View source for Chain Scanning (501219)

'''Date:''' 19 December 1950

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

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I want to talk to you tonight about a technique which might be called Lock Scanning.

The history of this technique is very interesting in some respects. About three years ago I used to have a method of clearing up cases rather rapidly. When I fooled around with cases I thought I would kick them on through to a cleared state—I will be very frank with you, my time was limited to such an extent that I had time only to kick out the very easy cases, and on tougher cases only to carry them far enough so that they were very easily resolving toward this end. It was very necessary that a faster technique be developed than the one I was using at first and so I started a process of the concatenation of breaking engrams and locks. It was obvious that if you get basic-basic out of a case you have unlocked the most serious point of that case because you have picked up the earliest moment of anaten. That is very important to pick up the earliest moment of anaten because anaten—true anaten—doesn’t really start to come off until you have started to release it in the earliest moments of the case.

Therefore basic-basic is quite important, and the way I used to handle basic-basic was to find it, go back to it and erase it, but when erased would have a complete record of it and would chain scan out the engram, phrase by phrase, as long as I could find these phrases that were in the engram. I would just say, “All right, you can now run this forward to present time touching each time these words have appeared.” And the person would go ahead and do it. I noticed that—this was three years ago—the person would run through this with increasing speed.

The first time was rather slow. Let’s say the first words of the engram were “I hate you.” So he would start picking up “I hate you” all the way up the bank. And the first running would be rather slow. Then when you made him do it again—go back to that earliest moment there and do it again—he would come up a little faster. And he would go at increasing speed until the last time he did it, it would be from basic-basic to present time, just whhhht!

We would often get enormously effective line charges off the case. You could start a case laughing this way. I’m not now giving you the technique, I’m just giving you the history of the thing. Then you went to the second engram next to basic-basic which you could recover and you take each phrase out of the earliest and run him to present time. And then you get the next engram and erase that and then you go up to present time, in order to get each phrase out of it. In order to get the case unburdened you very often had to knock off some charge off the upper part of the case. By hitting it in this fashion you often loosened up the charge. Get pretty fast results this way; you also ball up cases. You can really foul them up. A fellow starts in at basic-basic and he’s gotten the words “I hate you” out of basic-basic and then he starts up the line and at about three months prenatal he hits “I hate you; control yourself.” And the preclear flies out of control. Then the auditor had to search hard and finally find where it slipped up, until he got that engram to reduce. Then go back and try to scan this thing again and the chances are you would get away with that phrase. And then you would get up to a phrase that said “Come to me,” and supposing as you started up the bank, halfway up through the prenatal area you had an engram that said “Come to me; we want to be all together.” You would come up to this point and suddenly the whole case would wind up and you might not even have the phrase, and the fellow would go into practically what appeared to be a spin. You’d collapse the track from top to bottom on this grouper and then it would be up to the auditor to go back and use all the wit and wile he had in order to knock this grouper out and reduce the engram in which it appeared—find the grouper the earliest time it was in this case and chain scan out this grouper. Only I wasn’t chain scanning; I mean, you reduce an engram and then take it phrase by phrase.

This was the technique which was in use. You can get a concatenation of running locks started in basic-basic and you can be quite effective about it because engrams are fortunately repeated in a bank over and over and over. You will find the same one repeated. This was a jackleg method which was about as safe to have around as a leopard cub that somebody was sticking an icepick in. It isn’t a technique you would suddenly hand into the hands of somebody who cared more for his preclear and less for research. I cared a great deal for research; the point being that it wasn’t the kind of technique you would turn loose easily so you had to have a better technique. But I evolved quite a few techniques and finally all of these techniques evolved into what we call “Standard Procedure.” We codify Standard Procedure and we can go on and use Standard Procedure.

As far as actually running engrams is concerned, the Standard Procedure as modified last month for accessibility only—and all that was added to it was just better ways to getting accessibility in a case—that’s the way you get out engrams and you can be darn sure you’ve gotten all the engrams you want out of them. You get all the engram out because we find this other method leaves pieces of engrams on the case. That’s not so good.

All right, this is history I’m telling you. A fellow by the name of Kitselman fathered the idea of installing an “examiner circuit.” He was out in Honolulu—and a lot of these cases are out there now in Honolulu being untangled by the Foundation—and his idea was that you install an examiner circuit. You told the preclear, “You have in your head an examiner circuit.” This is a very crude paraphrase of what he did. But, “You have in your head an examiner circuit and it’s going to run out all the engrams, and all that is necessary for you to do is have this examiner circuit spot the earliest engram.” “Okay, it has spotted the earliest engram, now run out the chain of engrams. That’s fine, and I’ll be back in two hours.” That roughly was E-Therapy as I saw it operate. This wasn’t any good, you might say. Just this freewheeling will take a circuitry case and snarl it up because the fellow will start running engrams as soon as he gets a “control yourself” in view. It’s very bad business so you shouldn’t ever run freewheeling on a circuitry case. Well, in view of the fact that nearly all cases have some circuitry it practically cuts out freewheeling.

Three people started to do something back in Elizabeth with this examiner circuit, E-Therapy, and what they developed was not in the least bit dependent upon the whole plan of E-Therapy. They developed something else. They developed what they call “chainscanning.” They went back early in a case and they found themselves part of an engram that was part of a chain and then they would scan this forward to present time in the chain. They would run it all the way forward to present time. They would go over it several times. And they developed with this the technique of commanding or ordering the speed of scan. The auditor can regulate how fast the scanning takes place.

There are four rates of scanning: There is vocal, in which the aberrative phrases are vocalized. There is nonvocal, in which the person goes up the line and doesn’t utter these phrases but just spots them in passing. There is accelerated rate in which you go about five times the normal speed. And then there is maximum rate which is just as fast as they can be run in a chain. Four rates of running a chain. This might be considered to be a lateral running of engrams. Here are your engrams, engrams, engrams, and you are running portions of these engrams all the way toward present time. This, with some modification, could be considered to be chain scanning.

The first thing you do in chain scanning is to keep consulting a flash answer arrangement in the file clerk as to “What is the name of this chain?” He gives you some name for it. “Can we scan this chain?” and he gives you a flash. If he says “No,” then, “Is there another chain we can scan first?” And he says, “Yes,” and you say, “What is the name of this chain?” He says, “It’s the embroidery chain,” or something. So you go early on this chain and you get the first phrase on this chain and you have it repeated two or three times and then you run it up to present time, and sometimes you run it at maximum rate three or four times: maximum rate, just whhht, whhht, whhht. And then you slow it down and say, “All right, run it at vocal rate.” One of the things you must do before you start running any one of these chains is say to the preclear, “Are there any groupers here?” And he says, “Yeah, there are six groupers.” “All right, run the first grouper.” You get the groupers off the line and then you can scan. This is chain scanning.

John Lewis points out about chain scanning, “Hubbard did not invent the action of an action phrase.” If action phrases exist as such, then chain scanning through engrams won’t work. Or, if action phrases have no action, then chain scanning will work. In other words, if you trigger a bouncer over once, just once, then that bouncer activates. This comes down to this: can you stop one engram from functioning by putting another one into a person’s mind? In other words, can you give a person hypnotic suggestion which will nullify his engrams? No. Therefore, it wouldn’t even do you any good if you said to your preclear, “Now, can you run this without paying any attention to action phrases?” Certainly he is going to pay attention to action phrases. You might get a flash and might not.

All of these considerations demonstrate chain scanning as represented in the mimeographed release. All of these considerations sum up to the fact that chain scanning as done postulates that some sort of use might be found for this technique. The Clearing Service reports to me that it has had several members of the Elizabeth staff under its especial care in order to undo cases fouled up by chain scanning.

At this point in the examination of the subject we could consider chain scanning as being very dangerous, something not to be used or tolerated actually unless you are using some aberree from the outside world—certainly nobody on the staff should have this used on them.

So, the problem is this. Here we have a mechanism. What does it do? What is it good for? I had a brainstorm a short time ago, the hurricane roared at 190 miles an hour between my ears and I said, “I wonder if you can chain scan out auditing. Supposing you chain scanned out auditing, just auditing.” I had already spotted the fact that this might be used for locks. Obviously if you went through engrams that was one thing; but to go through locks, that was something else, and particularly late locks. The thing looked like it ought to be safe for a late lock—late locks, and so forth—it looked like you could do something for them. So I started to work on a little experimental project and ran a very few people. I did one of these medical series. I tested it hardly at all—you know, like they do on ACTH before they release it. The point is that here is a use to which this could be put. How effective is it? Now, I can see how effective it is when I use it. How effective is it when you use it? I don’t know, but on those I used it on—I haven’t followed up one of these cases—but on those on whom it has been used a considerable change of tone took place. And evidently engrams which have been restimulated by auditing—and mind you, underscore that “evidently” — those engrams which have been restimulated by processing but not reduced are held in restimulation only because of the auditing, and that by chain scanning out the auditing, those engrams which have been restimulated by auditing are patted into place; in other words, they go back into a destimulated condition.

Now, it is indeed a boon, particularly to the instructors in a certified auditors center—you can take a case, no matter how thoroughly badly it has been audited, no matter how badly it has been restimulated, and if a certified auditor can chain scan out that auditing in the matter of an hour, two hours, or however long it takes, and get all the engrams back where they were before the preclear was ever audited, this is indeed a boon to all concerned.

Now, there are two other chains which are of vital importance to the Foundation: the chain concerning itself with the auditing one has done on preclears—in other words, while one is in the chair he picks up restimulations. Now there is a possibility that with all of the dozens or hundreds of hours of auditing an auditor does he picks up quite a lot of aberrative phrasing and so forth, from preclears that he audits. So there is a chain there, a chain which consists of everything which preclears have said while he was auditing them. Now you see there is that chain; that would settle a case back too, wouldn’t it? So he doesn’t get pretty badly restimulated, he can have it chain scanned out of him.

Now the third one is invalidation of Dianetics, as a chain. You start back along the line and you chain scan on up to present time through these invalidations of Dianetics. That picks up a guy’s morale a little bit.

With these three things you can pretty well destimulate a case. In other words, the world might look a lot brighter. Now, this postulates something very interesting. This postulates you might be able to chain scan out chain scanning. If one can chain scan out chain scanning, then one can use chain scanning. You get the idea. In other words, one can do practically anything to a preclear except stamp on his face and the curse can be taken off.

Now, the only place where this wouldn’t work would be in trying to chain scan standard first week auditing—the kind of auditing that only drives people mildly psychotic and the preclear went completely inaccessible so he couldn’t be chain scanned. So there is a borderline there where a person can be chain scanned and a person can’t be chain scanned.

Chain scanning destimulates a case, yes, but when you have a person up to a point where his file clerk will flash to him “Yes, I’m Clear,” and you can’t find any more engrams to chain scan, the Clearing Service can come along and say, “Lie down, shut your eyes, go to basic-basic,” and the fellow will run an exploder. He will run engrams, in other words, and the more engrams he runs, the better he feels. In other words, chain scanning off a case destimulates it but it doesn’t abolish the engrams even when you are chain scanning engrams. It makes the case feel better; you can raise the tone. Well, that’s good enough. Don’t fall for a chain scanning Clear, It has been the experience of the Clearing Service and, by the way, my own experience too—I had a chain scanning Clear presented to me.

I said, “Lie down on the couch, close your eyes, let’s go back to the first engram necessary to resolve the case,” so he runs me an engram. The two people who were holding their breaths to find out whether or not they had really done a good job on this thing looked with great horror at this fellow running an engram, and then leaned over to me and whispered, “Well, the file clerk told us it wasn’t necessary to run them all, you know.” Here I lay open to you a subject which at its highest reaches will create a temporary lock Clear, and a lock Clear is merely a destimulated case where you can’t find any more locks to chain scan out, and Standard Procedure is then very much in order. But after you have used Standard Procedure for a while, it might do a lot of good to chain scan off the locks again. In other words, this technique can be woven in that way. It can be brought in at the end of every session. At the end of every session, the auditor just chain scans off what he has done. He just runs it off, maximum rate and then accelerated rate, and then vocal rate, and then he goes over it a couple more times at maximum rate, and it is gone. In other words, it would take him about ten minutes to take out his own auditing. It is a substitute canceller. It flattens out the engrams.

Here is a summary of the method: The first thing one does is put the preclear on the couch, put him in reverie and tell him to close his eyes. And then you start to work on a flash answer basis. You ask him for a flash answer, “Can we scan out the auditing?” Now you explain to him, of course (and this should be first), the four speeds of scanning in this lateral running, that you are going from phrase to phrase on up from the earliest incident to present time and so on. You can tell him this. By the way, they seem to do this anyhow, to a large degree. Anyway, if you get a “yes” on the auditing chain, send him back to the first session of auditing and have him repeat a couple of the early words of auditing, possibly the installation of the canceller. Then you ask him to scan forward to present time at maximum speed through all the auditing. You will find by scanning locks that groupers are relatively ineffective, and that it is not absolutely necessary to spot these groupers out—if you started to do this in the auditing itself at first, it might be very complicated. So you just tell him to chain scan forward through all the auditing to present time at maximum speed. You return him to that incident, make sure he is at that point on the track, and then you tell him to begin scanning (snap) and he runs forward to present time. Usually when they are doing this ably and well they will run forward so fast that it will just be a blur. Run them over this, then, to present time, run them back to the first session of auditing again, and start them on through again at maximum speed. Get them through this once again.

Now you can start them at, you might say, vocal rate. Tell them to vocalize each phrase as it comes up if the phrase is especially aberrative, and you tell them to scan forward. You make sure that they understand they are scanning the auditing, not scanning through the engrams which have been run in them. Now, you scan them forward to present time at vocal rate. When they get to present time you go back again and you scan them forward once more, instructing them this time to scan any new aberrative phrases which come up. You are not asking for repetition over and over, you understand, on these phrases, because you are only running locks. Actually chain scanning could be said to be in this category, a sort of high-speed, fast Straightwire.

Now, you can scan them forward to any new phrases which show up which are especially aberrative and return them up the line again to present time. You have to tell them to let you know when they are in present time. Otherwise you have no way of knowing—they are liable to lie there for three or four or five minutes and you are waiting there patiently and they have been in present time all the time. So, instruct them each time to tell you when they get to present time. Then start them back at the beginning again and chain scan them forward from the first moment of auditing toward present time at accelerated rate, which will be a little faster. Then you chain scan them once more at maximum rate, which will be very fast—put them through at maximum rate three, four or five times—something like that. You will find that new data keeps showing up along the track. Usually, by the way, they will get off some anaten, and when you get them up to present time you can tell whether or not you have gotten all of it because you know if any of the somatics are still with them which they got after they began to be audited, because people will pick up somatics in the process of being audited sometimes. All these somatics should disappear. The engrams then theoretically would destimulate.

If you want to continue on with chain scanning, you ask them to chain scan out  invalidations of Dianetics or the  times  they have audited people—chain scan out all the preclears and everything they have said while being audited on forward to present time. In other words, you can get rid of chains of locks of this description.

You want to ask each time, “Can this chain be run?” like, “Let’s chain scan out all the auditing you have ever listened to, all the things the preclears have ever said to you. Now, can you scan this?” (snap) If you get a “No,” you say, “Do you have to scan another chain first?” If you get a “Yes,” you say, “Give me the name of the chain.” (snap) And a name will flash, and you tell him to go to the first phrase in this chain of locks. You ask them if you have to run through any engrams to chain scan off this one. And if they give you a “No” or “Yes” you just have to be careful there that they chain scan locks, not engrams; you understand that.

Occasionally you will find that you have to run an engram first; you may have to go right into the case on Standard Procedure and run out one engram. You ask for the engram that prevents you from chain scanning this chain, something like that. After running out the engram, you then ask the preclear if you can chain scan out the named chain which is preventing you from chain scanning a later chain. If you get a “Yes,” you chain scan out that chain and when you have that chain deintensified, you say, “Can you now chain scan all the preclears you have ever listened to?” “Yes.” All right, you start in and by the same process you pick up all the aberrative phrases of the preclears. That should lay back all the engrams which have been restimulated in this process.

Now, if you really want to finish up the case royally, you chain scan out your own auditing that you have just done, you run them through a pleasure moment, give them some Straightwire, and bring them out of the session.

You know how Straightwire will bring new data to view. If you chain scan a highly occluded case on Monday, by Wednesday you would be able to chain scan some more off of this case. You can treat chain scanning as a sort of high-speed Straightwire addressed to locks.

Let me give you a tip on running out control phrases: Sometimes auditors sit around and echo a lot; they do quite a lot of echoing. As a matter of fact, I have done a lot of echoing myself with unwilling people who would not repeat very much and I have repeated for them. It is effective, but when you start chain scanning out the auditing you will find that if you have said, “Control yourself” as a repeat several times, you are liable to run into this control phrase. And a phrase like “Control yourself” in a lock, where the auditor repeated the phrase for the preclear, will very often cause the auditor, in running it out, to fail to chain scan at that point. He will go off and he won’t get a flash answer. If you don’t get a flash answer with chain scanning, you will know you have hit one of these control locks. Usually they are very easy to knock into view.

When an auditor knows his preclear will have an extended period during which the preclear will receive no processing, or on the last day of an intensive processing period for a preclear, chain scanning can be used to knock out locks, auditing and getting useless stuff off the case in order to bring the case up as high as possible. Thus chain scanning can be used as an adjunct to Standard Procedure in picking up bogged-down cases or in polishing up cases we want to let ride for a while.

I ran a rejection chain—I chain scanned a rejection chain once—with quite marked results. I chain scanned from the first time Mother had ever rejected the child on forward through all rejections to present time. It doesn’t take very long to run such a chain—five minutes, something like that, at a high speed, and then start vocalizing it—and some of the tension will go off it.

You understand, of course, that after a case has been chain scanned thoroughly here, there, through this, through that, you can still find engrams. You can make this person a lot better by chain scanning—he feels fine — but you can make him feel a lot finer by starting to run out engrams by good auditing in Standard Procedure.

There is another thing which comes up on chain scanning in which you might be interested. The preclear will actually, if asked, name the central chains of his case. You can ask him, “How many chains necessary to reduce in order to clear your locks?” and he will say, “Seventeen.” “The name of the first chain will now flash into your mind.” (snap) And he will say, “The dumbbell chain” or something like that. Each one has a reason for it and maybe it is the first time his little brother ever called him a “dumbbell.” And then we get insults all the way along until present time. Or we get a grief chain. I have seen a whole lot of grief run out; also I have watched a whole chain of electric shocks run out with this. Zippety, zippety, zippety, zip. The tension came off of these shocks. Afterwards, by Standard Procedure, you could go in and audit up the locks, but you would be auditing locks that were not in high restimulation. With the chain scanning you would be getting the restimulation off the locks.

I have seen run out all the times an alcoholic got drunk and a lot of restimulation taken off that chain in this fashion. Consider this as a means of flattening chains of locks, and considered in that light, it is highly reasonable. It becomes much less reasonable when you start running in the prenatal bank, running through engrams, chopping them off this way and that, running the scanner over the side of this engram. You go up past “I hate you” and this one says “Get away from me,” the person comes up to present time and you run into another engram which says, “It all happens at once,” the case goes bmmmmp! These things are not good.

Chain scanning cannot be run auto.

Apropos of nothing here, you will find that your preclear will flash answer himself instead of remembering. Knocking out the auditing should cure him of it. It is not a healthy state of being.

[[Category:Lectures]]
[[Category:Lectures 1950]]