View source for Formation of Commands (SHSBC 611101)

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

'''Date:''' 1 November 1961

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

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Well, that's enthusiasm. Must have some processing results today. Maybe my popularity has gone up here.

Who knows? All right. This is the what of what?

Audience: 1st of November. You say it's the first of November? It is?

No kidding Halloween was last night. Guy Fawkes Day still has to arrive, the 4th of July comes later. All right.

Saint Hill Special Briefing Course, 1st November 1961. I should talk to you something about the formation of commands. Particularly at this particular stage of the game, you are not getting any opportunity of any kind whatsoever to form any commands.

I am shoving them down your throat and you get twenty-five infraction sheets and your pc gets a knock in the head if they don't run it. I mean, that's – that's a – it's a very diplomatic address. It's one of these conditions of you can do exactly as you please.

You can do anything as you please as long as you do exactly what Ron says. Well now, oddly enough, commands as a subject is one of the most esoteric, undetailed, unformulated subjects in Scientology – how you put a command together and what you do with a command and all that sort of thing. And I don't know.

I don't know if it's teachable. I see once in a while, I see something wild going on like – well, let's say that the pc's terminal is “waterbuck” and the level assessed is Anger. So we see a command like this with all the blanks ready to fill in and we see a command that's been filled in this way: “What anger waterbuck?” You think I'm kidding, but it's as grim as that, see.

And by my laying out commands, it's more or less just by my knowledge of commands over a very long period of time. And along about midnight after you've turned in your ten o'clock reports – Mary Sue and I going over your cases and reports; along about midnight, one o'clock, two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning – you would be amazed the desperation I sometimes feel of simply getting your pc by the nape of the neck and putting  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 2  him on an E-Meter for about two seconds and finding out which word will be the stronger reaction. Now, it shows you however, that commands will run without drastically clearing them with the pc because such commands do run.

So you might say there is a – the commands are divided up into three categories: One is “utterly asinine.” That's category one. That's an utterly asinine command. I mean, it doesn't make sense.

It isn't together and so forth. It is not a smooth, answering command. And under that category, you can get all commands where a Prehav level has been taken slavishly and simply put down in a blank and some sense is supposed to be made out of it.

Or a command which has no possible concourse with flows: “How have you shot a waterbuck? How have you kicked a waterbuck? Thank you.

How have you shot a waterbuck? How have you kicked a waterbuck? Thank you.” You know, something weird like this, you know.

One way flow, one way flow, one way flow. Well, the pc will hang up on it and that's all there is to that. Under another type of error that is made under this particular command line is a command that is too complex.

It is too wordy; it is too impossible to state. And some of the goals you've been getting, you've been taking, of course, just as you should, exactly what the pc says. The point has never come up because I've never before asked you to run goals.

But you realize that a goal is something on the order of “to climb the tallest mountain and dance a jig thereon while shooting off rainbow flares with my tootle-gun.” Well, that's what the pc said and so there it goes as a goal. All right. Well, that's all right; don't interfere with the pc's goal.

That's for sure. But what of this is the pc's goal? Now, I have to ask you at this particular time if goals are going to be made into commands, that you – to find out what out of all of this avalanche of verbiage was the pc's goal.

And you may be able to get it right back down to just a verb. It isn't actually “to climb the tallest mountain and dance a jig thereon while shooting off – “ you know, it's – that has nothing to do with it. It's “to climb.” And if you sort the goal out and compartment the goal the same way you do a Security Check, after it's all checked in and it's stayed in and there it is – you understand, you've checked it out; and now let's find out what part of this is the goal – you'll have a lot more success.

You'll find out that the pc all of a sudden does a new cognition on the thing Now, you would just compartment the goal and find out what part of the goal's wording falls and then, the only part that falls is the part you leave in. I mean, it's elementary, my dear Watson. You just leave that part in.

And it might be, of course, with such a goal “shoot off sky rockets with my doodlegun,” you know. And all right, if that's what stayed in and if nothing falls unless you have “to shoot off skyrockets with my doodle-gun,” that's the goal. Unfortunately, that is the goal.

FORMATION OF COMMANDS 3  But you may get it pared down and find out that it's just a word and that one of the reasons goals go in and out is because they're too particularized, they're too long The goal might be “to shoot.” The goal might be “to climb.” And it might do a fade in and out because it's being overlapped, don't you see? So after you've got a goal all sorted out or if you're having a lot of trouble trying to sort a goal out or something of this sort, you'd better go down the line on the goals that are still occasionally flicking. You know, they're in and they're out and they're in and they're out.

You've seen that happen. I think you better sort out what in that line that you are reading – just like you would a Security Check – what in that line reacts. What verb in that line or what noun or what something or other or what phrase is actually doing the reacting And now there's a possibility – I have not done this myself; I just mention in passing – there's a possibility you might – I was just thinking about that this morning – you might have a consistent read if you only had one small section of all this, you see, whereas the rest of the read is sort of knocking it out all the time and is losing the thing Do. you see what I mean?

So just as you compartment a Security Check – “Have you ever been PDH'd by a cat?” You know, that famous example, now. “Pain,” “drug,” “hypnosis” – these things are all reactive and go out, you see and so on. And finally it gets down to “cat” and we find out there's an overt against a cat and it clears. But you compartment a Security Check question and if you had a long and involved Security Check question like “Have you ever shot any girls off the top of a mountain with a BB gun?” you see?

And you keep getting a reaction on this thing You're just a plain knucklehead if you don't go back – “Have you ever shot – any – girls – off – the top – of a mountain?” All right. Three of them didn't react and it's, “Have you ever – shot – . Have you ever shot – girls?” Nothing else reacts.

Well, what have you shot? Now, you should know that well in putting together a Security Check question because you can make fantastic errors in Security Check questions by noncompartmentation of the question. Now, similarly with goals after you've got all the pc's goals and your rudiments are in and you're not ARC breaking him or anything like that.

You've got some goal that's going in and out and you're having a lot of trouble isolating goals or you finally wind up with some sort of a goal “to join the I Will Arise Societies and lie quietly in a coffin while snoring” Well now you can make up your mind that it is insufficiently fundamental. It has to do with one section of track and you've actually gotten a little tag A little flag is shining there. But it is somewhere in this long goal and you're liable to get something tremendously fundamental.

And all of a sudden the pc will wake up to it by compartmentation of this goal. FORMATION OF COMMANDS 4  I'm not telling you as you go down an original Goals Assessment to compartment every goal. I'm telling you that when you've got some goals down toward the end and you're having a bit of trouble sorting them out, you should start compartmentation a little bit and you're liable to be able to break a goal down to a fantastic simplicity of some kind or another that absolutely pervades the furthest reaches of the pc's life, whereas “to join the I Will Arise Society and lie in a coffin quietly while snoring” pervades that exact time when he was in Birmingham.

And we finally find out that it's “to lie.” Ah, ha-ha-ha-ha. “Double-entendre. Ah-ha-ha. Quelquefois, que magnifique!

Aha!” You get the idea? The pc has not necessarily written his complete goals list when he gives you his original list. Remember this.

He's not necessarily written it. Well, I daresay there are traces of his goal in any such original list. You see?

And maybe some of your difficulties with Goals Assessment is the fact that there's a part of one of those goals which is the goal and not the whole goal at all. And if you have finally settled down to it and you do have this goal at the end and it's “to join the I-Will-Arise-Society and to lie in a coffin quietly while snoring,” and you've got that, we get to the subject of commands. If you're going to express this as a command, where are we at?

So you had better work this thing around to make sure that it is what it is, and that the part of it that is alive as the goal is the part. Now, this has a little more importance than just wording of a goal. You actually, occasionally, will get a much better goal summary which will reach much deeper into a person's life by taking some section of the goal – the last few goals, that you have hit upon.

You know, verb – goals don't always have nouns. Well, you get somebody; he's got a goal “to be a waterbuck.” All right. That's fine.

Seems very peculiar. “To be a waterbuck” and so on and we get it going along fine. And it's kind of – it's all right. Now, before you finally turn the goal in, let's find out if it's “to” “be” “waterbuck” and find out what fell.

And then we find out “to be” “waterbuck.” And we're liable sometime to find out we've assessed the terminal and not assessed the goal or that the pc's goal is something on the order of “to be,” which would be an interesting goal, you see. And it isn't “to be” anything, but “waterbuck” happened to be connected with it in the original list and it's never come apart since. You see what can happen at the end of a Goals Assessment.

It doesn't mean anything particularly is wrong with goals, but I would take any long goal that a pc has and check it over by compartmentation and now the least that can happen is that we get into commands, but the most that can happen is we get a more pervasive goal. Much more pervasive goal. We have some goal like “to climb Mount Button-Button in the lower Mojave Desert while carrying two burros on my back.” You see?

FORMATION OF COMMANDS 5  That refers to one stupid incident someplace or another and all he has is actually he's got a piece of his goals chain. See? That would be valuable.

He has a piece of his goals chain, but you don't have a goal. The goal is concealed in there someplace. We possibly find out elementarily his goal is “to climb,” see.

And there we are. His goal is “to climb” and that's that. And all of a sudden the pc wakes up, pinwheels go off, Guy Fawkes Day combines with 4th of July and somebody drops a live butt in the firecracker box, you know?

Bang! Got an entirely different sounding goal which is very pervasive, whereas the pc up to that time was going along with his goal but now we've got a goal which reaches the tip of his little toenails whereas before it gradually was seeping down about an inch below the left ear. You see how that could be?

Now, this is fraught – all goals formation and rewording of goals and that sort of thing – boy, that is really fraught with more perils. I'll tell you, navigating the coasts of England during a fog in a leaking boat is a lead-pipe cinch compared to – it's just nothing compared to trying to navigate a pc through the rocks and shoals of changed wording. We'll get this kind of a thing.

I'll give you an actual incident. We had a goal “space commander” and the next day the auditor shortened it to “commander” and it ceased to react. It was “space commander.” That was it.

That was the goal or the terminal? Female voice: The terminal. It was a terminal, you see. “Commander” – no, no, no, no, no.

It did not react. “Space commander” reacted. That was all that reacted and that was the wording that reacted, and that was it. Now, for the benefit of command, of course, it'd be very handy to be able to drop that “space,” but with such eagerness in view, don't lose the goal or the terminal just because you want to edit it or bobtail it.

Keep a firm grip on it while snipping at it and snip at it in such a way that it doesn't get invalidated and you'll be all set and you will wind up with a goal which can be phrased. This all comes under the subhead of “Get a command that can be said.” And the asinine category of commands are commands that just cannot be said. “How would you be afraid of someone who wanted to join the I-Will-Arise-Society and lie in a coffin quietly and snore?” Well, the pc has gone to sleep. His mind is incapable of holding that much verbiage.

And you find out he'll be wrastling with this, you know. And if he had a glass dome for a skull, you would see little whirlpools and dust devils starting up inside of his head, see. He just can't hold that much thought.

FORMATION OF COMMANDS 6  So you'll – you'll see occasionally some phrased up command which just goes on for a paragraph practically, you know and it's an unanswerable command. Another impossible command is one that the auditor can't pronounce. And you think that is – you think that it has not happened, you're being silly.

It has happened. I remember one poor auditor that it was perfectly okay – I've forgotten the exact word that he – letter that he had trouble with. Was it S?

Female voice: It was G. Huh? Female voice: The G in “Give me that hand.” Oh, the “G.” He could not say a “G” and he was trying to run the CCHs.

And every time he hit a “G” he would stutter. And it was so “G-g-g-g-g-g-g-gg-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-Eeuuh! Give-me-that-hand!” And of course, it would have been quite in order for him to have said, “Hand me the paw, partner,” and he would have had the same end result.

As a matter of fact, he would have had a better end result because the pc would have gotten some commands. Now, under that heading, of course, is some “She sells seashells by the seashore.” And you once in a while will run into one of these things and you don't notice it until you get going, you know. And you just set yourself up colossally, you know, to have command flubs.

It starts making you nervous about the thing. You should look over commands from that particular viewpoint. Well, the next category of commands are the commands that are just generally workable.

They're just generally workable. They do work and they are generally applicable and there aren't many of them. What do you know.

There are very few. In fact, I'm looking at a mimeographed sheet here that contains most of them that are just generally workable. It's not even important to read it at this particular stage of this lecture because it wouldn't tell you very much.

There's Rising Scale Processing is rather generally workable. The old wording that occurs in it. The CCHs are pretty generally workable unless you run into somebody that stammers and he can't say a “G” or something.

You've got numerous categories of processes that you just spit them out and so on. Your rudiments, for instance, are your best example of this. They're just generally workable. “Are you withholding anything?” you see.

Well, that works. And by that type of command it is, is without the auditor skewering around in any way to make the pc understand it, it gets answered. You know, it's a very directly communicating statement.

And then we get over into the third category of command and it is the type of command which is in blank form. It's the blank form kind of command that has to be fitted to each pc by reason of assessment. Well, you have a wonderful example of that.

You have – you don't run the goal and terminal and level of the pc without assessing them. FORMATION OF COMMANDS 7  Well now, you have certain blank-form commands and they start in at the beginning and they go through to the end, but you've got to have the assessed material before you can form the command. In other words, in order to run a person's goal, you'd have to have his goal.

In order to run his terminal, you'd have to have his terminal. And in order to do any broad runs on the terminal, why, you ordinarily – and certainly sooner or later – will have to have a Prehav level and these things all fit into a blank form. But it requires the special information from the pc.

There actually is another category of commands and that is the command of blank form which has to be fitted to the pc. It's a blank form that has to be filled in by assessment and then you have to turn around to the pc and you clear it by meter. Most of your clearing commands should fall into this fourth class.

Now, let's take a sort of a generalized sort of a run. Here's – “Assess the pc on the primary Prehav Scale and run with the following commands: “How would you (blank) a (blank)? “How would a (blank) you? “How would (pC'8 goal)? “What would be attempted against (pC'8 goal)?” Now, that's an interesting form there, but it's certainly a Class IV command. This thing has to be adjusted.

You've got to have all the data off the Prehav Scale in the assessment. You fill it into these blanks and then it has to be adjusted to make sense. That was understood.

But then it has to be further adjusted against the pc to work absolutely perfectly without ever a hitch or a flaw. See, we say the command to him, clear the command with him. We ask him about this wording or that wording or something of this sort.

I'm not trying to make any kind of a stylized science here of putting together commands. I'm just giving you this so that you can differentiate amongst them. You've got this “Think of a “ and that's terminal. “What would a (terminal) think about?” Well, now apparently, that's one of these Class II commands, you know.

I mean, it's just blanket and everybody works, you'd think. But it doesn't; it doesn't. And the second it doesn't work, checked against the pc, you of course are in trouble because you've got to reform the whole command.

All right. Let's say his terminal is “a waterbuck” and you say, “Think of a waterbuck. What would a waterbuck think about?” All right.

And as you're clearing this thing, you find out that the second you say “think,” you get no reaction on the meter. It's just dead. The pc is all ready to be buried.

Of  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 8  course he gets a reaction on “waterbuck” because it's his terminal. But that “think” doesn't get any kind of a reaction at all. And you say “Get the idea of thinking.” “What do you think about thinking?” is the way you'd clear a command on a pc, by the way.

You got his terminal by assessment. “What do you think about thinking? What about this word think?” You got the meter there in front of you. And he says, “Well, uuy-uuuuu-uuu.

As a matter of fact, people have been fooling me for a number of years.” You say, “Yes? Yes?” “Yes, they say 'People think.' Nobody can think.” Well, frankly, you could run, “Think of a waterbuck. What would a waterbuck think about?” for literally hours and hours and hours if you get no tone arm action.

Because the command is undoable to the pc. He cannot do the command. He cannot do this command “think.” Don't laugh and this is not a rare case.

This is about 50 percent of the people you'll process, at a rough guess. Because it's just about that many that have had trouble with it. There is a remedy for it.

You can turn around and clean up the thing semantically. I'll give you an old process. We had people looking around and finding things that weren't thinking.

And it is quite remarkable. After you've looked around and found enough things that weren't thinking, thinking doesn't get so arduous. You see, a person's doing a Q- and-A with MEST, of course, on the postulate that MEST doesn't think, which it doesn't and so on and there you've got it and it straightens out.

But nobody is asking you to process the pc so that you can process the pc. This is kind of silly, you see. So we – we process the pc for forty-nine years in order to run this command.

No, there's a better route – a better route for this and that is to find something he does understand. This is peculiarly true of children. You're always having to word commands in some other direction and work them around till the kid finally understands what your thing's saying It may sound silly to you, but he – he can understand what you're saying.

You're saying – or you're trying to get the idea of moving, you know or “walking” or something of this sort and you just aren't getting anyplace with “walking” and so forth. So you finally hit on “jumping” “Could you jump from point A to point B?” or something of this sort. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.” He could jump from point A to point B. Their semantics are limited and they're restimulated easily on semantics and so on.

And you have to go into the subject with them and clear up what – and find out what they can understand. By the way, the expert on this is Mary Sue. She's not only your best expert on terminals, she's really an expert on putting together kid's commands and simple commands of  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 9  a particular character.

I'm very often amazed at what she can get away with running a child, you know. She will word a rather complex thought and the child will be very happily answering it, you know, cheerily. But it's reworded.

It requires a taste for a simplicity. It's cutting through the Gordian knots of semantic, polysyllabic English. Now, “think” has a number of synonyms and ordinarily if they can't run “think” they can get the idea.

But this throws the whole . . . Now, this is what you have to be careful of in commands. This throws the whole thing haywire.

Now, up to this time, whenever we had “think” in a command, it was a perfectly easy thing to do. You just cleared the person as almost – this is standard operating procedure. You clear the person whether they can be run on “think” – you get a reaction.

Or no reaction on “think,” then you can run “get the idea of,” you see. “Get the idea of” has formerly been a good substitute for it and they can run like a bat on this. Everything is fine, you see. “Get the idea.” This person says, “It's not possible to think, but anybody can get the idea of, see.” It's quite remarkable. But these things are true.

So our young auditor sails into this knowing this old truism about “think” and “get the idea o£” And we say, “Think of a waterbuck. What would a waterbuck think about?” Well of course, we're trying to knock out the postulates and now-I'm-supposed-to's of waterbucks. Smart, huh?

So we transmit the command this way: “Get the idea of a waterbuck.” That runs all right. “What would a waterbuck get the idea of?” Well, after you've done some flub of this character on a command, don't blame me if you get no tone arm action and the pc has a hard time trying to answer it and stay in session and so on because it's all contained in the command. And if you're having trouble with a pc on some command, the time to have trouble is before you begin to run it. That's the time to have trouble with the command.

Not after you've audited it for three hours. Because now, every time you've uttered it, the pc has done something else than answer the auditing command. The pc is getting pretty sick of it, withal.

Now, the time to find out if a command is answerable is before you run it. Now, you can go to another extreme on this and every time you start a session – see, you've run this particular five-way bracket for the last twenty hours. And you start a new session, and each time you start a new session, you clear the whole command with the pc, word for word.

That's a good way to waste auditing Pcs will get very restive about it. That's the reductio ad absurdum. But the first time you use an auditing command on a pc, you had better clear it.

You had better find out. No matter if it's a standard command – it looks standard to you and it looks answerable to you – you should read it off to the pc and ask him  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 10  if it's answerable. Not “Word, word, word, word.” Let's read the thing off and find out if it's answerable. “All right.

It's 'think of a waterbuck.' All right. Is that an answerable – I'm going to read you this command now. I want to know if that's an answerable command – if you can do this, if you can answer this. 'Think of a waterbuck.”' And the pc says, “Uh, no.

A waterbuck. I just – I just (so on and so on).” Well, now you go back and now you take it apart word for word, see. Give him the broadside first, and then take it apart word for word.

And find out what is unanswerable about this and you'd run into this word “think.” “Well, nobody can think. I mean, silly business. How can anybody think?

Naturally.” So you say, “Well, all right. We'll translate that,” you say – very sloppily, you say. “Well, we translate that,” and we say, “Get the idea of a waterbuck.” All right. Now, that means we have translated “think” into “get the idea of” and now you just insert “get the idea of” down on this second line on “think.” If we did that literally we'd get “What would a waterbuck think of about?” It'll become that silly, you see.

Well, just because “get the idea of” was answerable in the first line is no reason it becomes answerable in the second line and you have to do something about the second line. And then, because you have to do something about the second line, don't be too disturbed if you have to go back now and readjust the first line. Your object is – here is to adjust the commands with the pc so the pc can answer them, not to force the pc into some frozen pattern of some kind or another.

Just get something this pc can answer. We, after all, are trying to transmit a mental concept and mental concepts are not always expressed in words. As a matter of fact, mental concepts can exist in the absence of words.

Now, you wouldn't think that – there – there are chaps in the universities – I think they call them professors? Something like this. There are chaps in the universities who teach semantics.

And their basic consideration is this: that because all words mean different things to different people, then communication isn't possible. Well, there's some two-hundred and eighty-thousand Bachelors of Arts graduated a few years ago, all of whom had been taught this with great thoroughness. They've been taught that nobody can communicate with anybody.

Nobody can communicate with anybody. It's not possible to communicate with anybody because the derivation of words are different. Well, what is wrong with their thinkingness?

Their thinkingness is just muddled on this basis. They think words – the word is the think and words aren't the think. You see?

The word simply expresses the form and character of the think. FORMATION OF COMMANDS 11  Now, I guarantee you, that if you shove Mamie Glutz and Joe Blow simultaneously up against a hot stove, they will have the same thought and it will not be verbalized. They will not think, “Goodness me, I am moving toward a hot stove.

Now, I am burned. It is very hot.” That is not what happens. They get a mental concept of hotness and they get another mental concept of proximity and the word hotness and the word proximity do not even occur.

Now, you don't even have to know what the Spaniard means by “Hace calor, no?” if he mops his brow at the same time. He's saying “It's hot” and you agree with him and yet you didn't understand the words. Well, you say, “Well, it's transmitted by the gesture.” Oh, fine, what's the semantics of a gesture?

Korzybski, front and center. Move thy tombstone and present thyself. What are the semantics of a gesture? “Different words means different things to different people” would then mean that when you mopped your brow, the holding out of the little finger while you mopped your brow would then make your communication incommunicable to somebody else who would normally consider that you held your little finger in close while you mopped your brow.

In other words, how pedantic can you pedant? So you can get pretty stupid on this whole subject of semantics when it comes into commands. And semantics are bound up with commands.

There's a whole subject. Alfred Lord Korzybski, Hayakawa – all these birds. It's interesting to read their books though.

My golly, aren't those books wonderful examples of noncommunication. The basic book on semantics by Korzybski is called Science and Sanity. And if you open it up to Chapter One and start reading, you don't know where you are at.

That's a fact. It's an interesting experience. You read several pages, and it's not about anything that you ever heard of before because he doesn't ever say, what he is talking about.

Actually, the book Science and Sanity is apparently a continuation of some earlier book and this earlier book . . . It's supposed to be the key book, you see, but it doesn't say what it's about and it's a continuation of an earlier book and it actually – I think it's – the beginning is continuing an experiment which is begun in the earlier book, the conditions of which are not repeated in the new book. I think you find yourself reading about a horse or something of this sort.

It's supposed to be all about words, and you read about this horse. Or it's some such beast. So they have trouble with their semantics.

Well, the reason they're having trouble with their semantics is because they're giving the word importance and the idea that it conveys, no importance. Now, learn the lesson better than that, and take a look at this and consult with your own wisdom. It's the thought and then the word.

The auditor's thought becomes the word, becomes the pc's word, becomes the pc's thought. FORMATION OF COMMANDS 12  So there's a four-step proposition here. There is the – the impulse which the auditor wishes to communicate which transmits into a word which is heard by the pc and is transmitted into an idea.

Now, the action following that idea is what the auditor is after but is really not part of the communication itself per se. All we are doing is, the auditor has an idea that he wishes to put into a word and then the word is received and heard by the pc, is reanalyzed and he gets the idea which is transmitted. And having done all of this and gone through it, Lord knows, ad nauseum . . .

If you figure out all these steps of what communicates to what and which communicates to where and – and exactly how he hears it and get a psychologist's explanation of how it registers on the neuro-aural cavities of the aurality and then re-echo against the medulla oblongata with the echo effect well known as the screen phenomena of the basic metabolism, you've just about got as much – It's – what I've just said is far more intelligent. There's a thetan who, to communicate, goes through MEST. And to hear takes it out in MEST and that's how he keeps off other thetans.

So it's – it's just this mechanism is all you are going through. Now, to become slavish, you see, to the mechanism itself is very poor. It is important to duplicate your commands.

That's very important. The command must continue to be stated in the same wording that it was stated in, but the time to catch an error in the wording is before you begin to communicate these commands. If you begin to communicate these commands properly, they're very easy to repeat.

The duplication factor is a sort of a havingness factor. It definitely does not challenge the pc's attention and it is doing something far more important than this; it is making him think a repetitive thought which eventually will push its way through and as-is most of his circuits and so forth. That's what you're trying to do with all this.

So it's a good thing to have the words right, but don't get pedantic about the thing. We don't care if a command has the word. . . Well, we're – we're processing a lumberjack from the backwoods of Canada and his hair sort of stands on end every time we say, “aren't,” “Aren't you happy?” or something, you see.

Aren't. Aren't. He knows the right word for it.

It's “ain't,” see. It's “Ain't you happy.” You unfortunately find yourself in the position ordinarily of having to process in the language that the pc speaks and that applies to dialects and colloquialisms as well as to different tongues. Well, Devon – imagine somebody from Edinburgh, you see, and somebody from Devon as an auditing team, don't you see, that was – that got into a semantic argument.

Well, actually, the auditor is at liberty to use any words that he wishes to use in a command as long as it relates between himself and the pc the exact idea that he wishes to have communicated. The words that he uses are secondary to the meaning transmitted. FORMATION OF COMMANDS 13  The meaning transmitted is always primary, so that if you do not clear your auditing command on an E-Meter, you very often find yourself in a noncommunication state of the pc, in disobedience of Clause 16.

You might have to take this command and say – well, let's move this over into a possible thing. “Get the idea of a waterbuck. What ideas does a waterbuck get?” or “What idea would a waterbuck have?” – asking for just one idea at a time. Now, that's a doable command if you understand what you're trying to do.

You're trying to get his attention on the waterbuck, his terminal and then get the thinkingness of the terminal as-ised. Tricky. So that he can then eventually differentiate between the thinkingness of a waterbuck and his own thinkingness.

That's the total target of that type of a command, you see. Now, if you're trying to compose commands – I hate to have to tell you this – but if you're trying to compose commands and hang them together without any knowledge of the basics and fundamentals of Scientology, I'll tell you it'd be far less trouble to yourself and the pc if you just went and hanged yourself quietly in some corner someplace, because it just isn't going to work. “What afraid have you been about?” “What waterbuck has been about afraid?” It sounds like gobbledygook to you. It sounds like total balderdash to you and it is.

But if you laid every command out simply with blanks – you know, you – here's the command form and a blank and you're supposed to put the Prehav level in the blank – you'll come up with things that sound as nonsensical as that. You have to make the command sensible. All right.

So we've assessed “fear.” And the command form requires “What would a waterbuck be fear of?” and “What would fear a waterbuck?” Well, the second one isn't too bad. But the first one, that's sort of weird. So now we take off into the wild blue yonder and we simply say “That's easy.

That's easy. We 11 just say, 'What would a waterbuck be afraid of?' and 'What would be afraid of a waterbuck' That's simple. Now, let's start to run it.” And an hour later we haven't gotten any tone arm motion and everything else has gone wrong.

Well, that's because we didn't get this Class IV-type command has to be cleared on the meter. And you've had to find out if “afraid” made this – meant the same as “fear.” Or maybe it was “frighten.” You see, maybe it was “frighten” means the same as “fear,” but “afraid” doesn't mean anything like “fear.” Or “fear” is something solid that you hack off in pieces and carry around with ice tongs. And that's what has registered is this solidity called “fear.” And you have to bend the whole command around to something on the order of “What would put a waterbuck into a state of fear?” and this is transmittable and it is very understandable.

Oh well, yes. And “What would go into a state of fear because of the waterbuck?” Or “What would a waterbuck drive into a state of fear?” This sounds like you're getting long and arduous, but this apparently communicates to the pc and this you get the  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 14  most reaction on. He finds this very easy to answer.

That's an easy one to answer, but the other one doesn't answer at all. “What's a waterbuck afraid of?” “Well, the waterbuck really isn't afraid of anything, you know.” “Well, fear. Fear is what assessed on the Prehav Scale, you know. How do we account – ?” We wouldn't be this invalidating We'd say something on the order of “Well, how do we account – .

What is fear? What's meant here by fear?” “Oh, fear. Oh, well, fear.

That's leaping about. That's trembling.” Well, Hayakawa was apparently right. Korzybski needn't come out of his tomb and account for himself because this pc definitely had a weird meaning for this subject of fear.

All right. This is 8ufficiently weird. It's not up to you to sit there – the pc didn't learn this in kindergarten when he was much smarter, five years old He isn't going to learn it now.

And this is not up to the auditor to run a language school any more than it is to run a process to clear the process. So a language school is not in order. “Fear” does not mean frighten, does not mean afraid, does not mean timid. “Fear,” at his first glance at it – because it, after all, fell because it was aberrated, remember. You forget that.

You know, if he wasn't nuts on the level, it wouldn't fall. Now, don't expect him to be sensible about it if he's nuts on it. That's – that's what it amounts to, see.

We find out there's just this thing called fear. And a waterbuck actually picks this chunk up called fear with a pair of ice tongs and leaps about. This is about the – the meaning that transmits. “Fear – well, it's a sort of a dark brown substance that is carved off in blocks.” It is?

First I ever heard of it. Well, you wouldn't abandon the level because the pc didn't understand it. No, I think the pc understands it and has slightly overreached his understanding and sooner or later that particular level will orient and many a time you've seen a pc all of a sudden brighten up and said, “Oh, angry, angry.

Oh, angry!” You've only been running this for an hour and a half, you see. “Angry. Oh, yes, I see what that means. It means getting mad at somebody.” Leaves you completely in the dark.

What the hell did it mean to him before? What did it mean to him before? Don't leave yourself in the dark with a pc.

If you want to know, ask him. You say, “Well, all right. Good.

It means getting mad at somebody. All right. What did it mean to you just before this time?

Just for my own curiosity, what did it mean to you just before this time?” “Oh, well, it's very simple. It means a pent-up pressure at oneself.”  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 15  Oh, now you know why it fell on the Prehav Scale. He could never be angry at anybody.

He could just be a pent-up pressure against himself. We don't know where himself was located – maybe the third button of his vest. But there it is.

Now, in hanging together a command, in other words, try and make the command communicate. And try to make it communicate regardless of the aberration of the pc, which is what the command is trying to take care of and now you will see at once why commands become a very tricky subject. If all pcs were Clear at the time you formed and ran the command on the pc, this would be very easy and we would not be giving a lecture today.

You see that, how factual that is. In fact, we wouldn't have to audit the pc at all. But your command that you're giving the pc is straight into the middle of the small whirlpools, dust devils, hurricanes and black ebbs and flows of tides which shift with the phases of the moon inside his skull.

He tries never to look at that particular part of his livingness because it is too painful. And you, adventurously, are going to say, “Very good. Now, look into the maelstrom that we have just found there.

Good. Look into the maelstrom. That's fine.

Now, jump in. That's a boy. Now, jump in.

Now, swim about a bit. Thank you. Jump in.

Now, good, good. Oh, you needn't flounder too much. I'm sitting here.

Now, jump in. Get your head under too. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right. Drown now.” And, of course, your command is cleared with a pc who is standing upon the edge of the precipice and he is well aware as you're clearing the command that over there where he has not yet looked are the whirlpools, whirlwinds, dust devils and black tides which ebb and flow at the phases of the moon and which may contain terrible monsters which go tok!

So where – where this particular situation obtains, there is aberration, you wouldn't be auditing the pc on that line if he weren't in that position and in clearing a command with the pc is rather unreasonable of you to ask the pc to do something terribly difficult semantically when he's already doing a tight-rope walk impossibly and the command which you're clearing with him has already got him pretty spooked. And you're saying, “All right. Think of a waterbuck.” Well, this is simple to you.

There you are. You're sitting there. You're all right.

You're not worried about waterbucks. Your terminal is a giraffe or something You're above all that. You say, “Think of a waterbuck.” With what aplomb you can toss this off.

But in his particular case – in his particular horrible case – the idea of thinking of a waterbuck: that's a pretty adventurous proposition. There's no telling what might happen if one did that. Now, “Think of a giraffe” – he could do that.

And you will occasionally get sudden resurgent agreements, overwhelming agreements by the pc to run something you really didn't intend to run very much. “Oh, well, yes, yes. Well, I think – I think it'd be an awfully good idea and I'm sure my terminal is a giraffe like yours.” Oh, he can run that command  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 16  beautifully. Run it for hours, no tone arm motion, no auditing, nothing Be good, but he certainly wouldn't have to walk...

He'll have an ARC break with you, too, after a while if you run it. So your commands are always being formed and cleared up against the raw stuff of which aberration is concocted. As a result, it becomes a very tricky subject.

And it becomes a very vast subject. The fundamentals of the mind are very simple. And they are not very many.

I'll have to retire one of these days, you realize, because they're practically all found, nailed down and there they've got signs on them and that sort of thing and I won't have anything to do. Right now I'm rather pressed to the wall about it, you know. I'm having to build a fireplace that nobody ever heard of before.

I just was out inspecting it just before I came down to the lecture and the estate bricklayer was just . . . He's just heaving sighs of relief. He's a happy man tonight.

He's singing When he was taking off his boots, getting ready to go home, he was cheerful and he was smiling and he was happy because he's got it licked. Up to this time he has been going solely and totally on a touching confidence in Ron. Nothing else has been carrying him forward.

He has never seen a barbecue pit. He's laid lots of bricks, but he's never seen a barbecue pit. And to cap that one, nobody in America has ever seen a barbecue pit like this one.

Nobody could ever have designed it in the first place. It took me a week just to figure out how to make the thing. After it's made, it becomes very simple.

But I was two days trying to transmit it to the estate bricklayer. Two days. And then found out that it was totally unsuccessful as a transmission, so I just stood by and when he started to put bricks up over here wrong way, you see, I'd say, “Mr.

Jenner – you know. There it is. Good man.” He's terrific.

Nobody else could have done it. That's right. He's terrific.

He's out there in that – in that big glass house – turning into a pleasure pavilion out there. One of these days, students will be eating their lunches in there and so on. But it's nothing but touching faith on his part has carried him along.

With what relief today he realized that we had it licked. It's actually sitting there in the form it's in. It's far enough advanced now so he knows exactly where it all goes.

The blacksmith has come down, checked it all out, and so forth. Everything is beautiful. The structure is done.

The time to audit a pc, of course, is when he's Clear and the job is totally licked. The time to clear a command and the type of command to clear with the pc is one that will have no effect whatsoever on his case or on a pc who has no case. And you'll never have any difficulty clearing those commands.

But the command which has to do with a waterbuck – ohhh, well now that is something else. In the first place, you have an awful time clearing it because every time you come into this zone and say “waterbuck” and you say, “Waterbuck leaping about” – well, you've said “waterbuck,” so of course you're going to get a reaction. And then the idea of a waterbuck  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 17  leaping about is the basic reason he gets sick at his stomach and you're trying to clear the command to find out if it's answerable and frankly you should have had the command in the first place and be running it.

But you haven't got it, so you can't run it. You get the ideas that lie behind this? These are the difficulties of clearing a command.

So therefore, you very often have a tendency to just give up and take a textbook command or a command that I give you without any further check against the pc of any kind whatsoever. Well, that's very decent of you and shows a very touching faith in Ron. And most of the time you'll find out these are dead on and they run and so forth, because I'm very careful to give them generalized enough so they don't need too much clearing, you know, with the pc.

They will communicate. But here and there, here and there, because of a scribbled note by the auditor with regard to the assessment or something, I've read the assessment as “fear,” and the thing that was actually assessed was entirely different. It was “failed woofing” And so we 11 have a pc run very nicely on “fear,” and “failed woofing” still stays live as a level of the Prehav Scale.

That's not so good, is it? Now, even if I give you a command straightly, try to understand what is being communicated by the command. What thought lies behind the command?

Because that is what I have written down. I've written down the thought which must be transmitted to the pc. Now, if it won't transmit this thought to the pc because of some peculiarities of some sort, you should be the first person to scream.

Not at me particularly, but let's put the English on the English in it to make it fit and transmit. So we have something that says, “Think of a waterbuck. What would a waterbuck think about?” Clear it with the pc.

Because I would write it and give it to you in the understanding – in the clean, clear understanding – that you would read it to the pc and the pc would be able to answer it. And if the pc said, “Think. You mean think?

Think? Think. I was afraid you said that.

You know, all of my life, I think people are just liars. They are just swindlers and thieves because they keep telling you that they think and it's not possible to think. Nobody can think.” Well, don't just plow it into him with a bulldozer.

That's too easy to get around it. You say, “Get the idea of a waterbuck. What would a waterbuck get ideas about?” Or any other way that you can put it around and make it make the same thing that has been written down there.

You would be definitely out of order to vary the basic idea of the command. Or to vary the level unless the level, of course, were miswritten or wrong We had a case right here in the class the other day that was going back and forth and around and around and the auditor stayed calm. I got, of course, misemotional about it, but fortunately, the auditor kept his head.

And that was just on this one basis: The auditor was the one who had assessed the pc's goal and had then written down one of these long goals. But halfway through the session, the auditor decided that the pc had a different goal because the auditor didn't realize that in this form “How would you ? How would a ?

What would (goal)? FORMATION OF COMMANDS 18  What would be attempted against (goal)?” He didn't realize that that form was just the goal, the goal of the pc. So he dropped one word out for one part of the session and we got him back on it again in a hurry.

And he all of a sudden understood that that was just the goal. But it was a question. Was the goal wrong?

Because if the word could be dropped out, why, then the goal could have that word dropped out. But apparently, this was or was not checked, but the goal was put back in and it was run the other way – was run properly, and it was run right back straight again, don't you see? Now, the argument was simply, then, on the basis of the auditor's understanding of what I was trying to do.

And, you see, it is really not good enough to completely take a ritualistic form that you don't understand what you're getting at and by filling in a few blanks, have it work by just repetition. This is tape-recorder auditing. The command might as well have been fed onto a tape recorder by me, one of these repeating, metal-tape recorders, you know.

They're very cute. They – they give you a whole song and then they – the metal goes around – the metal belt goes around and gives you the whole song again and then the metal belt goes around. Well, you see, you could put a start-stop switch on this thing and the auditor could sit there with his foot, you see, on this little throttle-like device and holding the E-Meter in his hands, you see, so the pc couldn't see what he was writing, using the E-Meter, you see, as a barricade.

And every time the pc had answered a command, why, then, all the auditor would do is press this little throttle, you see and this belt would go around again and the next auditing command, you see, would be given to the pc. That is just not good enough. The weird thing about it is, is that it will work.

That's what is weird about it. That would work. It had – it would have a level of workability.

But the level of workability is not as reaching or pervasive as the fact that . . . All right, I give you the command form, and this command form is “What problem have you had about a waterbuck?” and “What was unknown about that problem?” All right. That's fine.

I give you that form and you say to the pc, “Problem?” And the pc says, “Yeah, well, problem. Pretty easy problem. What problem . . .

That's easy, you know – it's very easy to . . . You see, a problem is something . . . Well, you know what a problem is.

A problem is something that nobody has any answers for. So I don't really see how the auditing command could have an answer because if you never have any answers for any problems, why, then you would never have any answers for the auditing command.” And you don't know your fundamentals well enough to know that a problem is also a confusion. It's also a motion.

And just say, “Well, all right. Problem? Fine” – reading your meter – “Confusion?

Motion? Commotion?” Not much of a reaction here anyplace or another. “Mess?” “Oooh, what – what do you know! Ha-ha.” Clang, the needle went.

FORMATION OF COMMANDS 19  You say, “Problem. Confusion. Motion.

Commotion. Mess.” Wham! And you say, “What is all this wham here?

What's – what's this?” “Well, a mess. That's – I'm in a mess, of course. A person is in a mess, I mean that. . .

What do you mean have to have it explained to you? Are you stupid or something? Something goes along in life, you're in a mess.

That is a mess. That's what it is.” So you have an auditing command which goes as follows: “What mess have you had about a waterbuck? What was unknown about that mess?” And you're still running, “What problem have you had about a waterbuck?

What was unknown about that problem?” because a pc calls a problem a mess. But he can't call a problem a problem and he himself, because he has aberrations about problems, of course, can never call anything a problem. And confusions and motions don't mean problems to him.

He's – he's above all that. But a mess. Well, that's – that's good.

That's fine. And you will cut down the number of hours run by about 75 percent. Blang!

Why? Because your auditing command is communicating closer to the whirlwind. Now, what does the meter say?

The meter says we are standing on the edge of a precipice that we can recognize at this time as a precipice and by looking slightly but not too closely over the right or left shoulder, we can detect the bubble, bubble, bubble of the cauldron, which we have never looked at very closely because underneath it there may be things that go ppTrX You got a reaction. You're getting a reaction on the meter. It's real to the pc.

Well, when a pc is in bad shape, why, anything that gets a reaction is real to him and is horrible and reality is horrible. And you translate all these commands over and you'll find out that's very interesting. It's not an invitation for him to take the commands which you're running on the pc at this moment and change them.

You're committed. When a command is committed along the line, it is actually worse to change the command, in most cases, than to monkey it up. It'll take the pc's attention out of session and so forth.

Just plow it through. Grind it out. Get it flat and next time clear the command properly with the pc before you start this kind of thing, you see.

You 11 find out a command that is out won't give you much tone arm action anyhow. So I'm not telling you that you have to go on for days. Now, most of the commands I give you, they need no fooling with.

But what I'm shuddering about is that near moment when you, in north Andalusia or south Stakoma or someplace are sitting there and you've got a Prehav command to put together and you get a pc and you take it off the Prehav Scale and it is “failed withhold.” And the blank says, “What about a waterbuck would be a (blank)?” you see. You say, “ 'What about a waterbuck would be a failed withhold?' That's pretty good. 'What about a failed withhold would be a  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 20  waterbuck?' That's pretty good. That doesn't sound right but that's the way it fits into the blank.

And 'What has another failed withhold on a waterbuck?' That's not quite right. And 'What is a waterbuck failed withhold on another?' Doesn't sound too good. 'Now, what has a failed withhold on a waterbuck on a waterbuck?”' And you say, “Well, this doesn't sound quite right. But Ron said so, so we'll run it.” So I just want to be on record that I didn't say so.

I said “Run 'failed withhold' in a 5- way bracket on a waterbuck would be the proper step after the assessment of the Prehav level.” And of course, you say, “A 5-way bracket – well, a 5-way bracket, that's from you to that, that around, so forth and so and so forth, and that's all dandy.” And then you audit a child on this and you find out the child cannot even get the idea of communicating from himself to the second bracket. He can get the idea of the second – the terminal communicating to the terminal. So if he can get the idea of himself communicating to himself, he can get the idea of a terminal communicating to a terminal and you've pulled on back down the line from a 5-way bracket to a 2-way, totally individuated bracket, which is, “What have you failed to withhold from yourself?

What has a waterbuck failed to withhold from himself?” “What have you failed to withhold from yourself?” and “What has a waterbuck failed to withhold from himself?” Works like a bomb. Everything is gorgeous. Person cannot reach any further than that.

But now you err like the mischief that – as you run it you don't expand the bracket up to a five-way bracket. Commands have to be expanded. When you start down below where you should be, graduate up to it.

Every now and then when the thing gets to looking a little sticky, add another bracket. So we'd have “What have you failed to withhold from yourself?” and “What has a waterbuck failed to withhold from himself?” becomes, of course, only two ends of the bracket. So “What have you failed to withhold from a waterbuck?” and “What has a waterbuck failed to withhold from you?” are the natural steps.

But you've still left one in there which isn't flat – “What have you failed to withhold from yourself?” – and you wind up at the other end of it, quite well, with a six-way bracket. So what? You don't do a violent shift on commands ever.

And you eventually have graduated the person with his understanding of the snake pit in which he finds himself with this waterbuck. Gradually he gets so that he can get outside of himself a little bit and look around and he realizes a waterbuck can look around and there might be another person someplace in the world. So we include that in the command and – and so forth.

Well, reductio ad absurdum. You could carry this up to a thirty-two-leg bracket. Just keep graduating it and you'd also find a little more action on it.

You'd always find it. I don't know. Nobody – no genius has sat down and figured out the ultimate bracket and counted it.

I don't know how many brackets there could be. By specific name, there could  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 21  be 250 billion for the people of Earth. “What has George failed to withhold from a waterbuck? What has a waterbuck failed to withhold from George?

What has Bill failed to withhold from a waterbuck? What has a waterbuck failed to withhold from Bill?” And now we add the numbers of societies and governments which there exist in present time and we'd say “What has the waterbuck failed to withhold from the Rosicrucians?” and “What have the Rosicrucians failed to withhold from the waterbuck?” Ah, great. And we could go further than that.

We could then take every society on the whole track for the last 200 trillion years and every individual on the whole track for the last 200 trillion years, and we could add all them in with special, separate legs. Wouldn't that be interesting Well, it exceeds the necessity. And you get up on legs of a bracket above five and it's starting to exceed the necessity of the occasion.

You go up to fifteen and you're getting a little bit dull. But in some particular cases, you will find that you had better go on up into the higher-numbered brackets, you know. I mean, get fifteen on a bracket.

Run a 10-way bracket. That's okay. Run two 5-way brackets simultaneous.

Two 5-way brackets simultaneous. It would have to be plus-to-minus brackets. So you get, of course, a 10-way bracket, which is plus and minus. “How have you failed to withhold from a waterbuck?” or “What have you failed to withhold from a waterbuck?” And “What has a waterbuck failed to withhold from you?” (Now, of course, you violate the Prehav level if you do this, but I'm just giving you this as an example.) “What have you not failed to withhold from a waterbuck?” See, that's – means nonsensical.

It becomes nonsense. It wouldn't clear as a command. The pc couldn't answer it.

So look at your commands before you run them. Meter them on the pc. Find out if you get a reaction on them.

Find out what the reaction is. Find out how the pc is reacting to this particular thing. But basically and primarily – it doesn't take you forever to clear a command – all you want to know is can the pc get an answer to it. “Something you wouldn't mind forgetting” here the other day produced an avalanche on a girl in the house.

And she'd go – “Something you wouldn't mind forgetting” Brrrrrrrrt. Brrrrrrt. Brrrrt.

Brrrt. And then she'd catch one by its tails as it went by, you see and she'd give that as the auditing... Well, clearing the auditing command would have run into the automaticity.

And you'd say, “Well, I'm going to ask you if there's something you wouldn't mind forgetting. Now, do you understand that command? Can you answer that command?” And she goes brrrrrt-brrrrrt-brrrrp-brrrrrp-brp.

Automaticity. Bing-bing-bing-bing. And she says, “Well, it's awfully confusing, and – and so on.

And it's pretty weird, and so forth.” And you say, “Well, I don't know. Maybe we'd better run some other command. Maybe we'd better word this command differently.” Because she said it's awfully confusing.

FORMATION OF COMMANDS 22  Well, your error, then, would be in w hat was confusing Is the command confusing? Is the wording confusing No, you'd find out, “Well, all these – I don't know. It's just suddenly as though you'd turned on a motion picture projector or a stack of cards or something and something went off inside my head.

And – and it's – I don't quite figure out exactly what's going – .” Man, if you've got a command that does that to the pc, that is cleared. You just cleared it. That's good.

Leave that one in. Now, if you go to the next one, clear the next command and see if you have that much luck on the next one. Probably you won't have because the avalanche is ordinarily one-sided.

And it'll be only one leg that'll go off in a brrrrrrpt. But here is your – here is the basis of commands. Commands depend on good sense.

They depend on judgment. Commands are a section of Scientology that do that. You get too concentrated on the semantics of it all and too pedantic in the perfection of it all and leave alone the fundamentals of Scientology in the meaning of the command as transmitted to the pc and of course, you're in soup all the time.

The command is an idea. When it is written down, it's expressed as an idea. Mostly when I give you a command, I mean you to run that exact wording without the slightest change and so forth because I couldn't get my hands on the pc.

But that doesn't mean that when you find out that the pc can't think that you won't shift it over to “get the idea o£” You should always clear your auditing command with the pc. You should always check it over. You'll normally find out it's perfectly correct.

Perfectly all right. Perfectly routine. But every now and then you're going to squander ten, fifteen, twenty-five, fifty hours of auditing on some kind of a piece of balderdash.

And at the end of that time, you find out the pc couldn't answer it in the first place and now you've stacked up-five hundred auditing commands that the pc has never answered. Ooooooh. Well, you mustn't do that.

So you clear commands. You clear them on the meter. You run exactly what transmits the thought.

Now, you want “What problem have you had about a waterbuck?” Well, now this is what you want on the pc. You want the pc to figure out if he has ever had a problem about a waterbuck and you want him to state the problem about a waterbuck. But the pc knows that nobody can solve a problem and that you can't have problems and mustn't have problems and problems don't exist – and – and – problem.

Well look, you're not trying to run “problem.” You're not trying to educate the pc on the subject of problems. You're trying to get him straightened up on the subject of a waterbuck. Ah well, this is different then.

So it is what – what is a problem to the pc? What does communicate this idea of confusion and upset and inability to answer or something that is not easily answerable or something that'll put a little barrier on the track or you have to think about it for a moment. FORMATION OF COMMANDS 23  What communicates this to the pc?

So you say, “Well, confusion. Commotion.” And now you've got no guideposts. But let me call to your attention on a guidepost for this, you're only stepping a quarter of an inch off the trail.

You're not going into the trees very deeply. You'll come out and you'll find my signs again. I mean, you – you're not going to get lost.

Think at that point. Think and say “Problem. Problem is something that there are no answers for and it can't be answered.

So can't do problem. Commotion. Commotion.

Don't know anything about that. Upset. Yeah, I've heard of confusion.

Ron said confusion. Confusion. All right, confusion.

Problem. Can't run the command. So we'll just run it this way. 'What problem have you had about a waterbuck?”' The pc says, “Well, I know, but it's an unanswerable auditing command and you can't have a problem without a waterbuck.

Because I've never had any problems about a waterbuck because a problem is something you can't have.” And you say, “All right, well, can you answer the auditing question just for the formality of getting on with the session?” Well, you can run into that if you don't suddenly, you know, get the old screwdriver out and sort of tighten up the cogwheels and see – “Let's see, a problem. What is a problem to the pc? It's an upset, upset, a mess, a stinking row, a to-do, and so on.” Just say, well, “A stinking row.

An upset. A mess – a mess. You know?

A mess. Ha! Mess.

A to-do. A stinking row. A problem.

A confusion. A motion. A mess.

Look at that needle fly!” “All right. Well, could you answer this auditing command then? Now, I'm giving you the auditing command – .” I always warn pcs that way, by the way.

It isn't in Model Session, but I always warn them when I'm clearing an auditing command. “I'm not auditing you this first question. I don't want an answer to the question. I'm not giving it to you.” I tell them this seven or eight times because they know they're standing on the precipice ready to drop in.

See? And I kind of give them a little lifeline saying, “Well, you don't have to fall yet.” Now I say, “There it is.” And you say, “Well, can you answer this? 'What mess have you had about a waterbuck?”' “Oh, man, could I answer that. Well, that's easy.” “All right.

And can you answer the question 'What was unknown about that mess?”' “Well, everything. Yeah, well . . .” “You can answer that all right. All right.

That's fine. All right. 'What group did not believe in a waterbuck?”' “What group did not believe – believe in a waterbuck? What group did not believe – believe in a waterbuck.

Believe, believe. Believe in a waterbuck. Group believe . . .

Believe. Believe. Believe in a waterbuck.

Group believe . . .”  FORMATION OF COMMANDS 24  Well look, as an auditor, why are you sitting there? He obviously doesn't know what believe means or what you're talking about. So you say, “Well, how about '. . . wouldn't want a waterbuck?' Is that better?” “Wouldn't want a waterbuck.

Well, of course, no group would want a waterbuck.” He didn't clear the command. He just amplified it for you. But that's all right.

He okayed it. And so you go on down the line and you clean it up. And you finally have all your commands answerable, all your commands understood.

And then you say, “All right. Now, this little lifeline I've had on you up to this time that's preventing you from falling into the dreadful, Stygian dark – I am now cutting it. Here's the first auditing command.

Pow! What mess have you had about a waterbuck?” And if you do that, if you realize that commands are communication, not semantics, why, you will just cut the living daylights out of the amount of auditing time you put in on a pc. Okay?

Thank you.

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