View source for Contol of Attention (SHSBC 610818)

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

'''Date:''' 18 August 1961

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

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Now you've given me a guilty conscience! Given me a guilty conscience now. This is the what, 18th of August?

And you are getting an extra lecture today. But that's basically because of this burning fact: You're not doing good. That's the burning fact.

When worse auditing is done, there will probably be people shot over it. I hate to say something like that. But when worse auditing is done around the world, it'll be done with brickbats or something of this sort.

Now, I don't wish to be unkind. I don't wish to be unkind, but I wish to be very, very factual. You're not auditing; you're in a games condition.

That's why you're not getting goals. You couldn't possibly miss these things the way they've been missed. And this tells us about 90 percent of the auditors get into a games condition over goals processing and that is the secret behind Routine 3 and that is the data which has emerged.

They themselves have been so thoroughly suppressed in their goals and have been so smashed back into environments that they themselves did not want to be in, that in the final analysis, when they start to audit, they do fine right up to the point where they start to run goals and terminals on somebody or something like that and then they go blooey. And you've just got to do a better job of auditing and you've just got to lay that games condition aside on the subject of goals. Now, I was even thinking you could possibly get run back and forth a little while “What goal would you rather another didn't have” or something like this and run the games condition on goals for a little while till you got over this.

But this is the primary thing. It isn't that you're flubbing technically particularly, but it is just absolute nonsense, man. It is nonsense to have the second goal the pc ever gave you, the proper goal.

Now, that's – that's silly! And then go on for five weeks looking for a goal. Now, that's already turned up here.

Pc gives you a terminal – gives you a terminal and the terminal is the right terminal and it falls, so the next day the wording is changed on the terminal and it doesn't fall and that's washed out. It's called something else the next day by the auditor. So of course it doesn't fall.

The other wording that it was changed to never fell anyhow. CONTROL OF ATTENTION 2  I'll give you an idea of it. “Black cat” fell. So in the next auditing session the auditor takes up the thing and he says “cat” and it doesn't fall.

So, he says, “Well of course, I haven't found the terminal.” But a check-over reveals that “black cat” was falling on – on one day and “cat” wasn't falling on the next. But “black cat” is still falling and black cat is the terminal. Now how else do you explain that, than just say, well, the guy can't have a terminal, that's all.

Now look, I know basically there's a certain terror in making Clears. I know, it's kind of spooky, man! Kind of spooky.

I – I myself get a jolter once in a while. You know, the records on Clears are coming in here fairly rapidly and here's another Clear, you know and once in a blue moon I find myself, you know, saying “Ah-da oh-oh! Ump!” You get the idea?

I mean, just some little reactive flick and I laugh about it, you know, I say, “This is silly as hell.” See you can get a reactive flip on this – this type of thing, you know, and you're fairly sure now that you're on the right line. And the only way you could stop making Clears right now is just don't run the rudiments, don't find the fellow's goal, and don't let him have his terminal. And if you do that, and audit it badly, of course you won't have a Clear.

I think there's a little bit of jolt connected with this. Now, that's just my private opinion. But don't think for a moment I haven't got confidence in you, because I think if I just point out what you're doing, what I think you're doing; and if that fits, the next time you're looking down the barrel of assessing somebody and so forth, I think you will be able to just checkrein yourself a little bit the way I've done, you know. you say, “Well, uh . . .” And all of a sudden you realize, “Wait a minute!

I left that whole block of goals out. Ho-ho-ho-ho. Well, now.” And get yourself by the scruff of the neck and put yourself back in the lineup and take up that block of goals and let's go over them, let's go over them real carefully.

This is hard lines, isn't it? But look-a-here, if we have operated up to a point where we can learn this, then the time is not wasted let me assure you. The time is not wasted, because I've been looking for what it is and the – the long goals assessment . . .

And do you know that I've studied this, just literally, for months. I looked over auditing records and reports and they all seem logical and there just doesn't seem to be a single thing out. But when I gave you a raking over the coals on the subject and you got busy – confirmed it.

That's it. I mean, right away you start finding some goals and terminals. They've been there all the time!

Well now, how do you account for that? How do you account for it? Otherwise than the fact that there must be, not – not carelessness, but there must be this little bit of unwillingness to find the goal and terminal, you see.

There's just a little bit of a games condition going on here, you get the idea? Because you're too bright, otherwise, to make these  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 3  mistakes and you don't make these mistakes in run-of-the-mill auditing. See, that goes along fine.

But on goals and terminals, bang! Now of course, suppressing somebody else's goal is the most natural thing in the world if you've got a bug on being murdered. If you've been murdered recently, what's the goal of the murderer?

To kill you, of course. And what is your whole evasive action? It's actually, fundamentally devoted to knocking out the goal of the murderer to kill you.

Isn't that right? So if you knock out the goal of the murderer to knock you off, naturally he won't. See?

So it's almost livingness to suppress goals. See, there's whole classes of goals that one would just instinctively suppress, you know. We'd instinctively suppress a goal such as the secretary of state or the president of the United States is all of a sudden going to sell out to Russia, wouldn't we?

Well, we'd be horrified! All right, now let's look how far this could go. Are there whole classes of goals that could horrify us?

Yeah, well, we must have a lot of built-in modus operandi of suppression of unworthy or unwanted goals. Well now, that easily slips over into suppression of goals. Suppression of goals, suppression of terminals.

I don't think you're trying to suppress Clears. You'd be proud as punch if you made a Clear. But I think this instinctive – this instinctive “suppress the goal,” you know, is standing right in your path, with concrete blocks on this assessment.

Because now I can tell you that from some data to hand here now, that the terminals and goals did exist in the first part of the list. They existed in the first part of the list. How did you miss them?

How could they be missed? Now, you can go ahead with an assessment. If you were handling every incident that came up and you were cross-questioning and crisscrossing every incident that came up and you were checking the guy backwards and forwards and so forth, all the way through and you were actually clearing this – actually auditing him as you assessed him – you know, running not-know on every incident that came up and running not-know on what he doesn't know about the goal and what area he escaped.

The type of clearing I was describing about three days ago, remember? You could just plow the whole thing up and bring him out the other end Clear, too. See, you could do that, but you aren't doing that.

You're just running repeater technique and trying to find a goal. Well, if you're trying to find a goal, you can find one and it's usually in the first dozen, two dozen, fifty, hundred and fifty goals that the person gave you. And as far as terminals are concerned, it's usually out of a list of thirty – thirty, forty terminals.

It's not hundreds of terminals – thirty, forty, fifty, something like that. can be done and you can find it. So therefore, we must be letting our reactive minds get a little bit in our road of clearing, wouldn't you say? Must be just something on that order.

Otherwise we wouldn't find a goal on Tuesday and on Wednesday change the wording of it, so that it didn't register and  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 4  then say it doesn't exist. Got the idea? We wouldn't let a goal hang fire for four weeks or something like that, before we suddenly said, “Well, I guess we'll have to let him have it after all.” But it'd been there for that many weeks, you see, still registering.

Well, the idea of get more goals, get more goals – this is all fine; this is all praiseworthy and so forth. Yes, add to the goals list and perhaps your directions here are to some degree at fault. I take full responsibility for that, not having obviated them.

But you just don't need all of these goals, you see, in order to do a Goals Assessment. You – you it – . Yeah, get your hidden goals and get your withheld goals and unknown goals and suppressed goals, and – and that sort of thing – ask for these in your classification – but when you've got about 150 goals written down there, if you can't find a goal amongst those that would stick, you better turn in your E-Meter.

It's just nonsense, not to be able to. Now, if you cleared up every reason he had each goal and went into it this way – not with a repeater technique but with Not-Know and found out what – you know, got the terminal for the goal and found out what he doesn't know about that type of a valence, you see and what area that valence would want to escape from, and what goal... you know, just take up the whole thing, with lots of not-knows and just cover the whole thing. Oh, yeah, you'd make a Clear that way too.

But you're not doing that, you're doing it by repeater technique and repeater technique is simply to eliminate and leave us standing with a goal that will register. You should be able to do it in an afternoon, on any pc that walks up the street. So let's just rack back our sights here on what we're supposed to be doing on the thing and we are not alone in this kind of a mistake.

Because the mistake has been made in Australia and it has now been made in Washington. It's not going to be made anymore. See, we've been making this mistake a long time.

I've finally isolated the factors which are causing us to make this mistake and the factors which cause us to make the mistake is an expectancy of: having to get all of the pc's goals before we find a goal – which of course isn't necessary at all – or have to Find all possible terminals before we find a terminal to match the goal, you see. You're being just a little bit too thorough, a little bit too rigorous here, a Little bit too stretchy on the whole thing. Pc gets down to a point where he's comm lagging on you for a minute before he can give you another goal; well, hell, you've got the list; you've got everything on the list you want.

Got the idea. He can't think of any more. He goes home and he does he – he. . .

You say, “I'm going to do a Goals Assessment on you tomorrow” and you say, “Make up a list of goals. Write down all the goals you ever thought of and also the goals that you don't want anybody to know about. Write them all down and bring them in to me.” Take the list, say, “Are there any goals you didn't write down on this?”  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 5  “Well, no, not really,” and needle falls. “Well, what goal did you not write down on this?” “Well, I purposely didn't write down the goal to – burning every city I Live in, you know.” Something like this.

Write it down, you know, strip it down a little bit. you don't get any more action on the needle particularly, for that moment. That's it. Now you have his goals list.

Now one of those goals is going to consistently fall, that I guarantee. If it is read out and phrased and so forth, it will continue to fall. Otherwise, your rudiments are out.

You've stopped the goal from falling by getting the rudiment out in some fashion or you erased it or you've invalidated it or you've just done a lousy technical job in some fashion. Auditing, perhaps to you, might seem to be something that had enormous numbers of rules connected with it. And as long as you think of auditing as having enormous numbers of rules, you aren't auditing.

These rules just serve as guideposts of one kind or another. But back of those rules, your good heart can carry the day. You trying to help this fellow out?

All right, there are certain things his mind will and won't do and if that is the basket of rules by which you're operating, you're perfectly safe – rather than a basket of ritual. And I call to your attention that every religious organization on the face of Earth must have fall – failed in its original representation to the multitude. Must have nailed; must have!

Because they developed rituals. Never let the ritual get to be the thing. Now, we can give you a ritual which repetitively spoken gives you a great ease of proceeding And you shouldn't depart from it, particularly, but it has no value beyond making a constancy of session, that's all.

That's all the value that a Model Session has. It just gives you a constant representation and it gives the pc a little confidence, because he Isn't being asked these things in different ways. And it also has the technical advantage of running out former sessions, because you're using the same words.

Repetitively, by repeater technique, the sessions never stick then – if you always use the same bridges and that sort of thing – you run out your own sessions. So you're just doing two jobs in one. It's a good piece of auditing, but its value, is no greater than that.

It won't do anything. It won't do anything. It's just a Standardization.

Now, let's look at what is happening. Here is what a pc will not do and this is what you must learn in auditing. A pc will not go into session with his mind fixated, his attention fixated on something else than what you're trying to do.

His attention is fixated on something; now, you are not going to be able to get him in-session. Nor will you get his interest in the process you are running and don't be amazed if your pc is restless and you haven't solved this point of concentrated attention. CONTROL OF ATTENTION 6  Now, a pc sits down and practically can scream at you sometimes and tell you “My attention is definitely concentrated on the fire hydrant which is outside the front door.” He'll warn you, if you ask him.

All the rudiments are simply covered on something like this: “Is your attention fixated on something? Is there any reason you wouldn't talk to me?” and you've got all the rudiments. Your rudiments cover nothing else. you could look in vain to find something else. “Is your attention fixated on something?

Is there any reason you won't talk to me?” and if that was your rudiments, that would be all right. Now as a matter of fact, however, the questions are a little broad. They aren't sufficiently particular and so you have the rudiments.

How many ways can his attention be fixed so as to stop a session from occurring? Well, it can actually only be fixed a very few ways. He's got a present time problem of short duration or he's got a present time problem of long duration.

Now that would be a fixation on the exterior environment and usually the short – the long duration problem is a fixation on something subjective. Present time problems of short duration are fixed attention on the immediate environment and present time problems of long duration the present – the attention is fixed on something in present time all right, but it's also been fixed on this thing for a long time and it's usually subjective. So his attention is so fixed – he can articulate this if you ask him hard – his attention is so fixed that, of course, to do anything else than keep his attention fixed there, would be painful to him.

So you get into trouble. Now there's the – the primary sources of fixed attention: present time problem of short duration; present time problem of long duration. Under the heading of present time problem of short duration you get such matters, is, “Well, I haven't given the – the housekeeper a message I had for her and I have to sit here remembering that at the end of the session, you see, I'm supposed to give the housekeeper this particular message.” No go. you won't get any auditing done.

You got somebody who's sitting there saying, “Well, yes, yes, yes, when did I eliminate a king? Okay, okay.” “Now, I must remember to give the housekeeper the message,” you see. “All right, well I eliminated a king. . .” 'Remember the housekeeper, the message.” “The king, uh. . .” “When did I eliminate a housekeeper?” You get what's going on? Well, you're not paralleling what the mind is doing, and of course when you don't parallel what the mind is doing with auditing you of course fail with auditing, naturally.

Now, the reason you fail might be interesting to you. We'll take that up in a moment. Let's take up the problem of long duration.

The fellow's attention has been so consistently and so continually fixed upon this particular thing, that at no time can he get his attention really on anything else and he more or  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 7  less knows about it. It's very close to the surface and it is very real to him and you could say it is the reality station for his attention. Everything else is sort of unreal and this is pretty real and it an be anything.

It can be a sore eye, you see. It can be a – a bad side. It can be whether or not he's getting old. you see what I mean?

It's whether or not her beauty will be totally destroyed at long last, you get the idea? But it's – it's – be something here. It's something and it's been going on for a long time.

By long duration, we mean this lifetime; absolute maximum limit. Got the idea? We – as soon as we exceed this lifetime, we have case.

That is the most flagrant of these. Now, you very often find a present time problem – this gets confusing to pc, because a present time problem of long duration becomes case. He finds out this has been going on for actually ages and he thought it had just been going on for the last few years and factually it's been going on since ancient Troy. you get the idea?

Something on the order of this: Is his son going to disgrace him? See. This is his – you know, he's thinking about this all the time, and he comes into session.

It's quite – it's quite up on the surface, usually. If you were to ask him if he was worried about anything and crisscross it and really press it down – does he go around worrying about something? Does he go around thinking about something all the time?

Is there something that bothers him most of the time? And he finally says, “Well, is my son going to disgrace me? Well, yes, as a matter of fact . . .” And we assess this thing out, handling it and we run it as a button, 'son” see.

And so help me God, it goes back to Egypt and becomes Ra, the sun god, and goes back into ancient – and space opera and goes back to glare fights, see. “Son,” s-o-n, s-u-n, all these things are all messed up one way or the other and it becomes a case. So a present time problem of long duration can become a case, don't you see. But ordinarily we say a present time problem of long duration – . we have a case or two of that going on right now, I mean, where the present time problem of long duration became the case.

But ordinarily it's just the – a problem. Maximum duration is this lifetime. Something on the order of years.

Certainly months. Absolute minimum is months. Now, I'll give you the reason for this.

The reason why you can't audit him with one of those things and it will become very plain to you. you – you won't make this mistake all the time. Supposing you were standing there looking at a tree and you were engrossed in the beauties of this tree and somebody stuck a pin in your back. Do you know that the pain of the pin thrust would be many times magnified by the violence of attention shift.

The rate of change of attention is a way of defining pain, relative. Relative pain is defined by rate of change of attention. Now, if a fellow walked up and he says, “It's a nice tree; I think I'll stick this pin in you,” you'd turn around and you'd have some defense against it and you'd say, “No, don't do that,” or something like that.

But you're looking at the tree, don't even know the fellow was  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 8  behind you and he sticks the pin in you. Sudden – sudden shift of attention from the tree to something painful. And it makes that pin thrust feel like a two-edged sword going in.

Hiroshima, going about its daily wartime activities and all of a sudden there's a loud bang and there is no Hiroshima, you see. Attention shift and that was sufficiently violent that the people who were in the catastrophe had no time for twenty minutes. Time did not exist for twenty minutes.

They just hung right there. Well, it wasn't the violence of it; it was the sudden shift – the shift was so remarkably fast, don't you see – and the amount of attention shift. And of course this shifted everybody's attention off all of his PT problems and all of his realities and of course shifted them onto something which was a total unreality and a sort of – net result was we got no time.

So we find that on the track, sudden attention shifts is the common denominator of every hung point on the track. It's when somebody's attention changed; not when his attention was on something. It was when it changed.

You could put a man in paradise and then consistently shift his attention rapidly and he'll become very unhappy with paradise. Do you see? Sudden attention shifts.

That's – that's the common denominator. This is not something new, in Dianetics and Scientology. The first lecture on this is July, American Legion Hall, Elizabeth, New Jersey, 1950.

Not something new. Furthermore, it's not even really new with Dianetics and Scientology, because Locke and Hume and some of the others have discussed attention, but they never really discussed attention shift; this is a brand-new factor. All right.

Attention has always been known to be a part of psychology up till 1879 and then actually was more or less dropped out of the lineup. The psychologist does not pay much attention to attention. That's mostly because he's in a total dispersal of some kind or another.

It's all unfixed attention, he thinks. Now, shifts of attention: You are using processes which are sufficiently strong that regardless of what his attention is fixed on, his attention can be yanked off of it and put on the subject of the process. You're using highcaliber mental weapons, see.

They're very, very high caliber. So you can make up your mind to run a process and sure enough, that process will yank his attention, but it lays the seed of the first ARC break of the session, because it's painful. He's worried about parking meters and you all of a sudden get him worried about waterfalls.

Hm, duh-duh, duh-dum. There's a point of confusion right there in the session. Now, his attention doesn't totally come off of parking meters.

So his attention isn't totally on waterfalls. So he's got parking meters and waterfalls all mixed up now and you've accomplished an identification for him. Which is interesting, isn't it?

You've got a new identification. You're not auditing him downhill, but you certainly aren't giving him a good session. CONTROL OF ATTENTION 9  Now, that is true – and mark this well – of a present time problem of short duration and a present time problem of long duration and in neither one of these do you find any exceptions to the rule that your auditing must parallel what the mind is doing.

Now, you can go so far with – this paralleling what the mind is doing – that you start Q-and-Aing and not really handling what's there. That's the other error. You go too far with the parallel.

So that he says, “Well, I've had trouble with . . .” But you say, “You're having trouble with your family? Who in particular In your family are you having trouble with?” “Well, I'm having trouble with my sister.” “What trouble have you been having with your sister?” Oh, no, he's . . . He says, “Well it's because of my brother and sister are always fighting.” And you say, “Well, have you been – had objections to people fighting?” And then he says, “Well, no, not really, except the police.” “Well, do you have trouble with watching police fight?” “No, except when they're fighting with firemen.” “Well, do you have trouble watching firemen fight?” We'll say that you at least got “watching” and “trouble” in there, but you're just letting his mind go all round and round in a dispersal, you see.

He's still got the problem, oddly enough, that he's having trouble with his family. Only you're riding over the hills and far away, you see, you're actually pulling an attention shift on him. You're not coping with what attention fixation he had.

You're now trying to pick up the attention dispersals, see. So you're not worrying about the present time problem, you're going over the hills and far away. That's what we call Q and A.

And I will lay down this rule and it is not a rule so much as an observation. I have never seen a case progress unless the attention factor on the immediate environment – whether of long duration or short duration – was not handled first. I have never seen it fail and I have never seen a case fail to get some version of an ARC break when this was done.

So the ARC break always occurs when you don't pay attention to the attention factor. All right. There it is.

If you don't handle the present time problem of short duration, the present time problem of long duration, when doing auditing, you are inevitably going to get an ARC break and there's where ARC breaks move in. What's the ARC break? It's a sudden attention shift.

That is all. I don't care whether it was done because of your error or because of what you were running or anything else; it's just a sudden attention shift. That is an ARC break.

CONTROL OF ATTENTION 10  When you don't handle attention fixation, you inevitably arrive with attention shift. When you have attention – sudden attention shift, you get an ARC break. This is getting awfully elementary, isn't it?

That is an ARC break. It's an attention shift. Unpredicted, unexpected attention shift.

Therefore, you flubbing an auditing command lays in a little, tiny ARC break, even though the pc says it isn't. We don't care what the pc says – must have been! Ah, but there's a much greater ARC break then laid in, when his attention is totally fixed upon trouble in the family and you are auditing Egyptian waterfalls.

Now, the ARC break is going to mount up and his confusion is going to get more and more and he's going to have to protest sooner or later and he protests in a version of an ARC break, but this ARC break turns up by you making a little bit of a flub. you notice that the pc is restive and it makes you restive and so you give some kind of a crossed up auditing command, and he takes exception to it and then you, knucklehead, start to cure up this particular flub. Oh, but that wasn't it. It isn't anything you have done in the session, except audit him with what you're auditing him with and therefore, it's almost impossible to cure it as an ARC break. “What have I done to you?

What have you done to me?” Well, it doesn't have anything to do with it. Because he hasn't really – isn't really thinking in terms of technical difficulties. And the technical difficulty is what he is objecting to but, he doesn't know it.

So of course – “What has he done to you?” “What has he withheld from you?” – this isn't going to do very much, don't you see. You'd have to run “you” on the Prehav Scale or something like that to get rid of this ARC break, because we have to get – practically get rid of you. Because we haven't remedied what the difficulty is and the difficulty is, is we've given his attention one hell of a yank and it's still halfway on – on the trouble in the family and we've got it halfway on trouble with waterwheels and he doesn't know which way is cooking.

Sound familiar to you? His attention is there, and it's there, and it's not there and it's not there, at the same time, don't you see. Now, you're going to run this as an ARC break because you flubbed auditing commands.

Well, it isn't because you flubbed auditing commands, it's because you gave him an attention shift – a sudden attention shift. And he doesn't know what's wrong and you don't find out and there we go. So therefore people with chronic, which is long duration, present time problems, or people with short duration present time problems, get ARC breaks in auditing sessions.

And they ARC break in auditing sessions to the degree and with the frequency that, they have attention fixations on problems which are not handled by the auditor. Seem real to you? Can you see this?

Can you see this? Is this very plain? All right.

Now, “willing to talk to the auditor” is the other one. Now of course, a pc with a heavy ARC break is not willing to talk to the auditor, but also a pc who does not want  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 11  the auditor to know something is unwilling to talk to the auditor. But when a pc has a withhold, something new is occurring.

The pc is sitting in the middle of the session, with a known where he is and an unknown where the auditor is and so the auditing session is a ridge. He's got a not – he's got a “know,” the auditor's got a “not-know” on the same subject. Now, in view of the fact that the pc's attention is fixated on this withhold, even at a lower level than – than analytical inspection, when we don't get it we're guilty of auditing a pc with an attention fix and it comes back to attention fixation.

So if we don't get off the withholds, we've got a pc with his attention fixed on something. Same thing, isn't it? Make more sense?

They had marvelous luck and everybody on the course over in Washington really learned to pull withholds and they made terrific case gains and everything was going along fine on – on – as far as this is concerned. They really learned to do Security Checking and so on; to that degree I'm very happy with them. But of course, they'd make case gains.

You can always make a case gain with a withhold. Fellow's attention is totally fixed on fireplaces where he burned the baby. you know, “Fireplace, fireplace, fireplace. Now I've got to have my attention fixed on this.” But it's a little bit of a complicated attention fix.

It's an out-fix with an in-pull. Which of course is guaranteed to anchor it. See.

He's got his attention fixed on it, but it mustn't get out and it must be a not-know everywhere else than where he is, you see. And you get what is known as guilt and it forms such a tremendous part of Catholic and Freudian mental therapy. Guilt, guilt complexes – oh, these are terribly important.

Well, what it is, is an attention fix. With the additional complication that it's got to stay fixed to pull it in, so it mustn't get out. See, it's just a little more complicated version of attention fix.

So you can't audit anybody with a big withhold. That's simple. So it breaks down to the fact that you try auditing somebody with a present time problem of short duration or a present time problem of long duration or a withhold and he's going to get ARC breaks and you're going to have trouble in the session and that is all there is to it.

And the session is not going to run right and it's going to go over the hills and far away and that's it. And I don't care whether the pc says it is all right, I don't care if the pc says he likes it, I don't care whether the pc says this is perfectly all right; he knows you're trying hard. The basic mechanic of the whole thing still holds and down underneath all of this “you're trying” and “it's all right,” and so forth, are the same forces of ARC break building up.

Those same forces are still building up. It doesn't matter what the pc says. This happens to be a mental mechanic which takes priority over all postulating and everything else on the part of the pc.

So it doesn't matter what the pc thinks about your ARC  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 12  breaks or your auditing. If this condition is there, the pc could think you were a wonderful auditor and make no progress. How fascinating.

Now, if you're very alert and you're very good at observation and you're very slippy, one way or the other, you notice the pc's wandering eye. I do. This accounts to a marked degree for my auditing gains and their consistency, is I see the pc sitting there and I see the pc looking into limbo as I ask this question or other and I want to know what the pc's looking at beneath the level of the eye socket.

Pc isn't there. I know it, so I find out where the pc is. It sometimes doesn't take more than a few comments and a few directions and something or other.

And his attention just slides very smoothly off of where it's anchored and it comes over just exactly where I want it to and from that moment on, why, we're in, man. We're running! You see?

And halfway through the session the pc's starting to go, you know, this way and that way and so forth. Let's find out where the devil he's gone to now. Got the idea?

He's gone somewhere. It's the goneness of the pc that you ought to be worrying about, because you want the pc here, you don't want him somewhere else that you don't know about. It's perfectly all right to have him elsewhere if you're putting his attention elsewhere.

That's perfectly all right. Put his attention all over the place, as long as he's paralleling the auditing with his attention, everything is going along fine and man, will he come out the other end – slick as a new- washed baby. But if his attention starts wandering over this way on the present time problem he had with Aunt Bertha – oh, you in trouble now!

You're in trouble. Because your auditing had nothing to do with anything that could ever reach Aunt Bertha. Now in running terminals, you will find – sometimes find this condition obtains and this is an interesting condition.

You're covering a long, long, long line of track with this particular terminal and the pc was present and the terminal was present, and the pc is seeing more than the terminal is seeing and there is more than that being embraced in the auditing command, so there's a lot of track stacking up that the pc isn't given any liberty to inspect, of any kind whatsoever; and that is why you run versions of Alternate Confront. Let's let him look at the rest of the track and get his attention off of it. And the reason we use Alternate Confront of a proper command – please, at the proper time.

You're trying to do it by E-Meters. Do it by the pc. Pc doesn't seem to be so interested just now in this particular terminal.

Well, his attention's gone someplace else, that's all. And what will put his attention right? Auditing will.

What auditing? Well, Alternate Confront's the best cure-all you know, when it – when his attention has done this on the long bank track, you see – on the long track, when his attention has gone skittering and scattering and so forth. You're running kings and he's gone galloping along the track and everything is fine and he's happy with you and he's cheerful and he's making gains and all of a sudden then his eagle eye  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 13  spots a queen; and you go on and ask some more questions about kings, and queen, queen, queen.

You say, “What's going on?” “Well, it's nothing” “Yeah, but what is? What is? What's – what have you been looking at there?” “Oh, well, man.

Aha, boy! You know there's one advantage to being a king. It's the very very fine variety of queens that you can corral.

Except sometimes.” And you say, “Well, what about this?” Well, there it is. Of course, I'm not above saying something on the order of “Well all right, what's this got to do with kings?” Not challengingly, but “What is – what does this have to do with kings?” “Oh, it's a pretty bad overt against a king if you steal his queen. Yeah.

Ha-ha, yeah, ha- ha. Yeah, yeah.” He's now back on the subject of kings. Because queens are now an overt against kings.

So he'll go on and run the auditing command. But you've spotted it and you've flicked his attention. Got the idea?

So you've kept him paralleling what you want him to do. Now, a cruder way to do it: “Oh, your attention's on queens, huh? All right.

Well, that's fine. Going to give you two more commands on kings and we'll end this process if that's all right with you. Okay.

What king have you eliminated? Thank you. What king have you eliminated?

Thank you. Very good. Anything you care to say before I end this process?

Okay. End of process. If it's all right with you, we're now going to run some Alternate Confront” – whatever version you have of Confront; just as long as it's track version and you say, “All right, look at the bank.

Thank you. Look at the bank. Thank you.

Look at the bank” – whatever it is. “Look at the bank. Thank you. Look at the bank.

Thank you.” And he says, “Hu-hu-hu-hu-hu!” And you say, “What was that?” “Oh,” he says, “these queens.” He says, “Yeah, ha-ha! Boy, that's really some way to get rid of a king, you know. Why, you cave him in, and break his heart and do this and that and so forth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We used to take them in the Roman arena, Roman parades, victory marches and that sort of thing. Why, we'd get the queen dagging along back of a chariot or something Like that, when we hadn't captured the king and so on.

I guess it was a sort of a dirty trick.” And you say, “Good. Fine. All right.

Look at the bank. Thank you. Look at the bank.

Now, if it's all right with you I'll give you two more commands of this and end this process. Okay. Look at the bank.

Thank you. Look at the bank. Thank you.

Anything you care to say before I end this process?” “No.”  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 14  “All right, fine. End of process. Okay, we're now going to run kings.

All right, what king have you eliminated? Thank you. What king have you eliminated?

Thank you.” you got the idea? All right. Distracting noises in an auditing room, of course, follow exactly this same pattern and you are a total knucklehead, if somebody drops a wastebasket down the hall and you don't immediately assume that something has happened with the pc.

Don't go into a big brace of protect-the-pc. Go into m immediate inquiry to find out what happened – assuming something did. All right.

There are two ways to handle it. This is relatively ineffectual rut is the usual way to handle it. “Did that noise out in the hall bother you?” All right, number one, that is a wasted question. We don't care whether it bothered him or didn't bother him; it sure shifted his attention.

Didn't it? Must have! To some slight degree.

So we say something on the order of “What were you thinking about when the noise happened?” This is a much more effective process. “What were you thinking about when the noise happened?” “Oh,” he says, “So-and-so.” Bzzt. And you say, “What were you thinking about when the noise happened?” He says, “So-and-so.” All right, you say, “That's good. All right.

What were you thinking about when the noise happened? What part of the auditing command were you answering when the noise happened?” “Oh, so-and-so and so-and-so,” you know. “Okay. All right.

How does that noise seem to you now?” No action on the meter; you say, “All right,” and without any kind of a – kind of a bridge you return to the process. You assume that it did something. You don't ask him if it did.

Your pc is not your oracle – knowing the mechanic of the thing. Those are rudiments and that's how she is cut. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

That's the way the cake carves and the way the balloon goes up. You are doing the oddity, as an auditor, of finding where the pc's attention is anchored and thereafter guiding the pc's attention and if the pc's attention isn't going where you want the pc's attention to go; you aren't auditing. So that anything gets in your road of guiding the pc's attention, you had better get rid of it.

Now, I'll lay down another statement. Don't call it a rule; it's just a statement. It's an accusative.

It's in the accusative tense. Anything that happens in an auditing session is the auditor's fault, even if the building burned down. But that isn't totally what I mean.

If anything goes wrong in the auditing session, it is never the pc's fault. It is never the pc's fault. Lack of gain on the part of the pc is not the pc's fault.

The pc will only do in a session what the auditor tells him to do or what the auditor doesn't tell him to do. And if the auditor doesn't tell him to take his cotton-picking attention  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 15  off of those gams in Georgia, in some gradient that is an acceptable gradient, of course the session will go wrong if the auditor wants the pc's attention on boats in Alaska. You have to take the pc's attention off of things in order to put the pc's attention on things.

Because you haven't yourself put the pc's attention on the things it is stuck on as he comes into the session, you are not quick to take responsibility for taking his attention off of those things. You see? That's what happens.

But if the pc has ARC breaks, if the pc doesn't make a win, if the pc doesn't get a goal – it's the auditor, man. It's nobody else and that's for a D of P or for anybody else. It's just the auditor and that's for you. you want to know what went wrong in the session?

Well, not from any part of the pc. Nothing went wrong from the pc's quarter. You did something wrong That's all.

Just as the pc must be at cause in his lifetime, because you can put him in an auditing chair and erase his whole life, he must have been at cause that whole life or you couldn't have just him there. You can erase the traumas he has had with his mama and his papa and his cousins and sisters and aunts and employer, without having his mama and his papa and his cousins and sisters and aunts and employer present in the auditing room. And if it was their fault and if they had any bearing on ordering his life about and ruining him, you actually realize that you would have to have them in the auditing room, in order to clear a pc.

Do you realize that? He'd have to scrape them up from all the way back the last couple hundred trillion years and bring them all together in one lot someplace in order to accomplish any kind of a case gain. Well, this is not true. you have one person there – the pc.

And isn't it miraculous that by shifting his mind this way and that, that he actually can get over this and that. Well, therefore he must be cause on the whole track, right? But in an auditing session, in an auditing session, there is another cause and that is the auditor and the great oddity is that auditing works.

Because it violates this other principle. For the first time, you are having an effect on a pc in violation of the fact that the pc is cause over all effects. Wrap your mind around that one, you really have learned a lot!

So this has to be terribly clever on your part. You've got to be very slippy, because you're being cause in a section of track, on the pc's track and that you can do it and get away with it is miraculous. That auditing can happen is utterly fantastic!

Now, the only way it can happen, of course, at all, is if he has some willingness to do what you want him to do. Because he has to do it, all you can So is. .. Basically, you can't force it into existence; you can suggest it into existence and he can take cause over it.

So his cause must still be there. But your direction of his cause must therefore be acceptable to him. Otherwise he is no longer cause over this section of track called an auditing session and if he  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 16  isn't cause over that section of track called an auditing session, of course he won't make any gain.

Well, how do we keep him cause on that section of track? We simply audit him exclusively with his attention on the auditing session, without his attention splintered up into this, that and everything else around in the environment on present time problems of short or long duration and the ARC breaks that resulted from your leaving his attention on it and also the withholds which he is keeping away from you and not communicating to you. Though all those things get in the road of this other thing, he must actually willingly follow your auditing directions.

And he must have a very clear view of what he is following, otherwise he isn't cause over that section of track. Well, if he isn't cause over that section of track, nothing is going to happen on that section of track and he's going to make no gain. This should be very plain to you.

You assume, probably wrongly, that the pc is delicate or that you can do something to bitch him up and so forth. Yeah, well, the only thing you can do to a pc is not give him a win and the only way you can do that is not by controlling his attention or having his attention there to be controlled. And the only way you can deprive him of a win is violate his attention factors.

And the only – only attention factor you can violate is having his attention on something else rather than the auditing command. And if you violate that you don't get any wins. You don't get any goals, you don't get any terminals, you don't get anything.

He sits there for two-and-a-half hours and that's it. Why? Well, because his attention wasn't on the auditing session.

Now, you can say auditing works, but auditing in the absence of the pc's attention isn't auditing, so no-auditing doesn't work. The pc's got to be there to be audited. How do you get the pc there to be audited?

Corral his attention. How do you corral his attention? Keep your rudiments in.

How do you keep the rudiments in? Well, you check them very carefully. It's not very hard. you make far too much out of this business of auditing; it's too easy. you know, you're always overreaching with the difficulties of the thing.

It's not that hard! All you had to do was have the person's cooperation. How do you get his cooperation?

Well, don't have his attention on something else while you're auditing him, that's all. All right, if his attention is going to be on a present time problem of long or short duration? Nah!

You haven't got his attention. Now, he'll tell you all sorts of things. There's all sorts of reasons and rationales.

He feels betrayed. He sat down there to get some auditing; what's auditing to him? How is he defining auditing as he sits down in the chair?

Well, it's to get over his headache, that's auditing! And he gives you a goal, he said, “Well, I'd like to get over my headache in this auditing session.”  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 17  And you don't even give him any hope, man! You just write down that and you write down a couple more goals and then you say, “Do you have a present time problem?” and then don't read the meter, and – and so forth.

And then you say, “Well, we're going to go on auditing kings.” Well, the pc just went that-a-way, you see! His attention is over that-away and your commands are over this-a-way and so an auditing situation doesn't exist, so no auditing is going to get done in that two and a half hours and that's all there is to it. And you're just plain lucky if you don't also have an ARC break and a this and a that and the other thing during that session.

Well now, what does it take, actually, to get his attention on this thing Well, there's several things you can do; you can just sit down and overtly handle the headache. Just – just start saying, “Well, who had a headache? Thank you. who had a headache?

Thank you. who had a headache?” or “What type of personnel has headaches? Thank you. What type of personnel has headaches?

Thank you. How could a – what – what type of person do you think would have that particular headache? In what kind of an environment?

Oh! Well, what don't you know about that picture? Thank you.

What don't you know about that picture? Thank you. What don't you know about that picture.

Thank you. What don't you know about that picture? Thank you.

What have you forgotten about the picture? Thank you. What have you forgotten about the picture?

Good. And what don't you not-know about – well, what shouldn't be known about that picture? Thank you very much.

What shouldn't be known about that picture?” And he says, “What picture?” And you say, “That picture.” And he says, “Oh, well, I can get it back.” And you say, “Well, how is it?” And he says, “Fine.” And you say, “Do you have a headache?” “No, I don't have a headache, that was pretty good!” And you say, “All right” and you go on with the rest of the rudiments. Well, boy, does he know he's being audited! Why?

You found his attention where it was and you moved it over to where you wanted it. Thud, bang! You see?

Now, I can tell you that as far as I'm concerned there are no missing weapons. If you can run an engram with Not-Know – if you can run an engram with Not-Know and Forget and so forth, and slippety-bam, without chewing all over on the thing... You find the terminal of some kind or another and you find this and that, and then you find this engram and the engram  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 18  shows up and you kick the engram in the head.

Not by taking up the personnel in the engram, but just taking up the picture of the engram, just taking up just exactly what it is, blowing the thing, moving it around on the track. Well, if you can do this, well, for heaven's sakes, you could handle any auditing fixation of attention that was coming up, don't you see. He'll say, “I have trouble with my family all the time.” “Well, how long have you had trouble with your family?” “I've had trouble with my family for years and years and years.” “When's the first time you had trouble with your family?

Okay, let's date it. Oh, all right, that's fine. That's fine.

Oh, they held you down, poured boiling water over you. Well, that's very interesting. Age of six.

Good. Got a picture?” “Oh, God,” he says, “I sure got a picture!” And you say, “Well, all right. Good.

All right. What did you do?” “Well, I kicked and screamed.” “What did you do?” “Well, I kicked and screamed.” This would be one way of doing it, see. “All right. What else happened around there?” “Oh, I don't know exactly.” “Well, good.

What don't you know about that picture? Thank you. What don't you know about that picture?

What don't you know about the incident? What don't you know about that – that thing? What you don't – what don't you know about it?

What happened that you could never figure out? Well, what don't you know about it? What have you forgotten about it?

What have the other people forgotten about it? What should they forget about it? Who'd be guilty if you forgot about it?” You know, boom-boom, play it on all sides from the middle.

All of a sudden, boom! It's gone. You say, “All right, that's dandy.

Now, now let's move into high gear here and let's take a look at this trouble with your family. Now, what – what do you think about trouble with your family?” “Well, I have trouble with my family.” “What trouble do you have with your family?” “Well, I have all sorts of trouble with my family – or I did have. I did have a lot of trouble with my family.

Yeah, I can see how that hooks up. Matter of fact, I would keep telling them all the time, you know, I keep telling them you're always getting me in hot water! Yeah, well, what do you know about that!”  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 19  “Well, now how do you feel about trouble with your family right now?” “Well, I'm not worried about trouble with the family.” “All right.

Well, that's all right. How do you feel about trouble with the family?” Cranked up E-Meter, see. “Oh, you're still having a little more trouble. What family is that?” “Oh, well, that's my own family!

You know, I've always had my own family. You know, uh, my – my – my wife and children, all mixed up with my own. Hey!

You know, they're different!” You say, “Well – well, what trouble are you having with the family?” “Well, I'm not having any trouble with the family.” You say, “All right. Now do you think we can get down to session here?” Bang! Here we go on the session.

You got the idea? You're in the business of handling people's attention. And that consists of finding out where it's fixed and putting it where you want it.

Got it? And gradually they came out of the woods and they find out they can put their attention anyplace they want to put it and there we go and we're on our way. That's about all there is to it.

And you get out of this rudiments and you get assessments, and you get Terminal Assessments and you get all sorts of odds and ends, and running on the Prehav Scale. Oh, these are just methods of fixing and unfixing attention and that's about all there is to it in auditing. But every time you violate auditing a pc, thinking his attention should be over here on spot X, when his attention is actually on spot A and you have assumed that his attention is on spot X without examining to find out whether or not it's on spot A, you of course get all the evils of a session.

First of them is no progress, next of them is ARC breaks, next of them is no trust in the – in the auditor. You get all of these things, one right after the other as you come right on up the line. They all arise from this one cause and from no other causes.

Follow me? Now, knowing this, knowing this, you then can say vividly that anything that happens in an auditing session is the auditor's fault. Anything bad that happens in the session must be the auditor's fault.

Why? He didn't find out where the pc's attention was fixed and didn't get it over onto something else. Now,I'll tell you something else.

The earliest method of clearing, 1947, 48, 49, was permissive; highly, highly, highly permissive. It was very delicate. You – it amounts to this repetitive auditing command: “What picture would it be safe for you to look at?” You know why it failed?

You know why it wasn't being done and why no clearing was occurring by 1950? Although my Clears were not all that good, they were not bad. But do you know why in 1950 it suddenly blew up?

Because I hadn't isolated this attention principle. I hadn't isolated  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 20  this attention principle so that I could articulate it to an auditor. And it has taken roughly eleven years to be able to articulate this very thing and I've seen it occurring now and I've just had a little example of – the old style of clearing accidentally got entered into, in a session and then the auditor violated the thing and I suddenly realized that all the old violations only ever summed up in just that one thing.

They kept giving him something to look at and the rule was that you couldn't give him anything to look at that was outside of his environment. You could give him something to look at that was in his environment, but you couldn't go any further than that. you know, you could get the picture of the last five seconds or something that's real safe and so forth. The auditing command which accomplished that clearing is “What picture would it be safe for you to look at?

Good. Look at it.” See, that kind of an approach. And the violation was – the violation was – and why that type of clearing worked, is everybody insisted on dictating what picture it was.

Now, “the engram necessary to resolve the case” was perfectly valid. Of course, that's where his attention's fixed so you run it as a picture. But in tremendous numbers of cases we were running people who were not finding pictures safe to look at, and so couldn't look at the engram necessary to resolve the case and that was it and there blew up clearing in 1950.

But you could today take somebody, have them sit down and say, “What picture would be safe for you to look at? All right. Now look at it.” He'd get it.

And you'd say, “Good. Now what picture would it be safe for you to look at? Good.

Look at it.” Just practically nothing else but that, he'd wind up at the other end. Long route! Now I had a lot of little speedups that I used to use. “What sound would it be safe for you to hear?

What sound could I make?” See, this is the violation of “we mustn't give them something out of the immediate environment,” you see. “What sound could I make that it would be safe for you to hear? Or what sound could you make that it would be safe for you to hear?” And the fellow says, “Swwwttt! Yeah, that'd be safe.

Swwwtt! Swwwtt! That'd be safe.” And you say, “Good.

Make the sound.” “Swwwtt!” And you'd say, “Now, close your eyes. Now, do you get a picture of the room? Good.

Now, can you hear the sound again?” “Oh, that's what you want me to do. All right. No, I can't.” “Well, let's try it.

Let's try some sound or another of some character and Let's fish around until you can finally hear the sound again.” And you just went down the line of all the perceptics, don't you see and you just educated him in with terribly tiny gradients. You'll find most people that don't get pictures are just stuck right up here in present time. They must, mustn't, mustn't go into that area, you know, mustn't, mustn't, mustn't, mustn't, mustn't, mustn't, mustn't, mustn't go into the area.

CONTROL OF ATTENTION 21  Mustn't, mustn't slide back, mustn't slide back. “No, no, I don't have any pictures. Ha-ha- haha. No, no, I haven't any pictures.

Don't get any pictures as a matter of fact, I don't see anything. Ha-ha-ha-ha,” so on. That's because one tiptoe down the track, you see, lies the battlefield.

But you can actually get them to look at these little pictures and look at facsimiles and what's it safe to look at and what's it safe to feel, what's it safe to hear. Just go on down the line, turn on all the perceptions one after the other. “What picture would it be safe to look at now. Good.

Look at it,” so an. It goes down the line, down the line, all of a sudden he's looking at an engram, you know. Not sure he likes that. “All right, that's fine.

What part of that would be safe to look at?” “The headsman, he'd be safe to look at. You've got to look at him, as a matter of fact. you can't do anything else! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” And you'd say, “Good, good, good.

What would be safe to look at?” Just creep through the thing, you know, the slow freight through Arkansas. You lick one engram, he's got the next one licked – already half-licked. Next thing you know you've accustomed him to his bank and familiarized himself with his bank.

And the reason clearing occurs is because this other attention problem therefore, unbeknownst, you see, didn't materialize. Why? The permissive approach always found where his attention was stuck.

The guy's worried about the parking meter. You said, “What picture would be safe for you to look at?” Well, the parking meter would be the picture he would get. you see? That is not a very good nor a very fast method of clearing, but it mustn't be lost sight of as a method of clearing.

Very gradient, very gentle, very patient with a pc, never giving him a lose, trying to give him wins all the way along the line. And it takes a gentle kind of auditing which is – and a very smooth type of auditing, which is almost impossible to teach, but it works. It works, just as such.

Now, you work auditing today, you say, well – much faster. You say, “Where's your attention fixed, bud?” You're running rudiments really, but you're really saying, “Where's your attention fixed?” and “What don't you want me to talk to you about?” which is “Where your attention is fixed?” All right, we know we got your attention all squared up and it's taken us three sessions to get the attention all corralled. We got present time problems of long duration.

We found a terminal. We found a long terminals list that had to do with the sore shoulders, don't you see and we got that worked out, and we ran that. And all of a sudden his sore shoulder went away on the Terminals Assessment, don't you see and we handled his long-duration present time problem.

And we found there were three more long-duration present time problems. We found terminals that were likely to have those long-duration present time problems. We found one of those terminals stuck a bit more than the others, so we ran that on the Prehav Scale, you know.

We  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 22  did a Prehav Assessment. We ran that a bit and we found out this was all straightening out and the fellow knows he's making progress. His confidence is rising.

Why? You're corralling his attention. And they gradually get all of his present time problems of long duration, making sure that we handle the present time problems of short duration in the session.

We make sure that he doesn't get ARC breaks and his attention gets stuck here and there. Keep the rudiments in, in other words, all the way along the line. Next thing you know, why, we've got a guy that when we get him rolling on assessments and that sort of thing, it is just bang!

You know? It's just nothing to it. We've coaxed the pc into a total sessioning.

If you take that kind of approach you can't lose! The only sin – the only sin that might be – is that you get into a bit of a games condition with the pc over the subject of goals and terminals. He's not going to have a body and he's not going to have a goal.

And you get into this kind of a games condition with him. Well, already you must have lost control of the pc to get into that kind of games condition. I told you early in this lecture that I thought of tailoring up some processes to handle this games condition.

That isn't necessary. The moment that you find out, you actually can find where the person's attention is fixed and handle that attention and get it over to where you want it, your idea of games with this pc goes because you've got the game now, man! And you feel pretty hot about being able to do something like that.

And if something goes wrong, don't chalk it up – don't chalk it up that you didn't hold your little pinky just right on the edge of the E-Meter. That isn't the reason the session went awry. Session went awry because you missed, somewhere on attention.

You just missed somewhere on the attention factors. The attention factors went awry. Either you really were auditing this fellow with a present time problem, otherwise he wouldn't have gotten an ARC break, or something went astray here that you missed.

And now that you've got a certainty onto what you missed, you're not in a – in a fog as to what will cause this sort of thing. So auditing becomes a much more certain activity to you. Try this sometime, if you don't believe what I say here; I mean if you have – if you want to get a good – you believe it all right, but if you get a subjective reality on it is what I meant to say.

Pc says, “Now, yow, yow, ARC break.” You say at once, “What was your present time problem?” See? This is not smooth, you know. The smoothest way is to say “Well, yes, I heard that.

Yeah, I'm sorry.” And then slide over and then look and get the rudiments in, you see. But just – just for the hell of it, sometime or another, in the very near future, pc gets an ARC break, ask him – don't even mention the ARC break – say, “What was the present time problem?” He'll give you an answer, just like that! Just automatically, right on the tip of his tongue.

CONTROL OF ATTENTION 23  “Well, I came into this session – I came into this session because I had a pain in my chest. That's – well, I – I needed auditing today. I had a pain in my chest.” That's the first you've heard of it.

So you see, you must have missed. Must have missed. Either you weren't looking at the E-Meter, or you didn't have the sensitivity up or something was there or your questions weren't searching enough or you weren't suspicious enough about this thing.

And basically it starts with your eagle eye didn't notice there was something different about this pc today, that he seemed to have a sort of a wandering eye, you know. Sat down and you say, “All right. Is it all right with you if I begin this session now?” And pc says, “Yes.” And you say, “All right.

Start of session.” And, “Session started for you?” And the pc says, “No. Not really.” Oh well, hell, that's enough, man! What's it just told you?

It's told you an encyclopediaful. Promptly and immediately, you've been told, the pc has a present time problem because his attention is stuck elsewhere. All right.

So you say, “What goals would you like to set for this session?” And he says, “Well I'd like to get this pain in my chest fixed up and I'd like to get this and I'd like to get that and like something or other and something or other and something or other.” And then if you were to say after these two indicators, “Do you have a present time problem?” – of course you say that, formally – and don't notice any fall, oh, wow! Is your E- Meter busted? What is the question you should ask at that moment?

Because you've already been told twice he has a present time problem. Didn't get into session easily so his attention must be someplace. Gave you a type of present time problem of long duration – pain in his chest.

Told you these two things. Now you're going to run something else? You haven't a prayer of running anything else.

Not a prayer! You've got to do attentionwrangling. So mount ol' Paint and go out and round up the attention units.

For a long time we said well we didn't handle chronic somatics. Basically we didn't handle chronic somatics because there was no process by which you could rapidly handle a chronic somatic. Well, that was then; this is now.

You've got processes that sure handle chronic somatics, man! You just – just get a terminals list on the chronic somatic and you normally would have handled it. Just as idiotically as that.

Just get a terminals list. Takes you maybe two hours to get a terminals list utterly complete on the thing because, boy, is this . . . The fellow's got something that the medicos, you know – the medicos oil up their secretaries to write bills for hours.

You know, it's that serious a disease and so on, you know. CONTROL OF ATTENTION 24  There'd be – between times of making out the bills, why they actually do batteries of clinical tests, you know and move him from hospital to hospital and specialist to specialist, you know. He's got cancer of the lumbosis compounded with felony!

And you say, “Well, that's just too much for me!” No, that isn't too much for you. Because he couldn't have it. He's a thetan.

In the first place, it takes a valence to get that complicated a mishmash of sensation. Well, if it takes a valence to get that much mishmash of sensation, he's obviously in a valence, so obviously just a Terminals Assessment on chronic lumbosis of the cancer with a felony would be absolutely adequate. You'll find people with that exact sickness back on the track.

And you'll find him knocking their heads in, too. And you take these people in leper colonies. So they've got leprosy.

If you were to say, “All right. Give me an – . Who had leprosy?

What sort of a person would have leprosy? Oh, this sort of a person. All right.

And how would you describe that person?” You write it down. “What other person would have leprosy? and leprosy and leprosy.” And you'd find probably Gomez sitting amongst them. You see, ol' Gomez was a very thorough – he was what's known as a – they have antibiotics, but he was an antileprotic. And Gomez, as dictator of Venezuela, decided he was tired of leprosy in Venezuela, so he hired two riverboats and he told all the lepers in the country that they were going to be moved down the river to a wonderful paradise and going to be given huge grants of land.

And he had everything up around and they all walked aboard singing hymns and hallelujah and he got every cockeyed leper – anybody who had even had a white spot on him, you know – he got them all out in the middle of the river, in these two riverboats and then the boys on the bank pushed the plunger on the dynamite. That was the end of leprosy in Venezuela, but I hesitate to say that it was the end of it for Gomez. He's real cute.

Now, there's a man with a nice package of psychosomatics. He used to take anybody he suspected that was being against his regime and hang them up by their genitals from hooks, which I consider one of the worst activities. He not only did that, but he would hang them up in dungeons below water – at – below tide level so that the water would seep in, trickle by trickle by trickle by trickle, you see.

Man, that guy's going to have chronic somatics! He was a boy! He was a boy!

Anyway, you was – just start getting things like that – you're running a guy like that, you see – and all of a sudden, why, he doesn't know what it has to do with lepers but boats. “I'm just a spectator here,” he'd say, “I'm on the bank and seems to be a couple of boats blowing up out there. Nothing to do with me. Well, anyway, let's get back to the session.” And you say, “Well, he said it had nothing to do with him, so we won't pay too much attention to it, and we'll go on here a little bit further,” and so on.

You don't even bother to ask  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 25  him if he's got another picture now. And all of a sudden you notice this wander in his eye, you know. If you then woke up to a point of asking him what he was doing, “Well, it's these boats.” “Well, what about those boats?” “Well, I just – they – just seem to be stuck.

And that's funny because, you see, I was just – just a spectator, here on the river. I can see – I'm a – I'm an Indian, you know. I mean a low-caste person that wouldn't have anything whatsoever to do with blowing up boats.

And there are these boats blowing up out there. Isn't that peculiar? And it just seems to worry me, somehow.

I don't know why, but it just seems to.” Well, of course, you – about that time you should cut loose with something like Forget and Not-Know and so on and irresponsibility flies off and he says, “Oh, God! Yeah, that's what I did. Well, I think it was a good thing to do.” And he goes through all of the ramifications of the thing and all of a sudden the thing blows.

And couple of days later the doctors come by to slop oil on him and they say, “What happened to you?” you know. Well, he's had a miracle cure. He's had a miracle cure.

Well, you get the idea? You get the idea? Well now, we couldn't handle chronic somatics rapidly in the middle fifties, so you had a lot of stuff out about “don't handle them.” Well of course every time an auditor handled them, he'd foul up one way or the other, so we'd say don't handle them.

All right, well, that's changed. That's changed. You're making Clears.

You're making high progress and you have things that can handle them and do handle them. This time you got a good subjective reality on doing so. Because I tell you, you're not going to run somebody with a hidden standard, which is always a present time problem of long duration.

A hidden standard is always a present time problem of long duration. You say, “What would have to happen for you to know that auditing was working?” He'd say, “Well, the top of my head would have to stop going up and down, up and down. And when it stops I know auditing is working and when it doesn't stop then I know auditing isn't, you see and that's the way it's – auditing is working.” You say, “How long have you had the top of your head going up and down?” “Well, ever since I was a little boy I can remember the top of my head going up and down.” You say, “Well, that's dandy.

Whose top of whose head went up and down?” And you start making a terminals list, you get some pictures, you shake it out, you handle it by terminals, you handle it by pictures and you've got it made. Now, your case is going to make some progress. Why?

Well, although his doesn't appear so, actually every time he sits down in a chair in a conversation, much less session, he knows the conversation's going well because the top of his head isn't going up and down. He  CONTROL OF ATTENTION 26  knows the conversation's going badly because the top of his head is. He knows he should make the deal because the top of his head is going not going up and down, don't you see.

He'll use it as all kinds of barometers. He knows who's going to win the election, because when he hears the name McMillian the top of his head doesn't go up and down. These things are fantastic, you know?

And you go researching into them, you find out what the score is on it. All right, well, I've given you a Friday lecture, but it is very much to the point. You can plow right on and now I'll give you the rest of it, which is simply this: that if you have not now found the goal in the first fifty to a hundred and fifty goals or you've not found the terminal in the first thirty or forty terminals given to you by the pc, then you are auditing somebody who has rudiments out, by which I mean: Present time problem of short duration?

Probably not. Present time problem of long duration? Indubitably so!

And you will have to handle it before that case makes another single budge forward. He's not in any kind of case to be audited at all. You'd have have to come down on him with a terrible crash to get anything even vaguely resembling a stable attention on goals, when his whole goal is to keep the top of his head from going up and down, only he hasn't mentioned it to you on the goals list.

And you haven't been searching enough to ask for it. you got it? So when you get rudiments in, get them in with a crash, and when rudiments turn up that you've got a present time problem of long duration staring you in the teeth, well, for heaven's sakes, sail into it, man. You've got the weapons, you've got the tools, you've got the armor plate – well, let's go!

Okay? All right. Now do you feel terribly crushed and abashed because I've been talking to you so accusatively?

It's all right then? You'll still be able to sleep over the weekend? All right.

Well, that's okay, but don't sleep over your preclears! Thank you very much!

[[Category:Lectures]]
[[Category:Lectures SHSBC]]
[[Category:Lectures 1961]]