View source for Opening Procedure of 8-C (7ACC 540726)

'''Series:''' 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)

'''Date:''' 26 July 1954

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

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Want to talk to you now about the Opening Procedure of 8-C.

This is a very, very interesting subject – a tremendously interesting subject. It's fascinating, utterly fascinating, exactly what you can do with a process which is apparently as permissive as Opening Procedure of 8-C.

Now, there's no need for me to go in, particularly, to the exact way that… It's all written up; you'll find it in Issue 24-G of the Journal of Scientology. But it is very fascinating the number of side effects which are cared for because you are processing straight toward simplicity.

We know that what is wrong with a person is his subjective universe. That has gotten into trouble. Now, in view of the fact that he could mock up a tremendous amount of space if he had to, he could mock up lots of energy, he could mock up objects and he could follow the same procedure all over again, why he's lugging around something called "his universe" is a little bit difficult for a reasonable man to understand. And yet people do this. A thetan gives a sort of – the idea of somebody walking around with a great many clanking chains all carefully hidden away, even from himself – old tin cans, old cigar butts, so forth. And these are possessions. It looks like a kid's toy box. If you've ever looked into a three-year-old's choicest possessions, that's strictly about the order of havingness that a thetan pulls.

Well, this is quite interesting because he gives them up with the greatest of reluctance. And yet he could make others. And his total health, you might say, is dependent upon his ability to make others – to have new, fresh things, to do almost anything he wants to with them. But remember, it was always very, very difficult for him to get an object into such a circumstance that it was actually somebody else's object. Do we see that? To procure an object which was somebody else's object is what he has to do in order to have that object.

Now, if we look at the four conditions of existence – the "is-es" – we will discover just exactly why. And these things are very valuable to him because they mean a period when he was actually in communication with thetans as such. And he could blame them, you see? And if he could blame them, then he could have something, and if he couldn't blame them, then he couldn't have anything unless he duplicated himself and so had another thetan in order to blame the other thetan for something or other. In this way he would get a persistence: he would get survival, then, in terms of motion. Otherwise, it would all seem completely motionless to him.

Now, again, all of these things are simply considerations. And in view of the fact that they're all considerations, we're enormously baffled as to how considerations could be so important. Remember they're only important because of the considerations which one held in common with others.

Now, it'd be one thing simply to change one's considerations all over the place, and it would be quite another thing to have a series of considerations which had been thoroughly agreed upon with others. And so your thetan with his old cigar butts, torn playing cards and clanking chains – he's been in communication, one time or another, and the system of communication was established and therefore he could have an other-determinism so true and so convincing that even he, you see, would not be able to question its convincingness. And therefore nobody could possibly question the validity of these objects which he's carrying around.

Now, you'll find out in some areas where thetans have been in concourse with nothing but thetans, there's such a thing as engram police. And there's all kinds of mechanisms that they use in order to steal mock-ups from each other, and it's really fabulous. They try to get an overt act done to them – in other words, get a motivator. Simply, then, they will have some reason to blame somebody else, you see, for having put that mass of energy there, and then that energy mass will persist. If they can't blame anybody else, why, it can too easily become an as-is and so disappear. Other-determinism becomes vital.

Now, when we look over this problem, then, we discover that an individual can go so far on this line and become himself disabled. How does he become disabled? He begins to count on other-determinism more and more and more heavily to produce his own survival. We see this in terms of attention: an individual in this society without any attention from anybody else would not have much chance of surviving. An individual just on the basis of food alone would have a great difficulty.

But he's gotten down to where those objects really have to be solid, and so we get this physical universe. And the particles of this physical universe are so beautifully lost, so completely confused, so misplaced away from their point of origin, that they can be subjected to a law in physics known as the conservation of energy: Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only be converted. Now, of course, anything that lost can only be converted, you see? Unless you discover the point where it was actually manufactured. And so this universe becomes valuable. It becomes valuable because we've gone to so much trouble to lose enough things so that we then have a continuance of objects.

Now, a thetan who has become upset about the various agreements and so on believes that he no longer can communicate with something. He is a nothingness, therefore he has to communicate with a nothingness, he thinks. The communication formula is at fault.

Here we have an individual who is living by the communication formula and yet cannot recover his own ability, easily, to follow the basic of communication, which is all things are on the same point. When you consider a consideration, you find out it doesn't have any dimension whatsoever and a thetan has no dimension whatsoever.

So he's gone to a lot of work to make a universe that's as heavy as this one. And he's blamed it all on God and he's blamed it all in various directions and he has made what amounts to a considerable investment – he has a big investment. And now he has gone so far that, having made this investment, he can no longer look at it because he has to follow the communications formula. He cannot occupy the same space as an object – two objects cannot occupy the same space – so, therefore, he is a body. He is not a thetan-plus-body, he is a body.

And every once in a while we run into some materialist in processing and just the barest thought, you see, that he is something else other than a body is completely, completely contradictory to him. It's utterly assaulting. You'd think that you would have held a gun on the man and asked him for his money or something. He'll become excited. "I am a body. I know I am a body. That is all I am. I am one!!" exclamation point, exclamation point. He gets real worried about it.

This person at the same time is liable to be that person you will run into who is most concerned with God. This is real curious, isn't it? Well, he has to have another determinism for responsibility. Also his field will be relatively black. No criticism of the individual, that's just the state he's in. Why? He knows two things can't occupy the same space! So obviously if he is there and the body is there, then he must be the body! That's the most elementary thing we could possibly put together! That's very observant, isn't it? Well, this individual has himself mocked up as something and is being something so thoroughly that he cannot disassociate himself. So you tell him to be three feet back of his head and he can't be three feet back of his head.

Now, we are processing something which has four parts. There is the the-tan and his machines – now, that's two parts. And the other parts are the body and its reactive bank. You see? Now, there are actually four parts. There's the reactive bank, a stimulus-response machine of some magnitude, and the body, which actually is capable of collecting an enormous amount of molecules and electrons and converting energy and doing all sorts of interesting things. Well, that's one unit. And the other unit is the thetan and his machines. But we're actually processing four things.

Now an auditor, occasionally, makes the gross error of processing one of these things not the thetan. See? He processes the reactive bank. This is a mistake today – I mean, the technologies which we have, and so forth, do not justify the processing of the reactive bank. Just doesn't justify it. So there's that many engrams. So there are that many engrams! Well, does this so assault our sensibilities, that these things exist, that we must vanquish and make every one of them disappear? Well, if he got another body, it'd have another reactive bank. And so what we want to do is improve the thetan's ability to handle reactive banks, to be in association with them or not, at will. That's what we want to improve, not knock out a whole reactive bank. You see, that'd be silly.

Now, the next thing: the body. An auditor comes along and he starts processing the body, the body, the body, the body, the body, the body. "Oh, my, our preclear. Look-it – he has a slight cold today! Uh-o-o-o-h-hh, wonderful! Now we've got something to process!"

Well, what kind of an auditor would this be? It'd be an auditor who had to have something. This auditor couldn't possibly have nothing, because he's actually processing nothing – he's trying to free a nothingness. And if he can't conceive of a nothingness, if he has to go in the direction of a somethingness – even though he is making nothing out of every somethingness he runs into (you know, with energy; a not-is) – this auditor, of course, will process straight at this case of sniffles. And you know what he'll do with that case of sniffles? He 'II have it next! But what's he doing processing a body? They're easy to make, patch up, do almost anything with – if a thetan is able.

All right, now, let's take this next thing: machines. Now, every once in a while some preclear has such an observable surplus of machinery that an auditor just can't stand leaving that machinery alone. He just can't stand it. He's got to get in there and get all of those mechanisms out of the road and get them all mopped up and wiped out and so forth. Next thing you know the thetan is very, very sad indeed. Because what would this thetan do? Look at all the years he's spent blaming this machinery on somebody else! Hm? He's got this little voice and it keeps piping up every time he says something, saying, "Heh, heh, that was a smart one, that was!" You know? And this little voice does this. And it's very worrisome to him. That's his mother's voice. So it's obviously his mother that's doing this. He made this machine a long time ago and put it off on somebody else. He even made a machine to make machines so that he wouldn't be responsible for it, and he even makes machines to add to his machines, the machine duplicates of other people. Oh, he's got complex machinery. But when you've gotten through processing all this machinery, what have you done? You've just processed some machinery. And it wasn't sick!

So we have these four major parts. And of these four parts, what are we trying to process? We're trying to process the thetan. Well, of course, he doesn't have any mass, but he can make space and he can make energy and he can locate objects in space. And he has certain very definite capabilities – very positive, definite capabilities. And by the improvement of these capabilities, we improve his ability to communicate. And so improving his ability to communicate, we make him able to handle not just the reactive bank he's mixed up with at the moment, not just the body he happens to be inhabiting or hanging around at the moment and certainly not his bank of machinery; we make it possible for him to handle large quantities of, well, other people's machinery and various other things. It's very interesting what he can do. But he cannot possibly be hung up on the basis of "two things can't occupy the same space" – he couldn't be hung up on that one. Another thing he mustn't – he couldn't be hung up on, if you're going to separate him easily, is that "it's all other-determined." You see, if it's all other-determined, then he would depend on other things to place him in space. And if he's depending on other things to place him in space, he will sit there and wait for the auditor to exteriorize him. But the auditor is not going to exteriorize him.

So our point of approach here is the thetan. Now, the easiest way to approach this is simply on make and break communication with the immediate environment.

Now, I'd better define environment: environment is the physical universe, security, gee whiz it's right there, it's solid, this is the space of the room, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the objects there, and if we happen to get looking through these things, then it's the walls in the next room and up through the roof, why, it's the air above the house and down through, it's the earth underneath the house. But this is still environment, you understand. And environment means "how far can this individual perceive with great certainty in the physical universe?" And that's what we're interested in when we say environment.

Now, we don't have the preclear in Chicago and, because he is an inhabitant of Iowa, then process him in the environment of Iowa. Now, this sounds too utterly stupid, that nobody could do this but, believe me, auditors have done this. Process him in the environment? Well, this fellow's environment was New Mexico, so they process him one state away. And what will they be processing? They'll be processing a set of facsimiles. Are we interested in this man's facsimiles? No, we're not.

Now, there's a direct ratio between the amount of facsimiles or energy masses a person has and his ability to communicate. There's a direct ratio between these two things. The more energy masses and more facsimiles which a person has, whether white or green or purple, or whether they're black curtains or actual, apparent, solid objects – we don't care what these are – the more energy mass the individual has, the worse off he is. It's a direct index.

This fellow, he runs a concept and gets a flow past his face. You know, he feels something moving past his face. Ah, we've got a case of energy masses. How did they get there? They got there by the thetan directing his attention in various directions, manufacturing energy the while. And you're going to process this case, as a preclear, this thetan, in such a way that he sprays out new energy masses around his body? Hm. That would be a curious thing, wouldn't it? And yet, you know, there are processes that you could run – not any listed in Intensive Procedure – which would lead an individual to immediately mock up more and more and more and more energy masses in the vicinity of his body. You could actually artificialize his condition. He's as well off as he doesn't have to have energy masses. He has to have energy masses to the degree that he believes he cannot create a space and energy. See? Now, it's a direct index.

So we find somebody who has large floating ridges, and that sort of thing, and this individual is having just that much difficulty – just that much; direct index. No question about it and no exceptions. Doesn't matter what manifestation we're exhibiting at the particular moment: a person is as bad off as he has these energy masses which are not placed but are floating. You could say they're floating energy masses, because everywhere he walks he's got them.

Now, he's as well off as he can simply take or leave the walls and other items of the physical universe where he finds himself. See, he can take them or leave them; see them or not see them at will. Now, he's well off when he can do that.

Now, what process would you tailor up in order to accomplish this? Well, you could just simply have a preclear sitting in a chair and looking around the room spotting spots. You know, you just spot spots in the wall and spot spots and spot spots, spot spots. It's a fantastic technique; it'll do quite a bit for a preclear. Just have him sit there and look at the walls and spot spots.

Well, actually, you can start adding to this the moment that you have him get up and walk around and pick out the spots and touch them and then break communication with them. And 8-C is actually a gradient scale, and 8-C's Opening Procedure is a gradient scale of getting this done.

There is an additional process that could go along with this: You could make him close his eyes and have him start checking off spots in the environment. The case that has had his perception turn on very fully and then promptly turn off – and it's never been on since – has practically scared himself out of his wits. See, his perception turned on and that was too much isness; he could see everything too clearly. And this made him nervous, it upset him, it disturbed his thetan digestion; and has made him very, very unhappy.

And what is this? This is just simply a case of too much, and he said, "It isn't!" See? He said, "Not-is!" and took a look at all this environment and said, "Dull down. Get real dull. It better be unreal around here. It's just too bright, it's too loud," and so on.

Well, what happens if we have this person sitting there in the chair with his eyes shut and we just have him look around the room? You know, have him look around and spot spots in the room. All right, a facsimile shows up. We just have him go on spotting spots in whatever he can see, which is – we're still heading at the room; we don't suddenly stop and say, "Oh, you've got a lot of blackness; let's spot some spots in the blackness." No, you just keep hounding him for some sort of a perception of the room. That's what you want. And he keeps spotting spots in the room and spotting them and spotting them and spotting them and spotting them. Just that and no more – spotting them behind him, above him, below him. If you don't watch him a little bit, he'll spot them all in front of him. You've got to direct his attention behind. A thetan has a 360-degree periphery of vision. There is no "Get thee behind me, thetan," situation.

Now, here we have in a thetan, then, a possibility that the moment he really saw the room, he'd turn it off again. That right? He'd flinch. Well, the funny part of it is, they do. They do flinch. And then you keep right on processing the room. You see what this would be? I mean, they'd flinch, their perception would go off and you just take it from there and have him spot spots in the room. So he says his perception is all off. Well, you just have him find something he can perceive.

If he says," I think it's a facsimile. I don't know what it is, really. It doesn't seem to me to be terribly real," yap, yap, yap, yap.

You just say, "Spot some more spots."

Now, in other words, we could go at this, then, on this basis: We just simply have a fellow, a preclear, close his eyes and start spotting spots in the room. And the auditing commands that go along with it, "All right," and you'd say, "Just close your eyes. Okay. Now, let's spot some spots in the room."

"Oooh," the fellow says," I can – what do you mean 'close my eyes and spot

"Well, can you see anything when you've got your eyes shut there?"

"No! Of course not!"

"Well, why don't you look around? Do you get an impression of anything?"

"Hmmm. Well, what do you know! It's all black." He never noticed this before.

You say, "Well, all right, how about this, now? You say it's all black. Well, is there any place that's thinner? You know, behind you, for instance, or above you or below you? Do you make out anything at all about this room?"

"No."

"Well, as you're sitting there with your eyes closed, do you know the location of anything in this room?"

"Yeah. Well, I know where my body is." Of course, a case like this would probably assert to you violently, if they weren't prepared otherwise, to tell you that they were a body, they had always been a body, they would always be a body, they've never been anything else but a body, that you live but once. And they would also tell you that during their study of Korzybski's Science and Sanity, they agreed with him utterly that two things could not occupy the same space. They tell you all these things. It'd be a very informative conversation if you let him proceed. You only let him proceed on such a conversation, by the way, long enough to keep the two-way communication going. Then you get him doing something. "All right," you'd say, "well, do you know of the location of any object in this room?"

And the fellow says," Well, there's a table right over there. I know that."

"Well, why don't you look at it?"

And if you don't catch him real quick, why, his eyes will pop open, of course, and he will stare at it. But you keep him with his eyes closed. And he knows there's a table over there and you say, "All right, spot some spots in it."

"I can't possibly spot any spots in the table if I can't see it."

"Do you know it's there?"

"Yes, I know it's there. I saw it when I came in."

"Well, all right. Spots some spots in it."

"But I'll have to open my…"

"Go ahead and spot some spots on that table."

He finally does. And it starts to get a tattletale gray around him, and then it flickers on and it flickers off and perception comes on and all of a sudden he's aware of the fact that it's all real. And then he convulsively shuts off all of his perception, then he lets it turn on again, and then he shuts it off again, then he flinches in this way and flinches in that way. Why? He knows it's dangerous to look at things. He knows that. He knows, again, it is dangerous to communicate. He shuts it off before something else shuts it off. See? He's there ahead of them. But after it goes on and comes off and goes on and comes off a few times, it's liable to be more and more upsetting to him all the time. It's because it's liable to be getting more and more real. The room is liable to be getting more and more real, more and more solid.

Now, if you let him continually and completely fly out through the doors and the walls, and so on, and let him spot at unreal distances (such as spotting at a thousand yards for somebody who, actually, if he hadn't come to you for processing, he would have been using a tin cup shortly and a pair of dark glasses and some pencils). This character, and so forth, spotting at a thousand yards – oh yeah? A thousand millimeters would be much too great, and three millimeters is about what he can tolerate. So we keep him in the immediate environment – and we mean the physical universe when we say environment, and we mean objects that he's fairly sure are there – and we just work him on that basis. And the first thing you know, why, the walls will start to disappear, and then they'll flicker on again and they'll flicker off, and it gets more and more real, and he gets upset about it, and then he becomes calm about it and he goes through a lot of variations. Doing what? Just sitting right where he's sitting – and you don't care where that is – spotting spots in the room, whether the room is black, green, purple or whether he's got facsimiles that he's really spotting or not. We don't care what this preclear is doing as long as he continues to spot spots.

If he's got a facsimile sitting there and he shifts his attention on the facsimile, he'll let go of it. You see? If he's really just spotting into blackness, and so forth, if he's really changing his perception direction, you see, why, boom! He'll start looking through the blackness. If you have him look at the blackness and spot spots in the blackness, you are validating these masses of energy I mentioned to you. And a thetan is as bad off as he has them. What he's witnessing with all of these possessions and masses of energy is his own inability to really mock up something and have it belong to somebody else. That's what he's witnessing when he can't do it. So, there is that process.

Now, out of these two processes you can do Opening Procedure of 8-C. But you can also do Opening Procedure of 8-C with the thetan, without moving the body. You can have the thetan touch things in the room. But actually, you don't have him touch things and let go, you have him look at and look away. And you can carry through all the steps of the room by more or less drilling the thetan in the room, preclear sitting there with eyes closed. And this becomes a tremendously workable procedure. Actually, its most simple form is just tell him to close his eyes. If he knows of any object in the room at all while he has his eyes closed, spot spots in it.

Now, the classic group example of this is a very simple one. And that is: three spots in the body, three spots in the room, three spots in the body; you have him spot three spots in the body, three spots in the room and three spots in the body, three spots in the room, back and forth. And at the end of this time, at the end of an hour's group processing on perfectly green people of a bunch of twenty, something like this, you will have four or five of them exteriorized – usual run of people that you run into, unless you're dealing, of course, with mystics 100 percent of the time. That's a little more difficult.

Now, 8-C done with the body, however – 8-C done with the body and with no further tricks with its most elementary auditing commands as given in Intensive Procedure's text – is the only process… Oh, please, mark this one down, please remember this: It's the only process which can be safely employed and beneficially employed on psychotics, neurotics and people with psychosomatic illnesses. Let's put that down. And recognize that when a preclear comes in with a psychosomatic illness, he has already determined exactly the processing he's going to get.

And I call your attention to the Chart of Human Evaluation, to the place where it says "Neurological and endocrine ills." Well, that's where they sit on psychosomatic ills. It's down below 2.0 on the tone scale. And they are physically off their base. And what it takes, and what will make that psychosomatic ill go away, is Opening Procedure of 8-C. And it'll cure psychotics and it'll cure neurotics, because in essence it is a purity of communication and is a very simple process to use. But that doesn't mean that you don't have to be an artist to use it.

Okay.

OPENING PROCEDURE OF 8-C PAGE 2 7ACC-31A - 26.07.54

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[[Category:Lectures 1954]]