View source for Ability - Laughter (18ACC 570802)

'''Series:''' 18th Advanced Clinical Course (18ACC)

'''Date:''' 2 August 1957

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

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How are you this evening?

Audience: Fine!

You're apparently still alive.

Male voice: Yep!

I've been busy all day. My office is very often used – when all other parts of the country have no place to put certain pieces of [[CONFUSION|confusion]] they get into my office, and various confusions have been happening, one kind or another.

Now, I have been a very bad boy here the last few lectures and I haven't answered all of your questions. But I've got them all here in a pile and I'm just going to run them off with the greatest of rapidity, and we [[HOPE|hope]] not [[STUPIDITY|stupidity]].

This is lecture number fifteen, 18th ACC, July …

Male voice: August.

August – what's the idea of sticking me on the [[TRACK|track]]? August the second, 1957. And we have some questions here which have been asked and we will take these up in very rapid-[[FIRE|fire]] order.

First one: "Have you now accomplished a sufficiently high [[TRAINING|training]] procedure so that you would be willing to recommend a [[GOLD|gold]] or red wafer [[AUDITOR|auditor]]? I have been given the [[DATUM|datum]] that in the [[PAST|past]] it was the [[POLICY|policy]] of the FC [[STAFF|staff]] to recommend only auditor [[PROCESSING|processing]] under your [[SUPERVISION|supervision]]."

This is correct. The last is correct. The fact of the [[MATTER|matter]] is, you are about to see an entirely new policy on the part of the FC with regard to referrals – we call this referrals. People write in and say, "Is there an auditor in my [[AREA|area]]?" To understand this completely you would have to realize that the basis of war comes about through the fact that a [[THIRD_DYNAMIC|third dynamic]] isn't a [[TERMINAL|terminal]]. The [[GOVERNMENT|government]] in Finland isn't a he or a her. It just isn't. The government of France isn't a he or a her. It just obviously isn't. So the government of Finland and the government of France, in trying to communicate, snap terminals with two "isn'ts" and this [[RESULTS|results]] in war.

It takes an [[INDIVIDUAL|individual]] to communicate. It takes a [[BEING|being]] to communicate. It takes something that can understand and bleed and understand suffering and problems and so on. It takes, in other words, something which is accustomed to living in order to handle the living. Right?

Well, the FC staff was first a little bit shocked and then quite exhilarated, several staff meetings ago when I suddenly told them they weren't an [[ORGANIZATION|organization]]. I told them they were individuals doing certain jobs. But after that we saw things brightening up on all fronts. You see, an organization is just a huge irresponsibility. Any government is the composite irresponsibility of any people. Definition of government: the compounded irresponsibility of the population. Nobody's willing to take the [[RESPONSIBILITY|responsibility]] for [[CRIME|crime]] so they send it over to the government. Nobody can take the responsibility for educating any [[SINGLE|single]] child so they form a [[DEPARTMENT|department]] of [[EDUCATION|education]] which does very little educating. And they have to put more and more people in and more and more [[MATERIALS|materials]] and more and more this and more and more that, and it's just like pouring it down a hole. The bigger department of education you've got, the less education you're going to get.

Now, they used to tell me that the US Navy was too big and that was why we had all these flops – battle lost and they'd say, "Well, the Navy's too big. Ha-ha-ha." And I was mad one day – I was real mad. And the CO of a [[SHIP|ship]] that had been present told me, "Well, the Navy's too big, and they..." and I said, "What are you saying? That you are too small?" He said, "Nyaaaa ..." He says, "This is peacetime. We court-martial officers like you." They did, too. But in the war it was all too big.

Now, you might say then that the composite irresponsibility of staff would become the organization. That's for true. In defense of this, a theatrical company, ceasing to be a company, will all of a sudden realize that they are a bunch of individuals who are doing work in the theater. And they work together to the degree that they can communicate. It isn't whether the company is good or bad. It's whether the individuals in it can do their job and communicate with one another, and this communicating with one another does make a semblance of what then becomes an organization. But it never is an organization! It is just a combined [[ABILITY|ability]] to communicate amongst us terminals, any one of which is able to communicate.

Now, when we look on it that way, we will see a brand-new form and shape to organizations, at least that I have anything to do – this is no [[NEWS|news]] to you, that the organizations and I are inveterate foes. I think organizations get so big that they forget that the individual can bleed. And now and then you have to make a [[DECISION|decision]] for the good of several people at the [[EXPENSE|expense]] of one or two people. Now, that's just about as far as you would go toward deciding on an organizational basis, and you can go too far in this direction, let me assure you. You normally shake the thing out and talk to the person involved and you find out you didn't have to fire or shoot anybody.

Now, looking this over we find out that the main difficulty with the Foundations, in enfranchising field organizations to do anything, was the same difficulty I have just outlined between Finland and France. Neither the organization in the field or the [[CENTRAL_ORGANIZATION|Central Organization]] was actually there. People realized this so they wrote me.

Now, we have found that those auditors who have been consistently [[SUCCESSFUL|successful]] have operated as individuals. They need, because the law requires it – the law tries to foster this whole [[ERROR|error]] of organization – the law requires that you have some [[CORPORATE|corporate]] name or something of the sort.

I gave a talk here in, I think middle of '55, at the congress in Washing-ton. The last talk in the congress was on the subject of how organizations were something that we could easily get along without – if we could get along without them perfectly.

There would be nothing [[WRONG|wrong]] then with somebody in the field having something he called the such and such [[SCIENTOLOGY|Scientology]] [[GROUP|group]] or such and such Scientology Society or the such and such Church of Scientology. Do you understand that? There'd be nothing wrong with this at all. The law requires this. But if he continues to do business only as that, and if he expects that then to be him, he is making a gross and serious error and this is the kind of an error we can get into with a referral. There was a [[GOOD_AUDITOR|good auditor]], let us say, in Kokokomo. And this auditor was doing very well and he had an organization called the Kokokomo Church of Scientology, see? So we knew this and we refer a [[PRECLEAR|preclear]] to the Kokokomo Church of Scientology.

And then we get an awful heart-rending squawk and we say, "What's wrong here?" Well, we find this auditor has moved on. The pc and other things, they were turned over to people nobody knew anything about. Do you under-stand that? Now, even somebody processing under the supervision of this auditor we knew about would have come off all right. But this auditor has moved to some other area and this thing is left sitting there, which has – it's like a pie with no filling. Do you see that?

Now, I'm not invalidating any organization which any of you have thrown together. But all of you know this to be true: that it is only your sweat and your [[INVESTMENT|investment]] of [[UNDERSTANDING|understanding]] that keeps that organization going, regard-less of its name. You know that.

All right. Then why should the FC, calling that as an organization, refer anyone to the Kokokomo church? That would be a very silly thing to do. And so by policy, which is now changing, we're going to take a list of all auditors validated, as they go down the [[LINE|line]], with their names and addresses – and as individuals be very happy to refer people to them – as individuals. You under-stand that? We're going to be very happy to encourage individuals to run PE Courses and all sorts of things. Let me tell you something about a PE Course. A PE Course run by a good auditor is a highly successful thing, and run by his assistants is usually a dismal flop. It's not just it's not quite so good, it's just that it isn't! It isn't at all! Ireland almost folded up here in the last many weeks. They were letting anybody teach the free course. Fortunately I caught them at it, and an auditor is now on deck. Their [[INCOME|income]] trebled and that was that.

Now then, myself or those people who have this in [[CHARGE|charge]] here – that's their hat, you see – be very happy in the [[FUTURE|future]] to recommend individual auditors throughout the length and breadth of the country and be very happy to publish rosters as to their whereabouts and be very happy to grant them some [[BEINGNESS|beingness]], something that has been lacking a bit in the past. And that is the current policy of the organization, and I hope it works out. Okay?

All right. So much for that question.

Here's another question – highly technical: "When doing Book [[MIMICRY|Mimicry]] and pc does command wrong but does not want you to repeat it or do it again, how would you [[HANDLE_IT|handle it]]?"

That's quite a question, isn't it? You got that? You reach over for his little paws and you put them on the book and you make his little paws go through the [[MOTION|motion]] and then you take the book back and thank him for it. That is exactly how that is done. That's the proper way to do that. Got that?

Now, that looks evaluative, huh? Looks very, very evaluative.

Now, he's done it very, very wrong or has refused to do it at all, you would do something like that. That is necessary to keep him from going [[OUT_OF_SESSION|out of session]]. And in view of the fact you're going to be running this on low-toned people quite often, you're going to have to learn that that is part and parcel of it. The fellow says, "Well, I just couldn't do anything like that. It's just impossible," something like that. Put his hands on the book, make him go through the motion, thank him for it. Now he says, "Oh … there."

You say, "Did you do it right?"

"Well, no."

"Well, do you want me to do it again?"

"No. No."

Put his hands on the book, make him go through the motion. It's a mistake but it is not as bad a mistake as letting it go.

All right. Somebody says here, "What study, if any, would you recommend outside Scientology for a [[SCIENTOLOGIST|Scientologist]]?"

Male voice: That's good!

Poor Rosina! She used to beat this into heads of auditors in London. She used to beat this into the [[COMM_COURSE|Comm Course]] and so forth, and I feel like I'm exposing a [[SECRET|secret]] weapon that she had, to give you the answer to this. But the secret answer to it is [[LIFE|life]].

Female voice: Good.

Okay. Now, here we have another question: "What are the [[MECHANICS|mechanics]] of [[RESTIMULATION|restimulation]] in terms of thinnies?"

I [[LOVE|love]] this word "thinnies." Actually you can go right on calling them facsimiles, pictures. It doesn't matter what you call them. Mechanics of restimulation are very, very simple. It is an [[IDENTIFICATION|identification]] of one [[REMOTE_VIEWPOINT|remote viewpoint]] with another. Got that? Got a remote viewpoint sitting out here in front of that wall – then you get another green wall someplace, and this remote view-[[POINT|point]]'s looking at a green wall, this other one looks at a green wall, and a person is too easily identifying things anyway and he snaps these two together and they both occupy the same point and that's restimulation. You might say restimulation is lost location – you lose the location of an anchor point or where it is.

All right. Here's another one. Got that one?

Audience: Yeah.

All right. Oh, this is an embarrassing one. I don't think – I don't even think it [[NEEDS|needs]] answering or that I should answer it or anything of the sort, but it says: "How does 'handle' relate to 'have,' 'permit to remain,' and 'dispense with'? How does handle relate to this?"

Well, it takes that part of "possessiveness" which is right up close – have, possess – a person has to be that close to it in order to have it or handle it, has to be right in it or be it. And when it's in that close you could say that's "have."

"Permit to" would be communicate at it or permit it to communicate – out or in. Now, just be able to look at it, to [[FLOW|flow]] out toward it, is to handle it: permit. In other words, I can flow toward that thing without changing it in any way. You ask the preclear, "Look around here and tell me what you would permit to remain." And he says, "That air conditioner," and this means then that he can have the air conditioner be there with all alteration. In other words, he'd just as soon it was there and he would feel competent to have it there, or in some fashion to handle it. It's an inference that [[HANDLING|handling]] is possible without [[CHANGE|change]].

Now we get "dispense with" and of course that becomes very easy. The way you would dispense with – why, to handle it that's obvious. That's just throw it away. To kick it out the window. To push it over the cliff. You would have to [[OUTFLOW|outflow]] against it again. That answer it?

All right. We have here: "How many hours should be given to teaching a validation course in the field?"

We have not been able to teach one under three weeks full [[TIME|time]] at the [[ACADEMY|Academy]].

And here's another one: "TR 0 and TR 1 do not leave much [[TWO-WAY_COMM|two-way comm]] between the [[COACH|coach]] and [[STUDENT|student]]. Could this be changed and should it be changed?"

Now, the [[TRUTH|truth]] of the matter is that there is as much two-way [[COMMUNICATION|communication]] between the coach and the preclear in any TR [[AS_IS|as is]] necessary to get him to do the [[PROCESS|process]]. And most coaches are far too reticent and talk far too little, and if they talk too much it's too little point. There is two-way comm between the coach and the student. If you have felt that there is not, then you have excessively curbed yourself while coaching or curbed yourself while being an auditor. There is nothing in the book says that an auditor can't cut loose and say to the coach, "Boy, you're really giving me a hard time!" There is nothing that says that the coach cannot say, "Well, we've been going over this and over this and over this and you still stink."

There is nothing in the book that says these remarks could not be made or any other [[SIMILAR|similar]] remarks. But a coach who sits there – and I think this is where the mistake that "there isn't much" is made – is we do try to [[PREVENT|prevent]] too much how to do it. The coach shouldn't sit there and go on and on and on and on about how this is done and never give the student a chance to do it. You got that? That's the only thing you're trying to prevent.

You can give somebody the steps which have to be done in order to achieve something, if these are known. You can use an idea you have about what he is doing and you can correct these things. There actually are no brakes put on it. Not really. But the Instructors in this ACC have been very, very strongly against too much "how to do it" with too little point, which confused the student. And if they felt a student was getting confused by a coach they were liable to chop it. That's what that's all about, okay?

Now, somebody says here: "Is there such a thing as disability? Is it a [[GRADIENT_SCALE|gradient scale]], gradient [[LEVEL|level]] of ability?"

Well, it's odd that this question would be asked, but I realize that the person that asked it couldn't have heard the 17th ACC, and neither have any of you – many of you.

But listen! There is no such thing as disability. The government pays [[MONEY|money]] for it. [[INSURANCE|Insurance]] companies are always paying off on it. People are always using it as an excuse. As a matter of fact, it's the one thing that prevented me from asking embarrassing questions of certain people that came up to me in the street and asked for a dime. They were obviously unable to do things. You don't say, "Why don't you go out and get a job?" Obviously he's "unable" to hold a job.

And this is so obvious that everybody has overlooked it. If we can turn on a full-scale [[MOCK-UP|mock-up]] on that wall in complete, [[SOLID|solid]] 3-D on anybody, including a black eighteen, in about ten to fifteen minutes of [[AUDITING|auditing]], which he will then take five days, sometimes, to get rid of, we can realize that there's nothing wrong with his ability to mock up. There is everything wrong with his willingness to do so. Willingness is the [[MONITOR|monitor]] of ability. Everybody can do everything he could ever do.

Now, if anybody here has been a [[MEMBER|member]] of the planet builders, they can undoubtedly still build planets. Mock up a bunch of stuff whizzing around in [[SPACE|space]], chunk it all together, throw it into a ball and kick it into an orbit. He could probably take Earth and swing it around his head like one of these hammer-throw gadgets. But he's not willing to do so!

Now, as I said, you could throw Earth around your head. You immediately said, "Well, no – think of all the people that would suffer." You didn't say, "That's impossible!" See, all of the people that would suffer if somebody disturbed Earth in its orbit.

Willingness to do is the monitor of ability and is the only thing that monitors ability. But this is so condemning that very few people like to have anything to do with it. It is on this premise alone that the 18th ACC is being taught. If you see somebody doing a job very, very badly, you are perfectly willing to assume that he is unable – but that's charity. The point of the matter is, he is not willing to do a better job.

Now, auditing in this direction we can straighten up job difficulties with considerable ease. We find out what part of the job it would be all right for the fellow to do. Then he finally finds some part and then we can increase this part and all of a sudden, he's "It'd be perfectly all right to do this job – I just don't want to," or something of the sort. We could go over it and flatten this out and he would then be able to do the job. But he was able to do the job all the time anyway.

Now, your preclear can do anything he could ever do – but he's not willing to. To a large degree, it is up to you to improve his willingness. When you do a bad auditing job on it, you deteriorate his willingness. But a good auditing job will increase his willingness. Therefore, that whole line of techniques: "What wouldn't you [[MIND|mind]] (blank)?" Those techniques that went, "What wouldn't you mind ...?" "Is there anything in the room you wouldn't mind having?" – had considerable bite.

Well, it's quite interesting, though, to occasionally run into somebody who tells you rather triumphantly, "Well, the auditor was only running 'What wouldn't I mind having?' – I didn't have to have anything." This is so much hidden that it's hidden from most people. And they say, "If only I had the ability to paint, to write, to act, to sing – if I only had these abilities." Aaah!

Let's say, well, a fellow with a [[BROKEN|broken]] leg is not able to dance a jig. Well, that is certainly pulling a long bow! The truth of the matter is, he wasn't willing to have a [[SOUND|sound]] leg and we come closer to home. This whole subject of willingness versus ability is so condemning that people do not like it very well.

Now, in cracking through, we actually need only to disclose to an individual at his own rate of [[ADVANCE|advance]] that he can recover. We disclose to him at his own rate of advance that he can recover. If we make him recover too fast, it is beyond his rate of advance. This tells you there is nothing really wrong with the preclear except his unwillingness to be right.

But of course, if you look it over you find that it's impossible to be right and be human. That is not possible. It is not possible to be human and be right. One goes down the street being wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and that's called manners – called politeness – called all sorts of things. Want to look that over someday. It'll give you a lot of laughs just arguing that out in a bull session, you know. Can you be right and be human? Becomes very amusing.

But if you turn on ability faster than the preclear is willing to have it turned on – in other words, if you exceed his willingness – he'll be in the horrible [[CONDITION|condition]] of not [[REMEMBERING|remembering]] or being completely willing to turn it off, and yet he'll manage it in a short time. Day, two days, three days, five days; he'll get it off again.

If you had that one [[BUTTON|button]] – this is what's wrong with the one-button process, don't you see – and you had just one button and you just pushed that one button on the [[CASE|case]], bing, and the individual at once stood forth like Jupiter or something – [[APOLLO|Apollo]], no less! It would be true; the individual would stand forth like Apollo. And he'd be walking down the street complete and ready to make the sun [[RISE|rise]]. But you see him two then three days later and he would have fallen in the tar or something and then made pretty sure that he cut this ability to be Apollo back. You got the idea? He would have – he would have worked!

And to see people work on this – I have watched several people work on this because we have several processes that do this – and to see somebody working to get off an ability is really one of the more amusing things. They argue – and they've lost the [[ROUTE|route]]; they've lost their way, they can't deteriorate it fast and it's just terrible. It's an awful strain. Terrible thing to do to somebody.

This we sometimes see as a [[MANIC|manic]]. We run somebody; all of a sudden they feel tremendously good! Of course they could feel tremendously good all the time anyway – they're not willing to feel that good. It's liable to do some-thing terrible to them, they say – another thing. They're just not willing to feel that good and they will go two, three days and then all of a sudden thud. And boy, when they thud, they usually over- or underestimate the landing field. Quite amusing.

The process, by the way, which turns on the mock-ups might interest you. It's "Get the idea of putting a [[CLEAR|clear]] mock-up there as big as the wall." "Now get the idea that that would spoil the [[GAME|game]] and not do it." And you just get them to think that [[CYCLE|cycle]]. In most cases – those that will think the thoughts you tell them to – all of a sudden it doesn't matter what the [[VISIO|visio]] field is. All of a sudden there will be this tremendous mock-up up there, totally solid, you know, and they'll be looking at the horses champing in it, and everything going on beautifully, zzzzzzz. They just sit there and sweat trying to get the mock-up down, see?

You can run that usually ten or fifteen minutes. The auditing commands are, "Get the idea of putting up a mock-up as big as that wall." "Now get the idea that would spoil the game and not do it." That similarly works this way: you say, "Decide" – decide can be also used – "Decide to [[CREATE|create]] a man in full form in the middle of the room that everybody could see. Then decide that would ruin the game and not do it." And the next thing you know you'll get a shimmer in the middle of the room. That takes a little longer than the [[SUBJECTIVE|subjective]] mock-up but not too much longer.

Of course the way to ruin anybody is to get – tell them, "Now decide to mock up a pile of money here that everybody would recognize as money. Now get the idea that would spoil the game and not do it." The individual, just really – that really would spoil the game, you see? And he's suddenly realized he could shoot the works just in no time at all, and he's carrying on this game he's got very tenuously. So we have to admit that too great an ability spoils all games.

The willingness is monitored by the games he could have, by the way. That's the – what the willingness is monitored by. What game can he have? Well, if he doesn't think he can have any games then he's not willing to get good enough to – if he doesn't think he can have any other game than "sick man" (that's a game, by the way – "invalid" or "sick man"), if he can only have that game then he must keep his willingnesses down on all other levels of progress.

"Invent a game," or "Now, come on. Tell me a game you could really play," as a very persuasive question, actually does more for a case, as crude as it is as a process, than this: "Mock it up and then decide not to," you know, "because it would spoil the game." Got that?

I think I've wogged a few of you. What's the matter here? Don't you believe this? Well, you don't have to believe it. Just after the lecture, try it! There are aud – – there's some auditors present that'd run it on you.

All right. Here's a question – got that one now, huh?

Audience: Yeah.

All right. "Does [[CONFRONT|confront]] mean confront with something, like a [[BODY|body]], or can a little old [[THETAN|thetan]] confront all by his lonesome?"

I [[HATE|hate]] to have to answer that question, but it turned up here – for this [[REASON|reason]]: when you confront with something you're in a [[NO-GAME|no-game]] condition. Now, let's get this – let's get this. I tested this very carefully: "Mock up your mother and make her confront that wall." Boy, does that sound good. Now, we'll find out that isn't a game – making Mother confront that wall. "Mock up Mother and refuse to let her confront the wall," and boy is that a [[GAMES_CONDITION|games condition]]!

So if you use something to confront other things with, you'll spin in after a while. You've no choice. If you always use a body to confront things with, your body will deteriorate.

Now, you can stand a body there and confront somebody yourself, and that's what you'd better do.

I notice people running confrontingness with eyeballs. They sit down in front of this – front of the coach and start [[CONFRONTING|confronting]] with the two eyeballs – turn the eyeballs out and confront the coach with the eyeballs. And after a while their eyeballs get sort of glassy, you know, and they start to smart. They'll [[CAVE_IN|cave in]] after a while.

It's very easy to confront. All you have to do is put your body in a chair and then confront the preclear and don't pay any [[ATTENTION|attention]] to your body. Of course, if you look at the preclear as a thetan, you're then conceiving a [[STATIC|static]] – so you better be able to.

But, it's an interesting thing that the process, "Mock up your mother and make her confront that wall," or "Mock up your body and make it con-front that wall," and so forth, is highly limited, and on any wide test at all, just spins the fellow right in. You're giving them wins! See? You're giving Mama wins! See, if Mama could confront utterly, why, she could ruin you. You've got to cut her confrontingness down. You've got to say, "Mama, it isn't really true that you're willing to confront me, is it? Mama, here's a couple of things that are pretty horrible and the schoolteacher couldn't confront them, the minister couldn't confront them, Daddy couldn't confront them, nobody could confront them, I haven't been able to confront them and I'm sure you can't confront them, Mama. Isn't that true?"

She says, "Yes dear. That's pretty horrible."

That's the whole game of "how bad it is over there," see? This doesn't meet the eye at first at all. In order to get any [[REALITY|reality]] on this you really ought to get the process run or run the process, "Mock up your mother and make her confront that wall" and then you'd see where you'd get making your body confront everything. People that take their bodies out and make them con-front racing cars and things like that – make the body confront racing cars; just don't let the body ride, see – after a while, get all exhausted and nervous. The body gets all exhausted and nervous. They're making the body confront. Well, a body can't confront all that. I don't know why people are using bodies to [[DRIVE|drive]] racing cars except to give the crowd a thrill anyhow.

Anyway, here's another one: "What considerations and disabilities chiefly stand in the way of [[EXTERIORIZATION|exteriorization]] and stable [[EXTERIOR|exterior]] and OT?"

[[OPERATING_THETAN|Operating Thetan]]. First mention we've had of OT this year. What stands in the road of it? I've just told you. Unwillingness. You ask a person, "All right now, what game could you play as an Operating Thetan?"

Funny part of it is, if he flattened the process he might become one. See? What game could you play as an Operating Thetan? If he finally found for sure and positively that he could play one, why, he'd have some willing-ness to become one.

Now, as far as exteriorization is concerned, an individual who goes around losing bodies all the time – every few years he loses a body. It's getting a longer period of time – he has one that's half dead for half a lifetime now. But he used to lose a body about every twenty or thirty years and it's gotten longer, but not much body.

Yeah, you go down to these cemeteries and so on, it's quite remarkable to read the tombstones. This girl – this girl is a mother of seven [[CHILDREN|children]], departed and dearly beloved. And read the dates of demise on the thing and you say, "Seven children!" It was an old woman of twenty-two, see? You look over these tombstones here in the East and it's quite wild. This fellow was an old man of thirty and so on. Why, you read these characters that signed the Declaration of Independence and so forth. The schoolbooks teach you that they were all old men. I don't know what their [[AVERAGE|average]] age was but it was pretty young.

As a matter of fact, in some [[EFFORT|effort]] to cut down the number of candidates for various offices they put some ages in the constitution. Remember? Well, that sure cut down candidates like mad because there were very few at that time that old. They'd die off before they got that old, on an average. But they lived very short but happy ones, as the saying goes.

Well, an individual keeps losing mock-ups one way or the other and he begins to get superstitious and he starts to hang on to them harder and harder and closer and closer. You got the idea? Less and less [[TRUST|trust]] in the fact that it will stay around. So he develops various mechanisms to keep mock-ups in close – and that's exterior – [[INTERIORIZATION|interiorization]]. See? Keep losing mock-ups, you'll say somebody's stealing them and you start keeping them in closer and closer and closer and playing it up closer and closer and closer, and the next thing you know, why, you're in the middle of one.

Now, you have to get a fellow over the idea of the scarcity of bodies before he will exteriorize with comfort. If – actually if you just had him waste bodies – waste healthy bodies for a while, like I told you way back when – PAB 1, I think it is – why, he'll exteriorize and stay exteriorized. We have so many exteriorization processes today, I haven't even bothered to keep a catalog of them. I just keep telling people this: that there's lots of exteriorization processes. But I don't give them any list of them.

And every time I start to write a list of them I know exactly why people don't exteriorize and so I say to hell with it. I stopped worrying about exteriorization when I found out that a fellow couldn't stick in his head after he kicked the mock-up off, and when I also found out that the thetan loves [[PAIN|pain]]. He protests against it like mad because he [[CAN'T_HAVE|can't have]] it, but he actually is unhappy without it. You give a guy a steel mock-up that won't give him any pain back, and he'll invent a machine in it that'll give him some pain.

He'll invent some ridges. He'll invent a mind. He'll do something. So it's a rather snide [[ATTITUDE|attitude]] I have regarding this particular manifestation. There isn't any particular reason to exteriorize anybody. We've found out in Scientology that an [[ENGRAM|engram]] is a moment (in Scientology) – engram in [[DIANETICS|Dianetics]] is a moment of pain and [[UNCONSCIOUSNESS|unconsciousness]], recorded with full [[PERCEPTION|perception]]. You understand?

That's a Dianetic engram. A Scientology engram is a moment of pain, unconsciousness and exteriorization. You start running something on – I'll tell you a honey of a process! You want to hear a real honey of a process? This is a killer! This is a killer on the subject of exteriorization. I say there are thou-sands of them. There really are. But this, amongst all others, is an easier one for the preclear to swallow and carry along with and it's quite interesting. Is, "[[RECALL|Recall]] a time you were in a body." Oh! You're just recording on this one, huh?

"Recall a time you were in a body."

"Good."

"Recall another time you were in a body."

"Good. Fine."

"Recall another time" – or "Recall a time you were in a body," more correctly.

"Good."

Next thing you know, wham, wham, zoom, zing, zoom, brrp, facsimiles, zuh, rrup!

And you say, "What happened?"

"I don't know! (sniff, sniff) I was a perfectly happy shoemaker sticking to my last, and a nail flew off the shoe and went in my right eye and killed me dead!"

And you say, "What are you talking about?"

You're running out his last exteriorization and that recall process goes right down the line and hits it just as neat as could be.

By the way, a [[POSTPARTUM_PSYCHOSIS|postpartum psychosis]] probably is a moment of exteriorization. A accident – an accident which doesn't contain a moment of exteriorization probably wasn't very severe. Individual went way off and said, "Well, shall I go any further, or did it live?"

That's a tricky process, "Recall a time you were in a body." There's a direct process which doesn't necessarily work a half-a-dozen times and – that is, if it works once. Somebody gives you a real – this isn't therapeutic – somebody gives you a real bad argument, you know, they say, "Well, you're talking about thetans. All us psychologists, we all know..." I know, I'm sorry to have to rant and rave about the psychologists again. I try to give them a break. I pretend they're not skunks. And I – somebody's ranting and raving at you and saying, "What is this exteriorization? The idea! You're a [[CULT|cult]] because you have a bunch of thetans and you know nobody's a soul or a [[SPIRIT|spirit]]. It's all been disproved by modern communotomy!"

And you say, "Well, that may be and that may not be. But what I'd like you to do right now – having nothing to do with that subject – is just take hold of your head and keep it from going away." It's hardly anybody can do that for ten minutes without yo-yoing.

All of a sudden he'll be out there looking at the back of the body and he'll say, "Eek!"

How many of you have tried that on people, by the way?

There's almost any process that'll exteriorize these days. Old Start-C-S, just run that way, interspersed with [[CONNECTEDNESS|Connectedness]] – by the way, that makes a good [[INTENSIVE|intensive]], just old Start-C-S and "Find something you wouldn't mind connecting with you." Those two make a fine intensive. They give very good results but they quite ordinarily result in exteriorization. In the course of twenty-five hours you'll have somebody out.

Okay. Somebody says here, "Can an auditor who is rather severely near-sighted greatly increase a pc's willingness to confront the [[ENVIRONMENT|environment]]?"

Ha! I'll say so! I'd hate to give you any examples. Actually, it takes a near-sighted auditor to be a complete beast on the subject. He's usually obsessed on it.

Aw, case doesn't have much to do with it these days. Somebody who has a terribly low trust level, who is in perpetual [[DOUBT|doubt]] or something like this, who can't really say yes or no to a circumstance or situation, would probably have an awful time trying to coach anybody to do anything. You know, I mean he couldn't say, "Well, the auditor in this case, in the training drill, is supposed to do so-and-so" – and this individual would be so doubtful about everything under the sun, moon or stars that he could not say that the auditor had done it. Supposed to sit there quietly in the chair – the auditor sits there quietly in the chair. The coach couldn't make up his mind whether or not the auditor had sat quietly in the chair and he'd sound doubtful all the time and so on. And this would be very bad in the final aggregate because it would stack up, apparently, an enormous number of loses for the auditor, so he couldn't do it. Beyond that, I'd say that was about its only real limitation.

This person also wants to know – this person thinks I'm a walking encyclopedia: "What [[TAPE|tape]] is PAB 111, on eyesight and glasses, taken from?"

Heh! I'll bet you thought I couldn't tell you, huh? Well, it's not from a tape at all. It's from a question and answer period of the 15th, 16th, or 17th ACC, and probably the 17th.

Male voice: Sixteenth.

Sixteenth?

Male voice: Yes.

It is. The sixteenth. But it's a [[Q_AND_A|Q and A]] period after an ACC lecture and it's not a lecture at all. And I don't think it's even available in tape form as far as I know.

"Any more news on pressures?"

Well now, this seems to be requiring a last-minute [[BULLETIN|bulletin]] here as though we were putting out bulletins on this subject. Well, as a matter of fact, there are very few hurricanes gathering in the Gulf at the present moment. The [[PRESIDENT|president]] has, as usual, played a couple of good rounds of golf, and the news on pressures is that they're building up.

You saw pretty close to the ultimate in pressures, at the congress, as far as the processes are concerned – as far as knowing what to do with these processes and so on. Pressures can be added to any process. We have some-body [[TOUCH|touch]] the wall with the right hand. We could then say, "Now adjust it to an acceptable [[PRESSURE|pressure]]." You could throw it in there. You could have some-body touching his body or confronting a body part or something like that and then make him do it with an acceptable pressure. You could throw this in almost anyplace. It's quite workable.

It's a thetan's [[EXPERIENCE|experience]] of [[HAVINGNESS|havingness]]. Of course there are other things connected with havingness than pressure, but it's an experience of having-ness and an important one. And therefore is quite important in auditing. Very much – a lot of work has been done on this but there isn't any particular news. You saw the two processes – actually two hours of tape in the congress just past, the [[FREEDOM|Freedom]] Congress – contain about the hottest processes developed out of pressures. There've been no hotter processes than those. That I would suddenly cut loose and without warning and with malice aforethought, run this on a whole congress at [[TONE_40|Tone 40]], most of whom had never heard of it before, you can just [[ASSIGN|assign]] to my cussedness. It's an adventurous thing to do. The truth of the matter is, we were blowing people out of their heads around there like popcorn coming out of a shallow pan.

I simply determined to give these people some reality on what we were talking about. And people found the floor and found faces and found that ground was ground, more than they ever had before. You see? But it's actually an individual process and I wouldn't essay to run it on a group if I were you. It's something you do on a wholly individual basis. There were only four hundred people at the congress – you can get away with that.

Boy, were there casualties!

Of course, part of the insouciance was just having the ACC staff monitor it, having everybody else sit down and do it. That was actually in the interest of putting the people under [[CONTROL|control]]. You realize that? Truth of the matter was, I should have had four times as many seminar leaders, but it obviously was not anything that was going to be that destructive because we had so few. Don't you see? But if you'll listen to that tape again – by the way, that tape is available all by itself.

Hm?

Audience: Reel three.

Mm-hm. It's reel three. It's available all by itself. Its commands are as they are. It's just a good Tone 40 individual process, is all it is. That, by the way, was a piece of high adventure which maybe some of you missed. It's an individual process. It's not tailor-made to run on groups at all.

"Please give the current definition of the [[SENSE_OF_HUMOR|sense of humor]]."

Any of you seen the most recent Ability?

Audience: Yep. Yeah. No.

It contains the reviews contained in Newsweek magazine about a book called Beyond [[LAUGHTER|Laughter]] by [[PROFESSOR|Professor]] Goofwoofle, a psychiatrist from Woofwaffle, Beverly Hills, California. Published by McGraw-Hill. Six dollars ill spent.

"Laughter is a manifestation of severe neuroses and anybody should be watched carefully who does any laughing." After years of study he's come to the [[CONCLUSION|conclusion]] that it means a deep-seated psychosis has been setting in.

Now, you think I'm kidding you. But there is a great, big, thick book of about 296 pages on the subject of why you shouldn't laugh, and in view of the fact that the only [[PSYCHOTHERAPY|psychotherapy]] known by the Italians, as a cure of melancholy (or any psychosis) was laughter – for some modern witch [[DOCTOR|doctor]] to fumble-dumble along and put something off on the [[PUBLIC|public]] and then to get a serious [[REVIEW|review]] in Newsweek magazine, tells me it's darker than I thought. It is the wildest book you ever wanted anything to do with.

Laughter is normally considered to be rejection. It actually is that mechanism which handles and as-ises [[SURPRISE|surprise]]. Now, I talked to you about surprise the other day. And an individual who can take a surprise with a laugh is in good shape, and an individual who takes a surprise with shock and great seriousness is not in very good shape. And an individual who resents every-body laughing (that he tries to give a shock to), is [[PSYCHOTIC|psychotic]]. I say that with seriousness, not just as a quip. It's a serious subject.

No, laughter is a mechanism by which one as-ises surprise. If you'll notice, nearly all humor is based on a change of pace and it's based on the zigs when they should zag. And comics, for instance, come out and do something that should be done quite another way, and people simply reject or [[REGISTER|register]] their surprise, you might say, with laughter. The fellow's going to step on the tight wire. He steps over it and goes down with a crash. Well, this is perfectly silly because they didn't expect him to do that.

Now, if it gets very serious – such as a fellow on a high wire and he purposely has the wire suddenly slacken so that he can catch it eight or ten feet down, you'll hear people in the crowd scream. It is serious to them to the degree that somebody's liable to lose his life over this situation. And this sudden change of pace elicits a scream. So you could say that laughter, to some degree, follows the gradient of seriousness, according to the individual.

Now, if a person laughs for the whole gamut and laughs at anything that happens, regardless of what it is, he probably isn't laughing at anything. And this is possibly the laughter that this psychiatrist was talking about. He probably is around [[INSANE|insane]] asylums and so forth. And he heard people laughing (not at or about anything, they just went on laughing) and he decided this was very serious. If he'd gotten out of an insane asylum, (if they'd let him) they would have – they would have discovered in no uncertain terms that there are very few such cases on the loose – very few. As a matter of fact, it's rather a rare case.

Now, you'll see somebody laughing at a moment that everybody else should [[CONSIDER|consider]] very, very serious. Now, let's say his girl just jilted him. I can tell you how serious this is, see? An individual, actually, had a girl jilt him – that is to say, she just threw him over. When he came to call – everything was all arranged, they were going to have wedding bells and et ceteras – and when he came to call there was another man there, in bed. So the fellow who was going to get married went out and got a pistol and came back in and sat down on the porch, waiting for the other guy to come out. He'd been sitting there for about five minutes and all of a sudden began to laugh like hell and he just laughed and laughed and laughed. And finally this other guy did come out, and he looked at him and he laughed hysterically and could practically not walk down the road. Got home, threw the pistol in a drawer. And I audited the [[INCIDENT|incident]] out of this individual several years later and there was nothing on it!

It was the love of his life! He'd gotten rid of the whole works. He just blew it! It was supremely funny to him. He suddenly found himself sitting there in the dark of night, an assassin, with a pistol in his hand. And he couldn't take it!

I saw a fellow one night in a cafe reach into his pocket, pull out his wallet to pay a very fancy bill – this was a New York night club bill, when I was a writer up there – and his wallet was totally empty! And he sat there and he looked at it, and the waiter came over, and the headwaiter came over, and the manager came over, and he looked at them and he looked at the empty wallet and he looked at his girl that he was trying to impress, and all of a sudden he just broke out into howls of laughter! And they couldn't get him to [[STOP|stop]] laughing! And practically collapsing and weakly – the last I saw of him he was staggering out the door, howling like mad. I'm sure nobody had to run that out of him.

No, laughter is not just a [[RELEASE|release]]. Laughter is a definite type of response, physiological and mental, to a situation which contains a zag when it ought to contain a zig. And people who are in pretty good shape, sooner or later, in any situation, will find that it has just gotten just too serious. And you'll find oddly enough that only those circumstances where laughter is socially forbid-den [[PRODUCE|produce]] [[ABERRATION|aberration]].

So much for Beyond Laughter and the subject of laughter. It is quite a mechanism. When you can no longer laugh at something, [[WATCH|watch]] out. Get it audited out.

The mechanism of line charges is quite interesting. It's never been discovered exactly how to trigger a [[LINE_CHARGE|line charge]]. I normally can trigger a line charge and get a release of a whole bunch of [[LOCKS|locks]] – just get a guy laughing all the locks off. But it is so unreliable, we have never said anything about the [[TECHNIQUE|technique]] at all. It is so seldom done. But the [[BASIC|basic]] mechanism is, is just keep it making more and more and more serious until it becomes too serious, and the fellow all of a sudden revolts from this being too serious and springs into a line charge. Like the girl who was nervous on the stage, and Lyle told her, "But isn't it your [[FEAR|fear]] that as you walk away from the mike you'll knock down all the scenery? Isn't that your fear?" And all of a sudden she line charged and it [[WIPED_OUT|wiped out]] her [[STAGE_FRIGHT|stage fright]].

The mechanism is, is make it more and more and more serious until it becomes utterly and completely ridiculous and the person will explode the whole thing off in laughter. Man, if sane, is a child of laughter and only when he begins to look very gloomy and glum – watch out.

Thank you.

ABILITY - LAUGHTER	 PAGE 15	18ACC-15 - 02.08.57

[[Category:Lectures]]
[[Category:Lectures 18ACC]]
[[Category:Lectures 1957]]