View source for Dianetics 55! 1955 Chapter 7

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== Chapter 7: Communication ==
Communication is so thoroughly important today in Dianetics and Scientology, as it always has been on the whole track, that it could be said that if you would get a preclear into communication you would get him well. This factor is not new in psychotherapy, but concentration upon it is new, and interpretation of ability as communication is entirely new.

If you were to be in thorough and complete communication with a car on a road, you would certainly have no difficulty driving that car. But if you were in only partial communication with the car and in no communication with the road, it is fairly certain that an accident would occur. Most accidents do occur when the driver is distracted by an argument he has had, or by an arrest, or by a cross alongside of the road that says where some motorists got killed, or by his own fears of accidents.

When we say that somebody should be in present time we mean he should be in communication with his environment. We mean, further, that he should be in communication with his environment as it exists, not as it existed. And when we speak of prediction we mean that he should be in communication with his environment as it will exist, as well as as it exists.

If communication is so important, what is communication? It is best expressed as its formula, which has been isolated, and by use of which a great many interesting results can be brought about in ability changes.

There are two kinds of communication, both depending upon the viewpoint assumed. There is outflowing communication and inflowing communication. A person who is talking to somebody else is communicating to that person (we trust), and the person being talked to is receiving communication from that person. Now, as the conversation changes, we find that the person who has been talked to is now doing the talking, and is talking to the first person, who is now receiving communication from him.

A conversation is the process of alternating outflowing and inflowing communication, and right here exists the oddity which makes aberration and entrapment. There is a basic rule here: He who would outflow must inflow – he who would inflow must outflow. When we find this rule overbalanced in either direction we discover difficulty. A person who is only outflowing communication is actually not communicating at all in the fullest sense of the word, for in order to communicate entirely he would have to inflow as well as outflow. A person who is inflowing communication entirely is again out of order, for if he would inflow he must then outflow. Any and all objections anyone has to social and human relationships is to be found basically in this rule of communication, where it is disobeyed. Anyone who is talking, if he is not in a compulsive or obsessive state of beingness, is dismayed when he does not get answers. Similarly, anyone who is being talked to is dismayed when he is not given an opportunity to give his reply.

Even hypnotism can be understood by this rule of communication. Hypnotism is a continuing inflow without an opportunity on the part of the subject to outflow. This is carried on to such a degree in hypnotism that the individual is actually trapped in the spot where he is being hypnotized, and will remain trapped in that spot to some degree from there on. Thus, one might go so far as to say that a bullet’s arrival is a heavy sort of hypnotism. The individual receiving a bullet does not outflow a bullet, and thus he is injured. If he could outflow a bullet immediately after receiving a bullet, we could introduce the interesting question, „Would he be wounded?“ According to our rules he would not be. Indeed, if he were in perfect communication with his environment he could not even receive a bullet injuriously, but let us look at this from a highly practical viewpoint.

As we look at two life units in communication we can label one of them „a“ and the other one of them „b.“ In a good state of communication „a“ would outflow and „b“ would receive, then „b“ would outflow and „a“ would receive. Then „a“ would outflow and „b“ would receive. In each case both „a“ and „b“ would know that the communication was being received and would know what and where was the source of the communication.

All right, we have „a“ and „b“ facing each other in a communication. „A“ outflows. His message goes across a distance to „b“ who inflows. In this phase of the communication „a“ is Cause, „b“ is Effect, and the intervening space we term the Distance. It is noteworthy that „a“ and „b“ are both life units. A true communication is between two life units, it is not between two objects, or from one object to one life unit: „a,“ a life unit, is Cause, the intervening space is Distance, „b,“ a life unit, is Effect. Now a completion of this communication changes the roles. Replied to, „a“ is now the Effect, and „b“ is the Cause. Thus we have a cycle which completes a true communication. The cycle is Cause, Distance, Effect, with Effect then becoming Cause and communicating across a Distance to the original source, which is now Effect, and this we call a two-way communication.

As we examine this further we find out that there are other factors involved. There is „a’s“ intention. This, at „b“ becomes attention, and for a true communication to take place, a duplication at „b“ must take place of what emanated from „a.“ „A“ of course, to emanate a communication, must have given attention to „b,“ and „b“ must have given to this communication some intention, at least to listen or receive, so we have both Cause and Effect having intention and attention.

Now there is another factor which is very important. This is the factor of duplication. We could express this as Reality, or we could express it as Agreement. The degree of Agreement reached between „a“ and „b“ in this communication cycle becomes their Reality, and this is accomplished mechanically by Duplication. In other words, the degree of Reality reached in this communication cycle depends upon the amount of duplication. „B,“ as Effect, must to some degree duplicate what emanated from „a,“ now as Effect, in order for the first part of the cycle to take effect, and then „a,“ now as Effect, must duplicate what emanated from „b“ for the communication to be concluded. If this is done there is no aberrative consequence. If this duplication does not take place at „b“ and then at „a“ we get what amounts to an unfinished cycle of action. If, for instance, „b“ did not vaguely duplicate what emanated from „a“ the first part of the cycle of communication was not achieved, and a great deal of randomity, argument, explanation, might result. Then if „a“ did not duplicate what emanated from „b“ when „b“ was cause on the second cycle, again an uncompleted cycle of communication occurred with consequent unreality. Now naturally, if we cut down Reality, we will cut down Affinity, so where duplication is absent Affinity is seen to drop. A complete cycle of communication will result in high Affinity and will, in effect, erase itself. If we disarrange any of these factors we get an incomplete cycle on communication and we have either „a“ or „b“ or both waiting for the end of cycle. In such a wise the communication becomes aberrative.

The word „aberrate“ means to make something diverge from a straight line. The word comes basically from optics. Aberration is simply something which does not contain straight lines. A confusion is a bundle of crooked lines. A mass is no more and no less than a confusion of mis-managed communication. The energy masses and deposits, the facsimiles and engrams surrounding the preclear are no more and no less than unfinished cycles of communication which yet wait for their proper answer at „a“ and „b.“

An unfinished cycle of communication generates what might be called „answer hunger.“ An individual who is waiting for a signal that his communication has been received is prone to accept any inflow. When an individual has, for a very long period of time, consistently waited for answers which did not arrive, any sort of answer from anywhere will be pulled in to him, by him, as an effort to remedy his scarcity of answers. Thus he will throw engramic phrases in the bank into action and operation against himself.

Uncompleted cycles of communication bring about a scarcity of answers. It does not much matter what the answers were or would be as long as they vaguely approximate the subject at hand. It does matter when some entirely unlooked for answer is given, as in compulsive or obsessive communication, or when no answer is given at all.

Communication itself is aberrative only when the emanating communication at Cause was sudden and nonsequitur to the environment. Here we have violation of attention and intention.

The factor of interest also enters here but is far less important, at least from the standpoint of the auditor. Nevertheless it explains a great deal about human behavior, and explains considerable about circuits. „A“ has the intention of interesting „b.“ „B,“ to be talked to, becomes interesting. Similarly „b,“ when he emanates a communication, is interested and „a“ is interesting. Here we have, as pad of the communication formula (but as I said, a less important pad) a continuous shift from being interested to being interesting on the part of either of the terminals, „a“ or „b.“ Cause is interested, Effect is interesting.

Of some greater importance is the fact that the intention to be received, on the part of „a“ places upon „a“ the necessity of being duplicatable. If „a“ cannot be duplicatable in any degree, then, of course, his communication will not be received at „b,“ for „b,“ unable to duplicate „a,“ cannot receive the communication. As an example of this, „a,“ let us say, speaks in Chinese, where „b“ can understand only French. It is necessary for „a“ to make himself duplicatable by speaking French to „b“ who only understands French. In a case where „a“ speaks one language, and „b“ another, and they have no language in common, we have the factor of mimicry possible and a communication can yet take place. „A,“ supposing he has a hand, could raise his hand. „B,“ supposing he had one, could raise his hand. Then „b“ could raise his other hand, and „a“ could raise his other hand, and we would have completed a cycle of communication by mimicry. Communication by mimicry could also be called communication in terms of mass.

We see that Reality is the degree of duplication between Cause and Effect. Affinity is monitored by intention and the particle sizes involved, as well as the distance. The greatest Affinity there is for anything is to occupy its same space. As the distance widens Affinity drops. Further, as the amount of mass or energy particles increases, so again does Affinity drop. Further, as the velocity departs from what „a“ and „b“ have considered optimum velocity – either greater or lesser velocity than what they consider to be the proper velocity – Affinity drops.

There is another fine point about communication, and that is expectancy.

Basically, all things are considerations. We consider that things are, and so they are. The idea is always senior to the mechanics of energy, space, time, mass. It would be possible to have entirely different ideas about communication than these. However, these happen to be the ideas of communication which are in common in this universe, and which are utilized by the life units of this universe. Here we have the basic agreement upon the subject of communication in the communication formula as given here. Because ideas are senior to this, a thetan can get, in addition to the communication formula, a peculiar idea concerning just exactly how communication should be conducted, and if this is not generally agreed upon, can find himself definitely out of communication. Let us take the example of a modernistic writer who insists that the first three letters of every word should be dropped, or that no sentence should be finished, or that the description of characters should be held to a cubist rendition. He will not attain agreement amongst his readers and so will become to some degree an „only one.“ There is a continuous action of natural selection, one might say, which weeds out strange or peculiar communication ideas. People, to be in communication, adhere to the basic rules as given here, and when anyone tries to depart too widely from these rules, they simply do not duplicate him and so, in effect, he goes out of communication.

We have seen an entire race of philosophers go out of existence since 1790. We have seen philosophy become a very unimportant subject, where once it was a very common coin amongst the people. The philosophers themselves put themselves out of communication with the people by insisting upon using words of special definitions which could not be assimilated with readiness by persons in general. The currency of philosophy could not be duplicated readily by those with relatively limited vocabularies. Take such jaw-cracking words as „telekinesis.“ While it probably means something very interesting and very vital, if you will think back carefully no taxi-driver mentioned this word to you while you were paying your fare, or even during the more verbose moments of the ride. Probably the basic trouble with philosophy was that it became Germanic in its grammar, an example set by Immanuel Kant. And if you will recall that wonderful story by Saki, a man was once trampled to death while trying to teach an elephant German irregular verbs. Philosophy shed some of its responsibility for a cycle of communication by rendering itself unduplicatable by its readers. It is the responsibility of anyone who would communicate that he speak with such vocabulary as can be understood. Thus philosophy could not even begin for some hundred and fifty years a sound cycle of communication, and thus is dead.

Now let us take up the individual who has become very „experienced“ in life. This individual has a time-track in particular. This time-track is his own time-track, it isn’t anyone else’s time-track. The basic individualities amongst men are based upon the fact that they have different things happen to them and that they view these different things from different points of view. Thus we have individualization and we have individual opinion, consideration and experience. Two men walking down the street witness an accident. Each one of them sees the accident from at least a slightly different point of view. Consulting twelve different witnesses to the same accident, we are likely to find twelve different accidents. Completely aside from the fact that witnesses like to tell you what they think they saw instead of what they saw, there were actually twelve different points from which the accident was viewed, and so twelve different aspects of the occurrences. If these twelve were brought together, and if they were to communicate amongst themselves about this accident, they would then reach a point of agreement on what actually happened. This might not have been the accident, but it certainly is the agreed-upon accident, which then becomes the real accident. This is the way juries conduct themselves. They might or might not be passing upon the real crime, but they are certainly passing upon the agreed- upon crime.

In any war it takes two or three days for enough agreement to occur to know what took place in a battle. Whereas there might have been a real battle, a real sequence of incidents and occurrences, the fact that every man in the battle saw the battle from his own particular point of view, by which we mean severely „point from which he was looking,“ rather than his opinions – no one saw the battle in its entirety. Thus, time must intervene for enough communication on the subject of the battle to take place so that all have some semblance of agreement on what occurred. Of course, when the historians get to this battle and start writing different accounts of it, out of the memoirs of generals who were trying to explain away their defeats, we get a highly distorted account indeed. And yet this becomes the agreed-upon battle, as far as history is concerned. Reading the historians one realizes that one will never really know what took place at Waterloo, at Bennington, at Marathon. In that we can consider as a communication one soldier shooting at another soldier, we see that we are studying communications about communication. This scholarly activity is all very nice, but does not carry us very far towards the resolution of human problems.

We have seen these two words „Cause“ and „Effect“ playing a prominent role in the communication formula. We have seen that First Cause became at the end of the cycle Last Effect. Furthermore, at the intermediate point, First Effect immediately changed to Cause in order to have a good communication cycle. What, then, do we mean by „Cause“? Cause is simply the point of emanation of the communication. What is „Effect“? Effect is the receipt point of the communication. In that we are only interested in life units, we see that we can readily ascertain cause at any time. We are not interested in secondary or tertiary Cause. We are not interested in assisting causes in any way. We are not interested in secondary or tertiary effects. We are not interested in assisting effects in any way. We consider any time that we look at a source point of a communication that we are looking at Cause. In that the entire track is composed of this pattern of Cause and Effect, an individual is very prone, whenever he sees a possible cause point, to look for an earlier cause point, and then an earlier one, and an earlier one, and an earlier one, and after a while takes to reading the Bible, which is very hard on the eyesight.

In view of the fact that all Cause is simply elected cause, and all Effect is simply elected effect, and that the primary echelon is the idea level of communication, that is Cause which we elect to be Cause, that is Effect which elects to be Effect, and there is no more that can be said about it. Cause in our dictionary here means only „source point.“ Effect means only „receipt point.“

We notice that the receipt point, midway in the cycle of communication, shifts and becomes source point. We could classify this shift in the center of the cycle of communication in some other fashion, but it is not necessary to do so. We would be getting too complicated for our purposes.

Now we come to the problem of what a life unit must be willing to experience in order to communicate. In the first place the primary cause point must be willing to be duplicatable. It must be able to give at least some attention to the receipt point. The primary receipt point must be willing to duplicate, must be willing to receive, and must be willing to change into a source point in order to send the communication, or an answer to it, back. And the primary source point in its turn must be willing to be a receipt point. As we are dealing basically with ideas and not mechanics, we see then that a state of mind must exist between a cause and effect point whereby each one is willing to be Cause or Effect at will, and is willing to duplicate at will, is willing to be duplicatable at will, is willing to change at will, is willing to experience the distance between, and, in short, willing to communicate. Where we get these conditions in an individual or a group we have sane people.

Where an unwillingness to send or receive communications occurs, where people obsessively or compulsively send communications without direction and without trying to be duplicatable, where individuals in receipt of communications stand silent and do not acknowledge or reply, we have aberrative factors. And it is very interesting to note from the standpoint of processing, that we have all the aberrative factors there are. We do not need to know anything further about aberration than that it is a disarrangement of the cycle of communication. But to know that, of course, we have to know the component parts of communication and the expected behavior.

Some of the conditions which can occur in an aberrated line are a failure to be duplicatable before one emanates a communication, an intention contrary to being received, an unwillingness to receive or duplicate a communication, an unwillingness to experience distance, an unwillingness to change, an unwillingness to give attention, an unwillingness to express intention, an unwillingness to acknowledge, and, in general, an unwillingness to duplicate. We might go so far as to say that the reason communication takes place instead of occupying the same space and knowing – the communication introduces the idea of distance – is that one is unwilling to BE to the degree necessary to be anything. One would rather communicate than be. Thus we find that the inability to communicate is a gradient scale – it goes down along with the inability to be. We get individuals winding up as only willing to be themselves, whatever that is, and thus becoming „the only one.“ To the degree that a person becomes „the only one“ he is unwilling to communicate on the remaining dynamics. An individual who has become only himself is in the sad and sorry plight of being off the Second, Third, and Fourth Dynamics, at least.

It might be seen by someone that the solution to communication is not communicating. One might say that if he hadn’t communicated in the first place he wouldn’t be in trouble now. Perhaps there is some truth in this, but there is more truth in the fact that processing in the direction of making communication unnecessary, or reducing communication, is not processing at all, but murder. A man is as dead as he can’t communicate. He is as alive as he can communicate. With countless tests in the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International department of writing and investigation, I have discovered to a degree which could be called conclusive, that the only remedy for livingness is further communicatingness. One must add to his ability to communicate.

Probably the only major error which exists in Eastern Philosophy, and probably the one at which I balked when I was young, was this idea that one should withdraw from life. It seemed to me that every good friend I had amongst the priests and holy men was seeking to pull back and cut off his communications with existence. Whatever the textbooks of Eastern philosophy may say, this was the practice of the people who were best conversant with Eastern mental and spiritual know-how. Thus I saw individuals taking fourteen or eighteen years in order to get up to a high level of spiritualistic serenity. I saw a great many men studying and very few arriving. To my impatient and possibly practical Western viewpoint this was intolerable. For a very great many years I asked this question, „To communicate, or not to communicate?“ If one got himself into such thorough trouble by communicating, then, of course, one should stop communicating. But this is not the case. If one gets himself into trouble by communicating, he should further communicate. More communication, not less, is the answer, and I consider this riddle solved after a quarter-century of investigation and pondering.