View source for Responsibility (AC 571231)

'''Series:''' Ability Congress (AC)

'''Date:''' 31 December 1957

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

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How are you today?

Audience: Fine.

Did you survive?

Audience: Yes.

You survived your morning's auditing?

Audience: Yes.

Well good. Now I hope that - I hope you are all in very good shape. However, if you aren't we have a 12 ½ -hour intensive just for those who collapsed or did something here in this Group Processing.

And if you see Mary Sue why I'm sure she'd do something for you.

But the point is that you were using very mild processes but they are quite effective - quite effective.

The trouble with Scientology today is the mildest we have makes an atom bomb look like a faint Chinese ladyfinger firecracker, you know go pfsst. That's for true. A lot of people think their case needs dynamite, you know, they think their case should be exploded or something of the sort. They have that feeling. They say „In order to get into good shape, why I'd practically have to blow up!“ That's right.

As the first thing that I'd like to do today, I'd like to introduce to you the staff of the Central Organization in Washington, D.C. And first of course, your congress manager and the Organization Secretary, Dr. Vic Dean. And this young lady you know, this is Mary Sue Hubbard. And this is HCO Secretary, Millie Dean. She's going to play the organ to get you out of here when the congress is over. You have to be versatile to be an HCO Secretary, she says. And this is Jackie St. Ann, Comm Course instructor. How are you Jackie? And this is Smokey Bland. Smokey here is a staff auditor, and he's the boy that built this with some help from some others, but he built this crook neck that you saw the first day. And he had to come out and pilot it himself, so's you better not be building rockets. Thank you. And this is Judy Breeding. And this is Dick Halpern. And this is Dr. Jan Halpern.

Now any of you that are smart enough or luckless enough to be part of the nineteenth ACC will be totally mislead. You think this little, white hand here is little and white. Wait 'til you feel it on the back of your neck when you do wrong. Thank you.

And this is Dr. Glen Elliot. And this is Bonnie Turner, HCO. And this is Gordon Bell. Thank you Gordon. And this is Jack Horner. Hi Jack.

From Audience: Hi!

This is Phil Talent. And he's the reason you've been getting all of your books on time lately. Thank you. And this is Eleanor Eddy. Thank you. There's Mr. Slaughter, who does a good job for us. And this is Al Cozak.

Now those of you that are lucky enough at this season of the year to be living in Florida will probably be seeing a lot of Al. Is that right, that you're taking over that territory?

From Audience: That's possible, yes.

Yeah, well he's taken over that territory, so you've got it made. OK.

And this Larry Michele, staff auditor. And this is Kathy Talent, who does a good job on staff auditing. And this is Gene Townley on staff as auditor. And this is Dr. John Galusha, who has been around. He's very suspicious. He doesn't know quite what I'm going to say now. He's been around probably longest of any staff, and he came back to us. He's now Director of Training, and doing a terrific job. Thank you John.

And this is Rosina Mann, formerly; used to be on London staff, and she was so good that we borrowed her and got her over here. And this is May Garringer. And this is Barney Bossick. Bill Lawrence. I'll show you how big this organization is. This boy's been on staff and working hard, organizing Washington here for weeks, and I can't tell the difference between him and Gordon Bell. They've gotten in each other's valence on this one project. Thank you.

And this gentleman is one of our newer staff members. He's been into more mischief lately. There are more people, there are more people in the opposition who wishes he weren't around, but we're glad he's around. This is Dr. Ken Barrett.

And this is my daughter, Kay Hubbard. And this is a gentleman who takes care of press, Paul Twitchell. And this is Johann Templehouse. Most of those PAB books back there were edited by Johann, and there's several other books and a couple of new ones there. They've all seen his light touch, and also a lot of your PABs are edited by him. So if you can read what I say, Johann is to blame. Thank you.

And this is Marilyn Rootsong.

Do you know who he is?

Audience: No.

No. Burt Belnap. And right now the tape recorders are probably grinding, grinding, grinding into dust without any attention, 'cause this is Don Breeding. Now Don is not our electronic man, he's a staff auditor. He's just a volunteer on electronics now. > We actually got him out of electronics. Thank you.

And last, and very far from least, this is Nibs, my son. Thank you. Thank you very much. Got quite a staff, haven't we? That's quite a staff.

And this organization, for all the things it's doing, is understaffed. Enormously understaffed. Nearly every one of those people is wearing two or three hats. Any one of their hats would be considered a full time job by anybody else. We have found, oddly enough, that only a very good auditor and good Scientologist can survive in most of the staff posts. That's an interesting fact. And when we have to put somebody in an executive position we look at his auditing skill, because that is a direct index of what he can do. That's a little less than you should take in throwing organizations together. If he can't audit, watch out. Something we have learned over the years.

Ordinary business would go slightly mad trying to handle the volume and the variety of things that we handle, number of projects we get into, and the things we do. And it's, homo sapiens couldn't do it. So we've had to do something rather extra. I'm not exaggerating it, this is actually the truth.

The complexity of a Scientology organization is almost the complexity of a civilization. The only thing we do not have at the moment is somebody in charge of the galley. We just don't have that particular post covered, but we will have very shortly.

Like to talk to you today about numerous things and somehow or other I have got to get four or five hours of lecture into the next two hours and forty-five minutes. So if I speed up and the words sort of start jamming, why start frowning at me.

Probably every nationality has a weak spot. The British undoubtedly have a weak spot, undoubtedly. The Spanish have a weak spot; the Italians have a weak spot. But Americans don't have any weak spots, do they?

I'll tell you what the biggest weak spot is in America. Would you like to know about that?

Audience: Sure, yeah.

First we have to look at an interesting principle: That anything you put on automatic, you then become irresponsible for. Anything which is put into a category where you can no longer control it and have nothing further to do with it, goes out of your reach, out of your attention and becomes a disability.

Now, I said the other day that a thetan was putting up his own mental image pictures and didn't know he was doing it. Well, the way he manages that is to put up an automaticity out here someplace; he mocks up something called Joe that he still feeds but doesn't control and this thing keeps feeding him his own pictures. Of course, he himself is making his own pictures but it is via this and he says, „I have no further responsibility for this over here.“ Do you understand that? We call that an „automaticity“ in Scientology.

For instance, an automobile will probably be a thing of curiosity in another thirty or forty or fifty years. Certainly it will probably be something that nobody ever sees and possibly nobody knows anything about.

Why? Because the automobile is being set up as an automatic transportation device which takes the driver and the passengers places. The accident rate increases to the degree that automobiles become automatic. Now, this I'm not talking through my hat, mainly because I am not wearing one. I'm not stretching this - it - what I tell you is true.

The more a thing handles somebody, the less he handles it. You got that? So this automobile that changes people's position in space eventually will become uncontrollable, the accident rate goes up, up, up. Now, the way to cut an accident rate is not to tell people they are going to have accidents. That is simply a postulate to kill them. It would be to make people take an automobile from point A to point B and never be taken by an automobile from point A to point B.

It was very interesting. I had a Jaguar. It's gone now; it is over in Ceylon. And Mary Sue didn't like it. She didn't like it; it had a gearshift. She'd never seen a car in her whole life or driven one that had a gearshift. That's right. She had no cognizance of gearshifts. And this thing was a right-hand drive and you had to fool with the gearshift over here. And as a result - as a result she didn't like this car. Until one fine day I told her, „You have to take a Jaguar down the road. You have to take it around corners. You have to take it up to higher speeds and drop it down to lower speeds.“ So she says, „What do you know?“ And she took the car out at once, and took it down the road, and took it around corners and took it higher and took it lower and so forth, and all of a sudden, why she could handle and control a Jaguar; it was no longer handling and controlling her. I don't think she has ever gotten back into the sloppy habit of being taken places by an automobile.

But if somebody didn't know that, eventually he would be sitting there and something would be steering, but it wouldn't be him. Got this? And that's the way you get more accidents. Something has been put on automatic and disaster follows, because an irresponsibility sets in.

All those things then that are put on automatic in this fashion - one becomes irresponsible for. And in America we have become irresponsible for those things which are built into our national life on automatic. The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, democracy. That's it - it's an automaticity.

It was set up by a fellow by the name of George Washington; Ben Franklin helped him. Tom Jefferson, the rest of these boys, they did a good job. And as long as any of that crew was alive, there were - some life in this machinery. Right?

And here and there up the line somebody has injected some life in the machinery. But listen, in America we have all the laws for freedom, and we don't have the freedom. And in Europe they don't have any of the laws for freedom, and they have freedom. You get this?

Now, this is an interesting condemnation of national life, and I am not going out on the line to tell you that America is all bad. It is not. A country is neither good nor bad; it is able or unable.

And a disability sets in when you no longer have responsibility for national functions - you become unable as a democracy. This is the greatest danger that faces the United States, not an A-bomb.

Hardly any American - this is his weak spot - will - but will tell you this utter asininity, „Somebody's taking care of it.“

You say „Civilian defense; there is no civilian defense. You say what the devil is the idea of courting war with Russia without organizing a civilian defense?“ And most of the people you talk to about that, you go right down the line and one right after the other they'll tell you, „Somebody's taking care of it.”

I talked to a couple of engineers not long ago, and these two fellows were very interested in rocketry and they were doing work in rocketry. And I said, „Do you boys have an orifice pressure table yet?“ I knew they didn't have one fifteen years ago, and I wondered if they had gotten one since. And these two fellows looked at me and fatuously said „Oh, I am sure somebody is taking care of it.“

Do you know what they use for a rocketry orifice pressure table that sends off their Vanguards and Snarks and Corporals? Do you know what they use? They use the hose-kick table of the Chicago Fire Department! That's still in use; I saw a copy of it the other day. Only now they pretend it is a rocketry-kick table, foot-pounds of thrust. How big does the hole in the end of the rocket have to be, and how fast should the velocity of reaction be in order to get an optimum take-off. That is what I mean by „orifice pressure,“ and they still use the Chicago Fire Department hose table.

The hose table goes in reverse. The firemen don't want a hose to kick, so they've worked it out so as to get the minimum kick for the size of the nozzle and the velocity of the water. And we wonder why Vanguard wouldn't take off.

Well, it's not quite as simple as this and maybe it isn't quite as bad as this; maybe there is somebody or another who has gotten an appropriation for figuring out the orifice pressure table.

But this feeling that „Somebody else is taking care of it“ will someday find this country lying under a large gravestone. It's built into the national life of the country.

The rights are guaranteed: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion. They're guaranteed utterly, you don't have to do a thing about them.

Listen, if they are only in print, and nobody is making sure those rights exist, they cease to exist; and they are ceasing to exist right now.

When you say that „the people of the United States shall choose the president of the United States,“ how long has it been since anybody came around and asked you who you wanted for president? They give you a couple of lunks neither one of which you'd have as office boy, and say „Which one of these do you want to vote for?“ Oh, no. This is government by representation.

Yes, I know, I am picking on the United States mighty hard. But the United States just yesterday was the light of the world; and just today is talking about becoming a second-class power! What would make her this second-class power?

Just one thing - the political life of the country is on automatic. The third dynamic here is on automatic and there is a tremendous unwillingness on the part of individual Americans to take responsibility for any other person than himself, because it's all by law guaranteed that everybody will take care of everybody else; but one doesn't have to take care of anybody. Do you got it?

Now, that sounds awfully harsh, and you may back up and say „Well, Ron is really taking his finger off of his number these days.“

But it is a little disheartening to go out and swap lead with a bunch of stupid jerks like John Foster Dulles losing the war before it is ever fought. One can get bitter about things like this. Good men lay down their lives to keep an enemy off our shores and then somebody works all day and all night to lose the peace. How could anybody permit him to? Just one thing: „Somebody else will take care of it.“

Now, it works this way: „Me and my little vote, me and my little vote couldn't possibly influence the course of the federal government. Me and my little vote are insignificant in the face of this overwhelming something or other.“

They used to tell us that „The United States Navy was too big; it couldn't be efficient anymore.“ It couldn't be efficient because it was too big. The US government can't be controlled because it is too big.

There is only one thing that enfranchises the federal government and that is the United States people. And when those people are no longer able to take responsibility for others than themselves, then there is no further a democracy here. There will be a totalitarianism, or a socialism or some new -ism, but there won't any longer be a United States of America, a democratic nation.

What is this all about? Well, this is backing up the hearse, isn't it? But don't you think the hearse has been backed up rather rapidly here in the last few weeks or months? We actually have been skirting on the edge of war ever since Eisenhower was reelected. We have somebody who is probably the worst hated American abroad kept thoroughly in office, who the other day said, „No, I will not help the Dutch in Indonesia.“ And the communists came right on along and picked it up.

Do you know what the communists do with a country? Do you know what sort of an economy communism is? It is such a bad economy, such a bad slave economy that inflation undreamed of in any other land, such as ours, demands that nation after nation has to be gobbled up so that it can be gutted! They can not produce in Russia enough food, enough clothing, enough shoes. A slave economy never can produce these things.

How do they keep living? By eating Red China! By starving the satellites more than they themselves are starved - and that is how they keep going. An interesting thing.

If you could see Russia as sort of a vacuum that must have new conquests continually in order to go on living, you will then understand more about the international political situation, I am afraid, than Dr. Dulles.

A lawyer always has an odd idea of property. Property is something that is in the lap of the Gods and at the issuance of the court. A lawyer, when he sees property, normally sees it in transit, in litigation and so forth. The property of the Dutch in Indonesia was the property of the Dutch. And lawyer Dulles said, „Well, we'll keep our hands off of Indonesia“ and now you will see in the next few weeks the communists again bolstering their tottering inflationary economy by taking everything there is in Indonesia and shipping it back home to Russia. Just like Franklin Delano let them take everything in Manchuria and ship it back to Russia. Just as they let them take everything in East Germany and ship it back to Russia.

You talk about locusts. Since the days of Ghengis Khan or before, these people have never acted differently than as a vacuum of goods. The campaigns of Ghengis Khan and these campaigns against Indonesia and so forth, differ only as a political conquest differs from a military conquest.

All right here's this tremendous amount of goods that sat in Indonesia; they have now been appropriated to the Indonesian government. But where do they go now? The little people of Indonesia, one of these fine days, will wake up and somebody will be coming by with a truck taking away their hoes and shovels. Oh, you say, that's kind of weird. What do you mean? Well, if they don't leave them hoes and shovels to work with how will they get any other produce. That's a problem the Russians have never solved and that is their national weakness; that you have got to let somebody else breathe in order to get production!

And the Russian thinks that if you just sit on somebody else's head hard enough and don't let him breathe then you get production!

This is a war of production that is going on right now, and every piece of goods that is permitted to fall into Russian hands, from whatever source, simply bolsters an economy which very well might collapse in the next few months! It is a day-to-day proposition.

A bellhop in Russia gets no more money than a bellhop here; but eggs are two and three dollars apiece, and you might be able to get two a week. If you got a new pair of shoes a year you are in a capitalistic class. These people are starving to death.

When any worker gets home, the kids always ask, „Did you bring anything to eat this time?“ These people work hard. The Russian says, „Oh, well, you should have economies that everybody - everybody can come along, you know, and they all pool the goods and we'll all be rich and wealthy.“ Well, they've never gotten rich and wealthy on this theory.

Europe has long since learned that only private enterprise and the freeing of individuals can bring about a successful economy; and Europe long since let go of its slaves, but Russia hasn't yet; she is still operating on this economy.

That whole state would collapse if she could get no further goods from conquered satellites. This maybe is to you a brand-new view of Russian economy.

Well, are we going any such route? Yes, we're going such a route, but we're going the route of „I couldn't do anything. Poor little me with my insignificant vote against this huge automaticity. I can't do anything.“

Well, look, if you don't do anything, nothing is going to get done. There is nobody else to do it.

It has been built into this society that it is a bad thing to take responsibility for any other person than yourself; that's built into this American state just by this dependency for freedom on this automaticity. Automaticities die out, remember, they don't serve you forever.

„Willingness to take responsibility from some other but than myself.“ And boy does this process on an American. Now, the Englishman is not quite this way; he's different, just a little bit different than the American. Fascinatingly so, because you say, „Is there anyone you don't have to take responsibility for.“ And he'll respond better. The darned fool has taken responsibility for everybody to such a degree that you can't get him out of group sessions. You just - it's rough.

Just let a bunch of Britishers get together and discuss an issue. Oh, no! You will be there until two or three o'clock in the morning trying to get this thing thrashed out, because everybody takes responsibility for the issue.

Well, there is nothing bad about this at all, and it is probably the only reason they are still afloat.

They don't have democracy on automatic. Somebody put a short dirk into the throat of King John while Old Yea and Nay was off to the Crusades. And he says, „Johnny, sign here. Sign here.“ And they've had to fight for it ever since. I think they got it in the first place as a Roman tradition. I think it's probably the only place in the world where Roman ethics and political philosophy still exist without much alteration. The Anglo-Saxons tried to knock it over, the Jutes, the rest of the people that came in there have tried to squash this down. The Normans have come in, everybody has tried to make a slave out of the Englishman, and he is the least slavish fellow you ever ran into in your life. It's quite interesting, quite interesting.

A fellow who carries coal up the steps, the guy that waits on you in the restaurant - none of these people consider themselves slaves. But one of these days an American is going to consider himself a slave, one of these days, because his freedom is on automatic; and because he has been carefully taught that he should take care of number one.

America holds in question anyone who would help her. And if you look over her history, you will find out that she has a national habit of killing off anyone who would come to her assistance. She owes an A-bomb to oh, several hundred scientists, but some of the key scientists who built that A-bomb have today been kicked out of the government - for subversion? No, no, it's not subversion to open your mouth. They have been kicked out for one reason only. I am afraid it's because they helped.

You look over America's history along this line, you'll find out that it is a bad one. This is a stupidity.

Now, we can talk straight from the shoulder here with no thought of real criticism for this reason: We can do something about it. The willingness to take responsibility for somebody other than yourself is at the root of every successful marriage. Why do we have all of these divorces in the United States? Why is this level of divorce so high?

And why, by the way, for another reason other than automaticity, is the level of auto accidents so high? Hmm? Maybe all of these things have got the same root: „Don't take responsibility for the other guy.“ It's just low pan-determinism, that's all.

I usually drive five cars at once: My own car, the car behind, the car ahead, the car coming in from the right and the car coming in from the left. If you don't drive all five of 'em - it's very easy to do in this country, it's not hard - it's not so easy to do in France. But it is rather easy to do in this country; there is seldom anybody else at the wheel.

Ah, yes, I am undoubtedly being very critical, but I'm being critical for a reason. Do you want to know why somebody is failing consistently in his marriage. It's because he is unwilling to take responsibility for others than himself. You want to know why somebody is failing consistently on the job. It's because he is unwilling to take responsibility for anybody in the office or any other jobs in the office but himself

You want to know why somebody is a bit antisocial, he can't get along with people. It's because he will not take responsibility for others than himself You want to know why somebody doesn't organize a group or carry it along? It is because he is unwilling to take responsibility for others than himself

Now, when we get up to a national disaster such as an atom bomb and this thing is posed to us, it tends to make „only ones“ out of any population. So at this particular moment in American history, this trait which might have ridden along all right, is not being tremendously accentuated, because the atom bomb tends to make „only ones“ out of all of us. We say „How could I possibly even vaguely influence any sensible course of action?“ And it is accentuated that you have no control over the international policy of your country. Because if it was left up to you, any one of you in this audience, you would say, „Scrap the damn things!“ You'd say, „Well, let's get ahold of Russia, let's get ahold of the other countries, and let's take them all out and find a deep part of the ocean and drop them in; and then utterly forbid any further manufacture of fission for any reason whatsoever.“ I am sure you would propose something like this if it was left up to you! But you know what you would propose; and you see this huge automaticity that nobody is in charge of called the government, doing quite the opposite; and you therefore consider yourself powerless on the third dynamic and you drop back into even more of an only one characteristic.

But listen, if somebody doesn't say it, and if you don't say it, it will never be done!

Now, you say, if each one rose up en masse and said this and expressed it as a „will of the people,“ it would go across. Oh, no, there is nobody cares anything about the will of the people. It's you! The will of the people isn't a live breathing thing, it can't eat or sleep. It breaks down to you.

And therefore the solution of our national problems, I'm afraid, is not possible outside the realm of Scientology. Man doesn't know enough about it.

When you have an atom bomb making everybody an only one, the threat of total destruction, and then you tend to say „I couldn't.“ But supposing you could say - any one of you, and every one of you - could say, „I can do something about this.“

Well, I'll tell you something very esoteric and very magical about the whole thing. If you thoroughly ran out the idea that an atom bomb could affect you, and if you established the idea that you could affect the atom bomb, you could probably stand (this is the reductio ad absurdum of this) in the middle of an atomic blast and never even get your hair parted.

A living thing has to make up its mind that it can be harmed by something before it can be harmed by it. You have to carry with you the seeds of your own destruction before you can be hurt by anything. You have to make up your mind that you can be hurt by an automobile before you can be hurt by an automobile. You have to give your consent to be destroyed, even to get a cut finger.

I'll show you an interesting little experiment. Sometime take the hair of your arm, ladies don't have any hairs in their arm - and take a pair of clippers or a scissors and just run it over those hairs and watch them. It's very magical, the clippers cut the hair. „Oh,“ you say, „this is the most routine thing, I mean, of course, the hardness of the shears and the hardness of the hair when compared to-.“ You figure it all out by energy and mathematics and a whole bunch of goof buffoonery; but the truth of the matter is if there is nothing there but knowingness, the hair has to know it can be cut by the shears before it parts; and there are all sorts of things that can't be cut by things. There are all sorts of substances that cannot be cut by substances. Well, none of these substances know that the other substance can harm it, and that's why it can't happen.

Why is it that almost unlimited tonnage of TNT can be dropped upon a city and still find people alive in it? It's very probable they made up their minds they couldn't be hurt by bombs. How is it that they could pull people out of the rubble in Tokyo - this tremendous shattering blast that destroyed the whole center of the city - and how is it that they found so many people alive in the middle of that city? Obviously an atomic bomb with its heat, fury, fragmentation, fire blast and everything else - the fire storm - naturally would let no living thing live.

Well, this is very peculiar and one of the things that I've always been amazed about in areas of destruction and I know something about areas of destruction, is the fact that there are a lot of guys standing right there in the path of the thing and they're still alive! You say well, this is the way we have figured it: If the disaster had been worse, they would have been dead. We have no proof of that at all, they're not dead. That would be only thing that proved it, don't you see?

Well, let's take this thing of responsibility further. In order to handle an atom bomb and not have it handle you, you would have to take responsibility for it; you'd have to flatten it as a problem. You'd have to take responsibility for that atom bomb. And if you say, „That is that horrible automaticity over there, and this is poor, little, old weak me way back here.“ Boy, can it eat you up - chomp, chomp.

If you were in a state of mind where you said, „Me here and that poor little old atom bomb there,“ why it would go Boom! And you would pat it on the top of its burst and say, „Nice little atom bomb. A cute toy for the kids.“

Now, I'll tell you there is some interesting proofs of all this. A problem of comparable magnitude; the willingness to take responsibility for - same thing.

We take a married couple, they've always been fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting. Well, the fighting seems to be mostly from the wife, and she is just chewing the husband up something fierce. And we take the husband, not the wife, we don't influence her national life at all; and we would process the husband on problems of comparable magnitude to the wife, and finish it off with „What about the wife could he be responsible for?“ That is a hot process! And she stops raising hell with him.

But wait a minute, we didn't process the wife, we processed the husband. Well, you could say, „Well, in view of his - in view of his changed behavior, he was probably courteous to her, probably didn't fight with her, probably didn't invite it any more, he probably - actions and so forth.“ Oh, I swear we can trace this in vain and we still can't find a real reason why; he is doing mostly the same things or worse!

So in one such test case, he was always in trouble if he got home five minutes late. So I made sure that he not only got home five minutes late, but every once in a while, four or five hours late! And you know what happened, the wife went on being kind, sweet and considerate about the whole thing. But we hadn't processed her!

I'll give you another example. There was a fellow that the cops picked up down in Union Station, and he was always being picked up by cops. He was a well dressed young man, but the cops would come along and they'd pick him up. This was his fate. And we processed him on problems of comparable magnitude to cops and „What about cops he could take responsibility for,“ and you know what happened? He hasn't been picked up since.

Now, that's an interesting state of affairs; how to influence something without doing anything to it? Hmm. So this lecture I gave you about knowingness and so forth was not necessarily off the groove here. How to do something to it? Well, the funny part of it is you've always felt that if you knew about something it couldn't do anything to you. You've had an idea that there's some knowingness entered into this cause and effect on things, right? You just kind of knew it, why it wouldn't, you know?

Well, it's a very special kind of knowingness that you actually are looking for. It is a knowingness that you can survive in spite of it. But higher than that, knowing that you do not have to be killed, maimed or injured or thrown off course by it. Do you understand that? The knowingness is that you're okay where it is concerned.

Now, in some weird and peculiar way you can influence the behavior of such things as governments, atomic bombs and other things with regard to you on the first dynamic. But that's just you.

What would happen if you were willing to take responsibility on a much broader sphere? If you were willing to take responsibility for others than yourself And you had no conquering fear of atomic bombs; you had no great fear of other things, of political upsets, of inflation or something of the sort. And you were taking responsibility for other people.

Well, if you were willing to do that, I am afraid that you would spread a mantle over these people which would protect them too. And that's a third dynamic.

One of the manifestations of the third dynamic is just that. Do you understand that? Quite weird - the mechanics of this sort of thing. It actually defies a reasonable explanation. Only in Dianetics and Scientology would we be able to even have language enough to talk about these things.

It used to be if you had a charm or an amulet given to you by the witch doctor then the ghosts couldn't get you. Do you get that sort of thing? Well, that was a deterioration for you having direct responsibility for the object yourself. Something that is nine times better than a witch doctor's charm or a political vote is a confidence that you can be an effect to it, that you can affect it, and that it can't harm you. Now that is the only efficacy of a charm, an amulet, a luck piece.

I did an interesting experiment here a few days on the subject of luck. Could you vary luck? I am sure that we can vary luck these days. I said, „You know, I haven't had any breaks lately. I haven't had any good breaks.“ We used to talk about „breaks“ in the writing business all the time, you know. And I just haven't had any good breaks lately.

So I said, „Well, that's just a matter of making up your mind to have some good breaks.“ So I made up my mind to have some good breaks. In the ensuing week I sold a movie and had a heck of a lot of other things happen, all of which were unexpected. Then I forgot about it. But I just made up my mind that I was going to have good luck for a few days - breaks.

Responsibility, the willingness to take responsibility for things - how do you achieve that as an auditor? It isn't something you just have to make up your mind about.

Poor old Gautama Buddha actually had a rough time with this. He said all you have to do is conceive mind essence and you got it made; but if you start conceiving a static you get sick as a pup. So the answer lies someplace shallower than that deep dive.

Let's look at this. Is there a process which immediately takes over this sort of thing? Yes, there is several processes; we are rich in such processes. We would run a process that more or less ran as follows if we wanted to totally exhaust a particular subject. Now, remember that you run all such processes against terminals. You run all such processes against terminals.

First, you have the preclear invent a problem. If he can do that you have him invent a problem worse than the terminal you've selected out. It has to be a terminal, not an idea or a condition. „Invent something worse than Mama. Invent something worse than an atomic bomb.“ Anything you care to, see, but it has to be a terminal.

Your next step when you've got that sort of flat is, „Invent a problem of comparable magnitude to the terminal.“ And then finally, „Something about the terminal for which you could be responsible.“ And if you run those, you've run the whole cycle.

You first run „Prevent it from getting worse“ you see. The dwindling spiral you have run out with „Invent something worse than.“ There goes your dwindling spiral. That's actually, by the way, all there is to a dwindling spiral is: individuals are dreading something worse than! If there wasn't a „Something worse than“ there, there would be no dwindling spiral. Do you get the idea?

They are always being cautioned about „Well, I know that your lot is pretty bad, but it could be much worse!!“ And then the individual after that goes around preventing it from getting much worse. Well, in order to prevent it from getting much worse he has to hold on to the thing. Right?

In order to keep his legs or his arms from getting worse, he has to have them in the condition they're in. Right? And that freezes them; they start then on a dwindling spiral because he sort of thinks about this „worseness“ and it is like a postulate, and he sort of pulls himself into the worseness. You get the idea? So „Invent something worse than that leg,“ actually knocks the dwindling spiral and deterioration of the leg out.

TBD

Now, a problem of comparable magnitude actually brings it up to a sort of a parity, so that you are taking responsibility really by inventing-taking-being cause over the problem the terminal can be, and then you finally get up to the point of just what part of it directly could you be responsible for. Of course, incidentally, you remedy games with „Problems of comparable magnitude.“ And „Something worse than.“ That's a very interesting thing to do.

I wonder what would happen if many of you invented something worse than another person, and invented a problem of comparable magnitude to another person. And then went out on the street and had the auditor say to you - the auditor would say, „Find something about that girl you could be responsible for.“ You got this as a spotting process? I wonder what would happen to you on the third? And I wonder what would happen if only the few hundred people here made this a little project? I wonder what would happen to the life of the United States? I wonder what would happen?

It's an interesting thing, we're running a test project right now on the atom bomb. We haven't finished the thing off, but there is no reason why you shouldn't run it. Of course that's a pretty rugged thing to start out with on a new process, so you'd better take something that is a present time problem, and „Invent something worse than..” and „Problems of comparable magnitude to ...“ And then, something - „Part of it that you could be responsible for,“ don't you see. And then you get that level - I wonder if you graduated up to „Invent something worse than an atom bomb?“ „A problem of comparable magnitude to the atom bomb,“ and „Some part of the atom bomb you could be responsible for?“ - I wonder if it could touch any of you?

And then if you flattened „people,“ I wonder if any people you organized together could be touched by it either. Interesting speculation, isn't it? Hmm?

But the one thing the American doesn't take much pleasure in doing is taking responsibility for somebody other than himself This he has a hard time doing.

For a country that once had the reputation for joining anything and everything, and at the drop of a hat, which is kind of natural to man, we have a condition where nobody is willing to join anything. It's an interesting state of affairs nationally.

Now, America is realizing at this time, perhaps a little late, that it should do something to or about or with the national government. People who never thought about the national government, are now talking about it and thinking about it and worrying about it.

Businessmen have to take it into their computations in order to pilot their businesses, which is quite interesting. You have to figure out which way this cat is going to jump in order to plot the steps of your near future. Well, nobody ever really had to do that before. Well, that says that the determinism of the government is greater than the determinism of the people, and certainly greater than the determinism of an individual.

The best thing to do is just to have a higher determinism than the government. And you yourself can do it all by yourself - you!

It's an awful hard job to hold thetans down; they are pretty powerful critters. You have to give them lots of barriers. You have to keep convincing them they are tiny and frail. You have to keep putting your heel on their necks, and to do that you have to give them necks, in order to hold them down.

Because anyone amongst you has the power of licking this whole problem if you felt you could raise your head sufficiently to do so. Rather interesting thought isn't it?

The Asian has already invented a mechanism to keep anybody from taking any responsibility. If you save a Chinaman's life out of the Hwang Pu River, you are now responsible for everything else he does. And this is wrong to the Chinese! And they are a nation of slaves. I don't know what is wrong with being responsible for everything else the guy did.

Karma - what's wrong with karma? A Dianeticist can erase it. What's wrong with being responsible for things other than yourself? Well, you have to decide that that is wrong before anything can be wrong with it.

If you want a third dynamic to occur in the country, I think it'd have its best chance - I think it would easily have its best chance if the people right here in this room right now, made up their mind to, or decided to get processed up to an area of responsibility. That is to say: „Responsible for self and others,“ or „What could you be responsible for?“ „What are you willing to be responsible for?“ And get this solved in terms of national government, your willingness to participate, your willingness to create a third dynamic.

Maybe it's the first time since Paul Revere went screaming up and down the highways saying, „The British are coming,“ and thus united, at least in poetry, the American idea of gung-ho - working together.

Well, they worked together enough to knock out George III, but it couldn't have been very tough because George was crazy at the time. By the way, yesterday on my tiepin I was wearing his head - a little guinea with George the III's head on it. I found in England. I thought it was time somebody brought his head home. But we could unite at this high level of emergency and get something done.

I actually see no reason why we cannot unite just because it's good sense. I see no reason why you couldn't take responsibility not only for yourself, but for others. And I see no reason why starting right from here it would not be possible to build a third dynamic in America.

I hope it can be done.

Thank you.

[end of lecture]

[[Category:Lectures AC]]