bit, cut—rate courses, you know, down there at Alabama University but well, it’s much better that they came to you. More traditional. Longer, harder, but more traditional.

You have to be able to confront better to take a course like this, you see. You can’t dodge around the back of the thing and say, “Well, we don’t know what the word ‘Scientology’ means. Uh—we don’t know what that is.

And uh—however we’re going to teach you about the left foot. And we’re going to teach you pedagogy, mixed up slightly with pediatrics. And then if we have any time left at the end of the week and so forth why we’ll get into pedantics.” Well, of course, the poor student who has enrolled and has got to have a degree and a career at the end of the line and so forth has no choice.

He can’t walk out of a university. But that’s what makes it different from your PE course, you see, they can walk out of your PE course if they don’t like it. They can’t walk out of a university.

So actually what they do is force people to go ahead and study these subjects through to the bitter end till they’re in such a state of committing overts that nobody is safe with them. I would just as soon open up a lion’s cage and throw a patient into it as I would to let them go near an institution anywhere in the world today. You think it over.

At least it would be over with rather quickly in the lion’s cage. But if you look at this as a point of view or a representation where the public is concerned and their first entrance course the PE, I think you would find it extremely successful. Now, you’ve looked on yourself as a ruddy revolutionary.

Yes, you’re a revolutionary against the revolution. You have been revolting against the revolution. But we hadn’t clearly recognized that we were revolting against a revolution and it was a revolution  THE PE COURSE 22  had occurred.

And it occurred in 1879. And that there was a traditional course of study which was going on and in which discoveries could be made. I entered back into that field.

My own training is very severely in the more traditional lines of philosophy. It’s interesting that there isn’t even a degree, did you know this, there isn’t even a degree for psychology. At least they’ve been that cautious, haven’t they?

There’s only a degree in philosophy. And we are definitely in the field of philosophy. This is more germane, then, to what the public wants to know.

They want to know how to live better lives, they want to know what existence is all about, so forth. So teach a straightforward course, teach them all the definitions of these things, teach them what existence is all about, wind it up at the end, they’ll be very happy with you and very keen to get back next week, because then they get to start the motor. And you’d have a very, very successful PE.

Okay? Audience: Yes. Thank you very much.

Audience: Thank you.

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