View source for The Failed Case (SHSBC 641027)

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

'''Date:''' 27 October 1964

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

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Now, this is what date? Audience: October 27. August, you were saying?

Audience: October. October 27th. Now, AD 14, Saint Hill Special Briefing Course.

All right. You’re going to have a good lecture today for a change! (Joke.) I have to get these jokes in, you see, because… And the name of the lecture is “The Failed Case.” You’re about to have put in your paws, The Book of Remedies, which takes all of these failed cases and all you have to do is look up and find out what your pc is doing and what’s gone wrong, and it tells you what to do. And if you follow the directions intelligently, why, you’ll find out the case ceases to be a failed case in almost all instances.

This lecture that I am giving you has some bits and pieces of that in it but is mostly devoted to the – or in part – devoted to the real failed case that will fail in any event. There is such a case and I have begun to understand this of recent times: that we cannot totally, 100 percent… Now, there’s always going to be a failed case. You can just make up your mind to that and you can get just as starry-eyed as you want to in saving the whole of the human race and so forth, but you’re still going to collide with the totally failed case.

And the reason for this, I must make very clear right at the outset, does not lie with the auditor and does not lie with Scientology, does not lie with technology. Let’s begin at the beginning on this. Along about 1954 I went into a spate of research on the subject of people who had turned against Dianetics and Scientology.

And I tried to find a common denominator amongst these people by which they could be understood. So I looked them over very carefully and I listed their names and so forth. And I finally was able to collect irrefutable evidence – something you couldn’t contest – that about twenty-one different peo- ple had been in Dianetics and Scientology but had been, during that entire period, very active against Dianetics and Scientology and it’s caused a great deal of trouble for us.

And so then I made it my business to run down these blokes. And I got up to seventeen names. You’ve heard of this little project before.

I’ve never laid it out to this degree, because  THE FAILED CASE 2  frankly I never really understood it until the other day – not in its total entirety. Its first eche- lon is very easy to understand. Seventeen of that twenty-one had criminal records.

I thought that that was very, very significant. I thought that was very, very interesting. Because these people had all had auditing.

And the other common denominator is they had had no case change – no slightest, faintest case change. The reason why I haven’t got twenty-one criminal records is because I got tired of looking them up at number seventeen. Because they had so far, all the way up the line, been one for one.

This was a totally failed case. Well, I started thinking the other day – no, not the other day, a few months ago – on the subject of case remedies and put together this Book of Case Remedies. And I have to add to it this little addendum – this is not in The Book of Case Remedies; it is mentioned in pass- ing, but it is a very highly specialized type of case.

And the other day I realized what the other factor was – the other factor with this totally failed case. Now, he doesn’t have to be a totally failed case; that is to say, you could do something to make it not a totally failed case, do you understand, if you understood the mechanics of what would otherwise be a totally failed case. Do you und – do you follow me?

But this is as far south – as far south as you can get is no communication possible of any kind whatsoever. That, by the way, just goes south of the English language and actually goes south of what you normally call unconsciousness. It goes into a – almost a total absence.

Because you can take a puppy dog, you know, and you can process that puppy dog up tone the like of which you never heard of, you know? Well, that doesn’t require any language. See?

So you could – processing exceeds language. And right now, knowing that people get hung up on definitions in study and that sort of thing, well, hurrah! We’ve now exceeded language, don’t you see?

So what does this case do that is the failed case? Now, you in the kindness of your heart are always thinking about his past and you’re always willing to give somebody a break and not hold his past against him. But you’re not dealing with the man’s past and that’s what’s fooled you.

In the totally failed case, you’re dealing with his present. He commits more overts between sessions than can be picked up in a session. Do you see that ratio at once?

He commits more overts between sessions than can be picked up in a session. Now, in view of the fact that it takes you quite a little while to dig for and get up an overt, don’t you see… He doesn’t as-is things well; life is on a big, beautiful alter-isness of it all, you know? He’s going to ch – he’s changing everything around.

It’s all sort of dub. It’s all sort of justified. He’s pretty detached.

This was Freud’s failed case, too, by the way, only he never realized it and I’ve never spoken of it in these terms before. The person had no responsibility for any place he was or anything he was doing. Freud called him a detached case.

I don’t know why he’d be detached. I think he’d be dead in his head to end all dead-in-your-heads, see – undetached case. It’d take you quite a while to get in communication with this bloke and his responsibility level would be down around zero.

See? The responsibility level would be very bad. THE FAILED CASE 3  Well, it takes some degree of responsibility to put one’s self into the scene.

Do you see? You know, “My hand – my hand stole the pocketbook.” Well, that’s an irresponsibility to end all irresponsibilities, don’t you see? And it wouldn’t as-is because he hasn’t said the rest of the communication, you see, which is “I saw the pocketbook and I picked it up with my hand.” He doesn’t say that, so you don’t get, really, an as-isness of the action.

Do you follow? The action then doesn’t vanish or key out or deintensify. He’s putting an alter-is on the line.

You say, “What have you done?” He said, “Well, I’ve picked up a pocketbook.” But he says this because it’s social, don’t you see, just to use “I.” But if you question him very closely, you would find out that actually his hand had picked up the pocketbook; he hadn’t had anything to do with it at all. He’s quoting you something it said off the police blotter. These people are not all criminals, by the way.

They’re not un… they’re not caught; they’re not this; they’re not that. But you understand here that he isn’t really giving you a fac- tual answer, so therefore isn’t answering the auditing question. You say, “What have you done?” And he says, “Well, I’ll be sociable about it and I’ve done this, and I’ve done that.” And sometimes the auditor is completely spun in by the fact that this guy is getting off fantas- tic overts, see, fantastic crimes of some kind or another.

Guy just sits there and gives them to you by the bucketload, don’t you see? And you say, “Well, good heavens, anybody getting off that much would undoubtedly experience a case change,” and you find out that his case sits just exactly where it was. That’s because he never answers the auditing question.

You’re saying to him, “What have you done,” or something like that or “What overt have you committed?” or something like that. And he never answers this. He answers something like “The society has forced me to commit…” or “My hand picked up the pocketbook,” you see. “And it was purely an accident that the money was found in my pocket.” But, you’re saying, “What have you done?” but he’s not answering “What have you done?” because he’d be incapable of assuming that much so- cial responsibility.

So what he’s doing is answering some put-off as far as you’re concerned. Yes, he’ll say the things which occurred in his lifetime, but in his own mind he isn’t answer- ing any auditing question. It doesn’t really matter to him.

It didn’t matter if he did these things. And then there’s the fellow who turns around and tries to make himself look good all the time, don’t you see? And his concentration is totally on how he looks to the auditor, you see?

He’s got to look good. He’s got to put up a social presence so he never gets off a harmful act, don’t you see? Well, that’s peculiar to this failed case.

Any – either one: He’s either giving you tons of things he didn’t do… In his own mind he never did these things. He says, “Well, that’s a social response. I’m in a sort of a police court; that’s where I am.

It’s not an auditing session. All right. Well, I’ll tell them all these crimes; doesn’t matter and…” Or he’s saying – he’s done some wild things, don’t you see, some crazy things and he’s withholding these things like crazy. “Oh, I’ve always been a good boy.” The one that sticks in mind was a pc who was the sweetest, dearest old lady you ever laid your eyes on who had led an exemplary life but had had a lot of bad things happen to her.

THE FAILED CASE 4  And it wasn’t until we used one of the remedies in The Book of Remedies, which you’ll find there today, of after finding out completely that she had never done anything in her whole life – you know, never even stubbed her toe. Life was just one beautiful song, you see. A lot of things had happened to her, though.

Why, we got the happy idea of asking her, had she murdered anybody? Questions of that character, total exaggeration, you see? Had she ever raped any small children, don’t you see?

This dear sweet old lady. It was quite obvious that if she’d had this many motivators in her lifetime, that she herself must have been very, very busy, see? But according to the record that she was putting up, she was just looking nice and sweet and social to the auditor.

And the trick that was worked there, you see, is by presenting “Well, have you ever murdered anybody?” you know? “Oh, that’s so terrible! Well, no, I’ve never murdered anybody, but of course I made somebody awfully sick once.” And it’s the trick – it’s the trick of, “Oh, you can look much sadder than that,” don’t you see? It’s the trick of giving them a much worse overt than they had committed as a yes-or-no type of question.

And they start unloading real overts, you see? But I’m just showing you, then, the normal run of cases, and this I would consider the normal run of cases. You have problems and you have to apply special remedies very often to get off overts.

Sometimes auditors blunder in getting off overts because they don’t get the pc in communication with the auditor. You know very well that there are people you’d say “Good morning” to but they are not people that you would tell your family troubles to. Well, similarly the pc is willing to sit there and say “Good morning” to the auditor, you know, but not go any deeper into his life than that.

You see? It’s a standoff sort of an attitude toward the auditor. Well, the auditor would have to work on that.

The pc is in this condition of perfectly willing to say “Good morning” to the auditor and say, “Yes all right to be audited,” but that’s about the end of the intercourse, don’t you see? That’s as far and as personal as this must go. And then the auditor says at once, “All right, now tell me a harmful act you have committed.” Well, good heavens, the person really wouldn’t even describe breakfast with the auditor, see?

You know, you’d have to build up this communication gradient. “What are you willing to talk to me about?” which is a far more effective process than you ever realize until some day you run it on some pc you’re having trouble with. You find out, well, hell’s bells, you’ve been auditing him for twenty hours and they’ve not been willing to talk to you about a blessed thing. And you get these long comm lags on “What are you willing to talk to me about?” “Well…” Finally they get an answer that’s real to them, you know, “Well, I’m willing to talk to you about… this room.” You’ve been trying to get overts off this guy, see?

Oh, poo! You’ve been trying to run ten thousand volts on no wire and it just wouldn’t go, you see? Or too thin a wire – too little communication line.

And that’s so tiny a wire that if ten thousand volts ever started over it, it’d blow up the wire, and you’d have an ARC break, of course, see? So that – there’re all these – all those little nuances. This is, by the way, where an audi- tor lays the most eggs, is in the field of overts.

That’s where they chicken the most. That’s where they buy the wrong things and so forth. So it is a difficult zone of auditing.

I won’t say that it’s unsurmountable because it’s pretty confounded easy. THE FAILED CASE 5  I’ve gotten to be an old war horse on this now. And the pc says, “Well, I have a with- hold.

I thought the other day that you were…” I say, “Oh, yes. That’s very interesting. I’m very glad you can think.

Now, I want something that you’re withholding from me.” “Well, I was withholding that.” “No, I’m afraid you weren’t even bothering to withhold that. You were simply being critical. Now, I want the withhold that’s back of this.” See, I just don’t ever let a pc get in there and chop me to ribbons, and I sit there, you know, and say, “Well, that’s the lot of an auditor,” you know?

You think this will produce an ARC break. No, no. The other way is the way you produce an ARC break.

Because you’ve just got missed withholds by the ton on the case by – after a while. No, what you do is the guy starts to get off “withholds” about you and starts to get off “withholds” that’s somebody else’s withholds, you know, “I was – well, I have an awful withhold here. I was auditing Betsy Ann the other day and she told me – yap-yap-yap-yap- yap-yap-yap-yap-yap.” When I run into that in a pc, I go pheew!

Chop! “Now, look, we’re auditing. We’re interested in you; we’re not interested in other peo- ple’s withholds. We’re not interested in what you’re withholding of critical thoughts.

Nothing of that sort, and so forth. I want to know what you’re really withholding.” And the needle goes beuuuw. “I spilled all – a whole ashtray full of ashes over your new rug the other day. Oh – ho- ho-ho.

And you can still see ‘em.” “All right. Thank you. Any other withholds?” Now they give them to you very cheer- fully.

You don’t get these circuitous critical thoughts of the auditor and other people’s with- holds and all this kind of nonsense, don’t you see? But as I started to say before and complete saying, pulling overts is dependent upon the degree of communication with the pc, the degree of responsibility of the pc, the – it’s also in the ability of the auditor to really know what one is and pull the right one. In other words, we’re dealing here with stuff that can’t be done crudely.

We’re dealing stuff that has to be done rather slippily and very well. An auditor has to be right on his toes. Well, even if you were right on your toes, the case that’s the failed case still couldn’t have his overts pulled fast enough in a session to keep up with PT.

And that’s why he’s a failed case. So it’s his present that you’re in collision with, not his past. He leaves your session; he cuts you to bits with his friends; walks up on the front porch, sees the dog lying there happily asleep in the sun, gives him a good, solid, swift kick in the ribs; goes inside, finds out that his sister hasn’t got dinner on time, breaks a couple of plates; finds somebody else’s piece of mail, steams it open and reads it.

Rather incredible! I want to interject a note here which seems not apropos of anything else, just as an aside here at this particular point. But did you know that you could audit all sex and so forth you want to on a pc – it isn’t going to do very much – but you can audit any God’s quantity of it – because it doesn’t happen to be an end word.

You very often find GPMs and that sort of  THE FAILED CASE 6  thing what – that they are things that it can lock on in root words and end words, but it itself is a humanoid action and the GPMs aren’t, don’t you see? So you could pull all the sexual overts that you want to. Don’t think that it’s going to make all that difference to the case, however, because you aren’t on down to the roots of the reactive bank; you’re just taking the very sur- face locks off.

I think why Freud did this is because that’s about as far as people could go, you know? But he probably has some – a lot of second dynamic overts on the subject, you see? He has probably all kinds of tangles and withholds, but his life is just one long, harmful action.

See? Active, man, active! Not the crimes of omission, even.

Good and active, and you never spot these. So, therefore the case remains undetected because you can’t even get off his shal- low overts, don’t you see, from his past. So you’re not about to get off these overts in his pre- sent.

Now, you wouldn’t even have to classify this fellow as a criminal personality. Maybe this fellow is simply a foreman of the works, or something like this, and he’s always figuring out how to get somebody sacked. And he’s doing this and he’s doing that and he’s just chop- ping them up left, right and center, don’t you see?

And taking the stuff out of the company till in the bargain. The guy – the guy is really heavy at it, you know? He’s working – he’s working at it, you know?

He’s dedicated. And you get him in session and you just can’t pull those overts fast enough to keep the case in balance to return any degree of responsibility. And you wouldn’t really know what you were looking at.

You just wouldn’t really know what you were looking at until you got right down to brass tacks and put a shadow on his trail through- out the entire day, which is outside the province of auditing. Because, you see, he’s so irre- sponsible that those things don’t react on an E-Meter. An E-Meter reaction takes a certain degree of reality, a certain degree of responsibility, and the reason you take – always take your biggest action, is you’ve got that thing the pc feels the most responsibility for.

The E-Meter works, then, at the level where the pc has reality and responsibility at any given time. And therefore if you run things that you know the pc has done, but which don’t react on the E-Meter, you are then either running something that’s al- ready been run out or you are running into a zone on which he has no responsibility or reality. And in either case, you will practically do him in, see?

Asking a guy to run out something that’s been run out is pretty grim. But trying to run out something for which he has no respon- sibility of any kind whatsoever is almost fatal. You can take a list and the key word – this is Auditing by List – you can take the key word on the list – isn’t reacting, but you through some insight or observation of the pc deter- mine that this is the key word – you take that thing and you audit it.

And you’ll have an awful sick pc on your hands. Didn’t react on the meter, see, but you knew it must be, so you audited it. Therefore, the thing that falls best is the thing that’s nearest and realest to the pc.

In R6 if you skip a GPM you of course haven’t got the thing which is nearest and real- est to the pc so you don’t get much reads. That’s practically the total source of small reads on R6. You’re just running him where he ain’t.

So if you’re running him where he isn’t, why, you’ve bypassed something where he is and on – if you had him where he was and so forth…  THE FAILED CASE 7  Another little remedy that goes along with this: You go over ARC break lists – you know, in Auditing by Lists you go over your L6 and – or L4 at lower levels – and you don’t get any reads on this. Well, that doesn’t mean anything, except that the pc has got lists sup- pressed. That’s all that means.

The lists are all perfectly accurate. So what you do there is a very simple remedy. If the pc is getting small reads and you can’t find out where he is because he doesn’t respond on any of the lists, then you must assume there’s something wrong with the lists.

Now, there’s two things can be wrong with the lists: He’s never learned the parts of the GPM or the bank. If you’re auditing some green pc (as some auditor undoubtedly, stupid- headedly will do sooner or later), uneducated, totally uninformed pc… One recently, by a name that I won’t mention – but I will send a bill to for not mentioning – sent a student the Academy in Washington the other day with orders that they must not audit her because she had been run on R6. And the understanding was that if anybody had been run on R6, they couldn’t be run on anything else.

That’s just about as wild and crazy a datum as you ever heard. No, they can’t be run on processes which involve words; that’s all they can’t be audited on. A process whereby you’re trying to get them, you see, to define whole track-type words, like Clay Table Clearing or definitions of earlier subjects or something like this – something involving words – you’re going to lay an egg because this person is already into the slot of the GPMs and of course the only thing that’s going to read is the nearest GPM.

And you’re just going to key them in. So eventually if you were stupid enough to force them into some word that they considered was wrong, which was way down the bank someplace, you’d bypass all that, they’d turn on a tremendous somatic and they’d feel like the devil. But it’s just those things which – those processes which – would use words.

Now, you actually could get them to define Scientology terms except some of those terms are also in the bank. That’s a liability; but you could get them to do that if you watched it. And if your meter started to go high or something like that, you’d say, “What’s the mat- ter?” And you’d better jolly well find out what’s the matter, don’t you see?

You’d have to take it very delicately even to do Scientology definitions. But you definitely could not do definitions of Clay Table Clearing. And you definitely couldn’t do definitions of earlier sub- jects.

And you definitely couldn’t list words to assess. Those things would practically wreck your pc. But good God! as far as I know, that leaves some hundred thousand processes!

And, you know, there isn’t a single process in The Book of Remedies that violates it, except the ear- lier subject, definitions of. That’s all. All the rest of those processes in The Book of Remedies, whether they came from 1950 right straight on up the line – all these tons of processes that are on tapes and everything else – could be audited on somebody who’s running R6 out of his ears.

And the other thing is, who ran R6 well, well, well. That’s the clue. So somebody is running R6 and they’re not running R6 well – well, you possibly don’t even have the liability of Clay Table.

They’re not in the slot; they’re not going down the bank. Lord knows where they are! You might even be able to run Clay Table Clearing on them or  THE FAILED CASE 8  run any stupid kind of definitions or run anything that comes into your head or anything in The Book of Remedies on them.

You’re not going to do anything to them. And you could prepcheck them. Perfectly valid to prepcheck them on various things, providing you prep- check.

Very often people go completely astray by taking a Prepcheck and think a Prepcheck is very harmful or upsetting because of end words that might occur in the Prepcheck, when as a matter of sober fact they don’t know how to run a Prepcheck. Well, if you overrun the Suppress button on a Prepcheck, you of course got all the other answers he would have thought of on the other buttons coming up and hitting him in the face, and then you make some recommendation, “I think I will have to have this pc itsa.” (This happened right here the other day. I won’t have any withholds.) And having overrun Suppress madly, you see – audited the process wrong – why of course the pc now had all kinds of additional answers.

So the auditor’s solution to it was to go off Prepchecking and go on to itsa because the pc had so much to say. No, the only thing that had happened the pc had all of his answers to Invalidate and Change and every other darn button in the Prepcheck. You see, he’d been run – the tone arm action had been run out of the Suppress button, see?

You don’t – you don’t flatten a Prepcheck button to a point where a steamroller appears to have run over it, you know? The pc says, “Well, I really haven’t got any more answers.” “Well, you’d better get me another answer. I’m still getting tone arm action on it.” No, the tone arm action is on the process; it’s not on the button.

If you don’t think it’s flat, go through the buttons again in rotation, and so forth, and see if you get anything. But that’s ac- tually the mechanics of it. You’d have to prepcheck properly, you have to audit properly to get proper auditing results.

And one of the things is, is when the pc hasn’t got any more answers and he really hasn’t got any more answers you don’t ask any more questions. I mean, it sounds elementary. I know of no auditing situation where the pc who has been getting proper tone arm action – proper tone arm action in the session – who says, “I don’t have any further answers to it,” has ever had any further answers to it.

I know of no such situation. But occasionally you’ll get a pc who is getting wonderful tone arm action on some- thing like O/W, who runs into mea culpa. (Latin morals of the Catholic church: “I am ashamed” or “It’s my blame” or “It’s my fault” – mea culpa). I mean, that’s – they practically never got off mea culpa as a therapy.

The Catholic church could be very pleased with this boy because he really now knows shame, blame and regret, see? And he doesn’t bother to give you the withhold. He just simply says, “Well, I don’t have any more answers.” Well, actually, if you – if you took a pair of magnifying glasses and looked across the table at your pc and cut the smog out of it and so forth, even in Los Angeles you could tell that this pc has not answered all of his answers.

Because he’s sitting there – there’s various symptoms that you could notice, you know, like chewing his fingernails, looking cringing like this, you know; he’s backed up in his chair; he’s turned bright red; he’s sweating; the palms of his hands running rivers of moisture. I mean, there are some small indicators that says he’s simply hit something he don’t want to talk to you about no more, brother. He’s not going to  THE FAILED CASE 9  say any more about it – hah – uh!

Oh, no! Well, at this point, of course, in O/W, you press it home; but it’s only in O/W that you press it home. If he says “I haven’t got any more present time problems,” you say cheerily, cheerily, “Good.” He can withhold all the present time problems he wants, really, without getting him in – or anybody else into very serious trouble.

He’ll only withhold them if they’ve got overts connected with them that he’s ashamed of and you’ll get that on the overt line, don’t you see? Not to push it home, but you could actually run a – run a Prepcheck so that it looked like you were restimulating end words and messing up the pc. Don’t you see?

You could run it in such a way that it looked like catastrophe that was occurring. The only thing that was occurring is you just happened to have flattened the button and you aren’t listening to the pc in the session. He says, “Well, that’s all the answers I got.

There aren’t any more answers.” And you say, “Well, I think you’d better answer this two or three more times or five or six more times.” And – hm-mm-mm-mm-mm – about that time he starts imagining answers and dreaming up answers. You now have a condition where he isn’t answering the auditing question, and because Prepchecks are Prepchecks, you now start getting answers to the other buttons on the same subject. So he now doesn’t answer the auditing question at all.

So now he looks like he’s got – a floodgates of Niagara would open at any minute, see? Because he’s thought of this to tell you but that doesn’t answer the question and there’s no way he can. Well, what fouled it up in the first place, you see?

Somebody forcing him to answer a question he had no more answers for. Now, some pcs change faster than others and on this particular course, you can get very, very used to a case going at a certain pace or rate of change and all of a sudden be to- tally thrown for a loop. The case will start to change at a faster rate.

And it’s the auditor that worries in this particular case. Case is changing at a faster rate than is believable according to auditing experience and so processes are madly overrun, particularly at the lower levels, you see? And we sin on the direction now, because of the – of the supervision and other factors involved in the course, don’t you see – it’s very tight auditing – you’ll find the rate of change of the pc is increasing.

It’s faster. He’s changing faster and very often, why, we run into the sin of overflattening, don’t you see? The case will suddenly come up with a cognition.

Now, we try to audit this process again and it’s blown. That won’t happen with GPMs. You’ll find out the GPM was just suppressed at the time and you’ll go back a couple of days later after you’ve run something else and all of a sudden, why, it’s got all of its reads, too.

But rate of change of the case increases in ratio to the auditing. The slowest change pe- riod of the case is at the start of the case. So if you’ve actually started a case, then rate of change increases.

Do you understand? Your very failed case – coming back more solidly to that – doesn’t experience any rate of change at all. There is no rate of change but one.

See? And that will change more slowly as  THE FAILED CASE 10  you go on because the case is a failed case. Do you follow this?

The length and rate of change – you say, well, this actually has very definite indexes. You can measure how long it takes for a pc to get a cognition on something. How many hours of auditing does it take a pc to come up to a cognition on something fundamental about himself?

Let’s say it starts out early on when he’s being audited at the HAS levels or something like this and it’s about twenty-five hours or something like that and he comes up to some rec- ognition about himself, you see – some bigger recognition. And you’ll find out as he goes on up the levels, why, it would take him maybe an hour to come to some conclusion of similar magnitude, don’t you see, about some facet of his life at a higher level. You get what I mean – rate of change.

And you sometimes can get somebody who has been audited well and whose case is moving very well who almost audits by inspection and this gets pretty weird. And sometimes then the auditor will overestimate the power of the engram or something that the pc has collided with and think he can get rid of that because he got rid of all of the others, you see, and audits him too short on it and comes a bit of a cropper. Don’t you see?

It’s a variable thing. It doesn’t stay constant, but it goes also along with comm lag: How long does it take the pc to answer the question? And one of your indexes of rate of change is the posture of the pc in auditing.

Pc al- ways assumes the same physical posture while being audited. Never assumes an additional or changed posture really. Always comes back to one posture, if they do change to another pos- ture.

It isn’t any particular posture; you’ll just have to understand it like that. The pc is al- ways dropping into Rodel’s [Rodin’s] (or whoever it was) Thinker. Don’t you know?

You’ll see that the pc is – very frequently in session the pc has his head cocked, way over here – something like that – some posture. He keeps returning to this posture. He keeps returning and returning and returning to the posture, don’t you see?

Always auditing like that – being audited like that. Has a habit of doing a certain type of fiddle with the can. Always has this mannerism in auditing.

To the degree that the pc’s mannerisms in auditing remain constant, he is not ex- periencing a rate of change of progress. Do you follow that? You can do that by inspection.

You see some pc: He’s – always sits down – he always slumps in some position or he always sits in a certain way or he always looks in a certain way in a session. Always seems to return to this mechanism in some way or another – I mean this posture, this pose, this diddle-fiddle. That thing keeps recurring.

You want to watch for that as an auditor, because that case is parked. That case is definitely parked. Quite important for you to recognize that.

When you see that, you know that you’re looking at a case which needs remedying. And if you start – that means that you’ve got to look this case up in The Book of Remedies and do something about it. You understand?

No rate of change. Now, the rate of change hasn’t changed at all. I mean the case has still got the same posture, same reactions, you know, very often the same overts.

But you don’t have to go off into that direction to find out that they’re stuck. They’re not progressing and you can tell that actually from the consistent physical pos- ture in a session. As simple as that.

THE FAILED CASE 11  And tone arm action on such a case is minimal – very little tone arm action. Their other symptoms are all there. They just go on down.

Your bad indicators are all there. I mean, everything that you’d shake a stick at is present. But as an Auditing Supervisor, as an Auditing Supervisor you actually can go through a room on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and if your memory is very good, by the time you’ve gone through Wednesday (and it’s this – it’s this fast a rate of change is what is ex- pected) you notice that you still got a pc – by George, you still have a pc – who is sitting there with his cans like this.

He always holds his – he’s – on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday he held his cans flopped down at his sides with his back bowed and his head hanging and that’s the way he’s being – he’s responding in auditing. Well, you wouldn’t have to look at his audi- tor’s report or anything else, you wouldn’t have to look at his auditing, you wouldn’t have to study anything particularly and so forth to know the case wasn’t changing. Follow that?

Now that you know the case isn’t experiencing a rate of change, now let’s look at the case, now let’s look at the – at the auditing reports. We’re trying to find something wrong and you’re trying to find that and match that up against The Book of Remedies. And when you get those two things matched – well, you give those directions, and if you did it Wednesday night, by the end of session on Thursday you would find the pc sitting with his cans in his lap.

He’s no longer sitting like this; he’s sitting like this. You get the idea? I mean, it’s that superficial an observation.

You follow that? There’s nothing very – nothing very fantastic is required in the way of instinct to know somebody isn’t changing. They’ve always had a green complex- ion; they’ve still got a green complexion.

Well, you know their rate of change must be lousy. A nonoptimum condition persists is another way that you spot this. Well, when a person starts in, in auditing, in spite of everything you do, in spite of anything anybody else does, in spite of all the think and everything else and the sweat and so forth, you’ve got one thing left that isn’t in The Book of Remedies, because that’s a book of remedies.

But it could very easily include this one, of course, but it wouldn’t necessarily em- phasize it. You’ve got this present time condition of a concatenation of overts which is too rapid to be picked up. And that’s your boy; that’s your boy.

If after a hundred hours of auditing and all the sweat and change – particularly with The Book of Remedies in your paws – you didn’t see any change in this pc, there is no reason for you as the D of T or the auditing supervisor or something like that – or the auditor – to go – considering that you have failed in some particular line. I mean, you haven’t failed in any line. You did your best.

You’d better start looking at this pc’s PT. You’d better look at that PT environment. What’s he do when he leaves this auditing session?

That’s giving him a fair trial, don’t you see? That’s a long look, you know? Well, what’s he doing?

You don’t know of any big flubs that weren’t corrected. You – nothing been done to victimize this character one way or the other. Yet there he is – no change.

Well, that’s the other zone which you yourself would not find it very easy to inspect but which you’d better jolly well find some way to inspect if you’re going to do anything with this case at all. You’re going to be horrified at the conduct of some parts of the human race. You’re going to stand your hair on end on some of these characters, you know?

And it’s so pathetic,  THE FAILED CASE 12  because they’ve done so many overts, they get so many motivators. You see, it’s not a one- for-one, even. I don’t suppose it’s that neat a ratio.

But it’s a type of overt for a type of moti- vator, so you could actually run it down in auditing; you could search this thing out. You must realize it’s not something the person has done but it’s something the person is doing. Now, it’s pretty hard to spot that this is what you’re handling because of course you never get any communication about this from the pc.

But there is one method of spotting it and that is what the pc complains about in the conduct of others. And you could just get him busily complaining about what he complains about in the conduct of others and go over this right on down the line and you’ll finally find out that one of them is very, very consistent. Well, that is what the pc does between sessions.

Now you see, you wouldn’t go to an heroic measure, like this – pc has merely got some motivators and they’re talking about this and that and their PT is – their present time is all upside-down or something like this. But you’re auditing him and you’re getting a change of case, see? Well, you don’t take any such measure.

I’m talking about the fellow who was audited and everything is done for him that can be and he still comes around – he says, “What are you going to do – what are you going to do about my lumbosis?” They drive the medical doctor mad. “What are you going to do about it? You’ve done nothing for it,” you know. “You’ve done me in,” and so forth. Now, you’re probably part of the – part of the overt-motivator package.

He’s got enough overts against you out of session, you know, to make a – make a book like Fanny Hill. Anyway, we got a whole bunch of stuff going on here that is outside the observation zone of the auditor. So the auditor is looking at his mind, he’s looking at his past and he’s looking at his own auditing of this pc, don’t you see?

Well, those are legitimate areas of in- spection. But there is another area and that’s what I’m calling to your attention, and that is the failed case – that other area. It’s the present time series of overts, and I could add the word involvements but this is rather false because it’s not really – he’s involved because of overts and don’t kid yourself otherwise, you see?

Now, that’s the PT of this pc who keeps coming back after 150 hours, saying, “You haven’t done anything for his lumbosis.” There’s your boy. Overts! – comes down to, straight dead on the line. And this case could be so bad and his environment could be so enturbulated that you just did not have a prayer of being able to pull any part of the overts which he com- mits.

You audit him for five hours in a day; that leaves nineteen. You can audit him on a ratio of five to nineteen. Of that nineteen, let’s say he sleeps eight.

Let’s give him credit, then, for not committing overts during one of those hours. That leaves ten hours of the day for five hours of your auditing, and it’s already two for one. Now, if it takes three times as long in auditing to pull the overt as it did to commit it, you’re just straight up against nothing but pure, honest-to-God arithmetic.

That’s what you’re up against. And I don’t care, these people are the first to tell you how innocent they are and how inactive they are. They’re the first.

They – you give them a stack of Bibles a mile high and they’d do something about it. Now, that person is a failed case where it comes to general practice for this one reason: is you can’t monitor his environment strongly enough. He’s  THE FAILED CASE 13  walking into your zone of influence which extends maybe the size of the organization, maybe the size of your house or your auditing room, don’t you see?

Maybe even to your front side- walk. That’s your zone of immediate influence as far as this case is concerned, see? Your zone of influence may be much wider than that, but as far as that case is concerned that’s your zone of influence.

Now, the second he steps one foot beyond that zone of influence, he’s away. And the way you handle this case, if you could handle the case, would be to establish your zone of influence as far as the case is likely to go between sessions for long enough to pull the case out of it. Now, it would mean a shift of environment.

This isn’t the normal thing whereby the guy is simply in an enturbulated environment and so you change his environment during the period of auditing, see? That’s a common remedy. And that is not – enters into the failed case.

This other fellow would take a lot more, he’d take a lot more than just that. If you changed his environment, don’t you see, he’d go on committing the same overts over a long-distance tele- phone or something. He’d do some way, you know?

He’s getting even with all of existence. Now, where you have such a case and where you do not have control of the environ- ment, you can be absolutely certain that this will become a failed case. The only possible rem- edy that you could have is to project the fear of the auditor or something like that to such a degree that perhaps you keep him under.

But then you’re defeating yourself, of course, be- cause you’re spoiling your ARC, and you’re doing an overwhelm of the pc and you’re more likely to get a religious reaction. The fellow kisses the hem of your tablecloth before he leaves, you know? Keeps facing your front door as he goes back up the walk, don’t you see?

You haven’t got anybody in a very healthy frame of mind, so that’s self-defeating too. But you can do some of it. You can do some of it.

And it’s worth – it’s worth trying. Recognize what you’re looking at, you see? You don’t have control of the society in which this fellow lives or his family or something like this.

Well, recognize what you’re looking at here. You can say to him, “Now look, the reason your case isn’t progressing is because you are doing things which you suppose I have no inkling of, between sessions. And you’re think- ing things and you’re saying things and you’re acting in certain ways between sessions which is highly diffi – highly detrimental to your case.

Now, if you change these habits and actions and cease to frequent the same places that you’ve been frequenting and so forth, why, maybe we can go on, and even then I would have to be very, very convinced before I would pick up the meter on you again,” see? It’s this kind of thing. Now, you actually, at this point, have simply to some degree located and indicated the bypassed charge; because this would be true.

You’ve audited the bird for a hundred hours and he’s had no rate of change. And you’ve applied the whole Book of Remedies and you’ve done everything under the sun, moon and stars, and this guy isn’t changing in any way, shape or form and he isn’t getting any better. Ah well, you’ve only got one left.

And that one left is his environment is being so reacted upon by him that he is laying in more overts than you can get up. And that’s all there is to that. You could try a lot of things, but that one I don’t think you will ever totally catch up with until you’ve totally controlled the environment in which the person exists.

THE FAILED CASE 14  Now, you could say, “Well, now, if you’ll go to the Bide-a-Wee Hotel and let me put a couple of guards on your door – if you’re willing to go through this for a couple of months and pay the price of the We-Spy-for-You Detective Company to relay – put a relay of watch and shadow on you during this particular period, why, I’ll go on auditing you, but not other- wise.” See? You might – you might – you might, you see, just on the occasional one, crack through and so on. But you wouldn’t – you wouldn’t do 100 percent, because these people are dedicated.

Environment – the environment looks so dangerous to them or so provocative or so hostile or so something – we don’t care just that; we’re not just talking about a particular type of reaction to the environment – but it looks so something, that the only way you can exert your livingness at all or even breathe is to do a certain line of actions which even though they are socially unacceptable nevertheless are vitally necessary. And the person’s conviction along these lines are to the degree that if you told them to stop them, you have practically told him to stop eating or stop breathing, see. It just totally violates his reality.

Now, therefore you sometimes look for the fast one – the fast, fast process. What’ll get in and undercut this case, you know – zooommm! Well, there isn’t anything to get in and un- dercut that case because in the first place you’ve got to be able to have the case in communi- cation with you.

The guy’s got to be able to be in communication with you before you can do anything for the case. And it’s going to take more than one session to get him in communica- tion with you, because after you’ve gone to the second session, you now have a bunch of overts in which you’re included in the perimeter of overts and this will just go on going in that particular direction. So there is the social liability.

Now that gives us an avenue for an activity known as – doesn’t give us one – but that gives a justification to the psychiatrist: One, he didn’t have any processes – well, one, he didn’t have any understanding of the situation. Two, he didn’t have any processes to handle the situation. But those cases, then, which can’t normally respond just by talking to somebody about their troubles – and you know that wouldn’t be very many cases – you know, I mean the case that wouldn’t get well just because he said, “Well, I been sick lately.” That’d be a pretty – a pretty hightoned case that can do that, see.

All the rest of these cases look crazy to the psychiatrist and look unsolvable to the psychiatrist. Now, because we’ve gone so far in an understanding of the subject in which we are dealing, because we’ve gone so far in having processes, because we’ve now gone so far in having remedies for these particular odd difficulties which the people come up with, we of course could get very, very cocky and say, “Well, we can go the whole way.” And I call to your attention the Axiom “Absolutes are unobtainable.” You’re always going to have this case. Unless you can exert – unless you could exert what amounts to politi- cal control of the activities of the environment, don’t you see – almost to that degree – you wouldn’t be able to sweep them all in and even then I imagine he’d still find ways to commit overts in a locked room.

Do you see this? Now, about the furthest-south process that operates on such a case – you, I’m sure, would be very interested in and that is – you already got it – it’s justifications. But I’d like to – I’d like to – I’d like to put in a word here.

If you can get the person to talk to you, why,  THE FAILED CASE 15  you’ve already won your first round with overts. This is true of all overt running. The first round you’ve got to win is to get the person to talk to you about things, see, without being reticent as he would be with a stranger, see, that degree, he’s got to be able to talk to you.

And then you can get off some of his lighter overts and then you can get off some of his heavier overts, you see. And that’s about the gradient that it will go on, don’t you see? Now, you actually, oddly enough, can audit the case who isn’t obsessively committing overts but he’s been so busy in the past that he’s got them stacked up to the roof.

Now, that case is actually not today very hard to audit. As long as you remember to get the case in communication with you as the first requisite of all overt pulling and as long as you don’t ask for the whole basketload with the first auditing question, why, you can – you can do this, don’t you see? But this bird you will run into, and he’s commoner, fortunately, than the bird who is committing the overt during the auditing session to – committing overts to such a degree that he can’t possibly catch up with it, don’t you see?

So you would handle this – they look quite alike, by the way. They – one is – they’re both very detached; they’re both very irresponsible. They very often will give you fantastic things they have done in life and expect you to be shocked over them or something of this sort but they aren’t.

There’s all kinds of odd manifestations which make these cases look similar so you can – you can make a mistake. So on either type of case you would try this one. You’d try to get them into communi- cation with you.

It wouldn’t matter what case it was – you would do that, don’t you see? – or what you were trying to do. And then on a gradient you’d get more and more, heavier and heavier – more voltage on the line – and you could go deeper and deeper on the subject. And remember this one: that for that long-gone case who can take no responsibility whatsoever for his overts or for the recurrent overt – the guy keeps giving you the same overt; you know, he really can’t get off of having done this terrible thing.

The secret of what holds it in: that overt has become a problem, then, hasn’t it? Well, the anatomy of a problem is postulate-counter-postulate, isn’t it? You got that as the anatomy of a problem.

It’s exactly balanced so therefore floats in time, you see. It – there’s just as much force against it as it’s pushing, see? And you’ve got this thing exactly poised in time here and it’s floating along with present time.

Well, he can’t get this overt off and he can’t get rid of this overt: You must recognize that you are dealing in actual fact with a problem as far as the overt is concerned, don’t you see? Well, you don’t bother to address it as a problem. I’m just showing you that having – he’s got this overt and he tells you about it but that doesn’t get it off.

This is true of any of these whether it’s from total irresponsibility, you see, or the guy just feels so guilty about it, you know. Whatever it is, the answer is the same at both ends of the scale: It wasn’t an overt in his view. It was justified.

Now, I want to give you a note on running this process, because you’ve run off the rails on it occas – wherever I’ve heard it being run and when I was wrestling with it I tried to straighten it out here in the class, and I may have succeeded and may not have succeeded. But if I had to fight that hard to get it back on the rails, I’m sure it’s gone a little bit off the rails  THE FAILED CASE 16  again. So just let me make a few notes, particularly for those who weren’t here when I was fighting to get it on the rails.

Let me make this – few notes here about this, and that is: There is a process of justifi- cations which is really not a repetitive process, which is a wide-open invitation to run as a repetitive process, “What have you done? How wasn’t that an overt?” You could say this, see. You could – you could sit there as an auditor with a silly smile on your face going, “Yeah,” being – he’s totally irresponsible as an auditor – and run a repetitive process called, “What have you done?

And how did you justify it? What have you done? How did you justify it?

What have you done? How did you justify it? What have you done?

How did you justify it?” Well, that’s the essence of the process, but it is not a repetitive process. Let me clar – call that to your attention. It is not a repetitive process.

It requires handling. You can say, “Well, what ham – .” Well, they don’t care what words you use – “What harmful act have you committed? What harmful act have you really, really committed now?

Let me see it.” Well, the fellow – now, this is not a repetitive process, you see, and it’s not itsa. This is taking up the case, see – crash! And he says, “Well, I did this.” And I say, “All right,” and you don’t challenge it or anything. “And I did that.

And I did something else.” And he’s giving you a lot of balderdash as far as you’re concerned, because you and the society at large don’t consider these things very harmful acts. Fine. Let him get them off.

He’s just trying to run some variety of O/W. Okay, but that isn’t what you ask him. And so you just go on getting your auditing question an- swered and you – doesn’t take you – if you – doesn’t matter if it took you twenty-five hours to get this auditing question answered.

You get something that he really did that he thinks was an overt act – it was a harmful action. That’s what you’re looking for and it’s a sort of a chitter-chat, don’t you see? It’s not “What have you done?

How have you justified…?” That’s not the process. Let me put this other form of action across here. It’s “Let’s sort it out.” And he finally says, “Well, I threw my little brother in the river one time.” And that was one hell of an overt act.

You’ve got a – it’s fine with you that he says something like this. Now you’ve got your meat. Now let’s cook it.

I don’t care if it took you one minute or twenty-five hours to get an answer that both you and he would consider an overt act. We’re not dodging around now about social mores and some people’s considerations are different. So the both of you consider this thing as an overt act.

All right. That’s fine. Now, that’s the one you start to put on the front burner.

And this is the way you put it on the front burner: And you say, “All right. Now, let’s just start out and count them up. Now, how wasn’t that an overt?” And that’s not a repetitive question because he’ll just go on answering that and he’ll get lost after a while and go off maundering someplace and you say, “The auditing question was ‘How wasn’t that an overt?’” – because you haven’t got that one answered yet either.

Do you understand? These are two auditing questions you’re getting answered. And it’s going to take you, sometimes, one awful long time to get each one of them an- swered.

And it’s not a toss-off process, the way those repetitive processes are, don’t you see? THE FAILED CASE 17  It’s not a process by which you could say, “Recall a time you communicated with somebody. Good.

Recall a time you communicated with somebody. Good. Recall a time...” – you see.

It’s not a process, “What would you confront? What would you rather not confront?” and so forth. Because he’s got certainty on these questions.

No, you’ve asked him right into the guts of ab- erration. You’ve asked him this question, “What have you done that was a harmful act?” you see. Now, that actually – actually he has to clip that thing in his mind; he’s got to get ahold of something that answered that question.

See, you’re not going up on it on some gradient and hoping some accident will occur. You’re driving right down the center of the road now and you’re driving all the way as an auditor and you want to know just that: “What have you done that was a harmful act or action,” and so forth. That’s what you want to know.

It doesn’t mat- ter much how you phrase it and so forth. And he’ll give you something that, yes, he – even he at the moment considers it harmful and it’s something that you recognize as harmful as the auditor. And we finally got this one shaken out.

And we can even get into arguments with the pc about what’s harmful and what isn’t. That’s all part of the game, don’t you see? We got this one.

Now he’s clipped one side of it. Now, let’s take the other side out with “How wasn’t it an overt act? How wasn’t it harmful?

Why was it justified?” I don’t care how you phrased it. He really, in his first sputterings, is not really answering that question. He isn’t telling you what he really justified, what he really thought was unharmful about it, why he really had to do it.

So he hasn’t really answered the question, don’t you see? And it’s going to take an awful lot of answers before you really get the answer to the question. When you finally get the answer to the question, it goes something like this, you see: “Holy suffering Godfrey, I hated his guts!

I’d been trying to get rid of him for years.” “Oh, is that so?” “Yeah, I guess that’s why I thought…” And you’ll suddenly notice a change to past tense. “I guess that’s why I thought it wasn’t a harmful act to throw my little brother in the river. Now, what do you know about that! Well, well, well, well, well.” And you see, you get a “What do you know?” It was one overt and it was one reason.

Do you see? In the getting of it you got fifty overts to choose from. You got twenty-hours’ worth of reasons but there was one reason which kept the violence of the action pinned into this thing of postulate-counter-postulate, see.

He and society really considered this an overt and there was an awful good reason for it. And there it is – hung. And it’s accumulated locks and it’s influenced his whole life, don’t you see?

And if you’ve got patience and skill as an auditor to go through that drill, you’ve got what I first released as justifications and which easily degenerates into some lousy, relatively un- workable process in which nobody is answering the auditing question, don’t you see? You can ask, “What have you done? What have you done?

What have you done? What have you done? What have you?” Well, you’re not asking for anything. “What have you done?” “Well, I ate breakfast.” “All right, that’s fine.” That’s a perfectly valid answer.

He knows he’s done that. But I shudder to think of how many answers you could get to that be- fore you would get… The gradient is so long that it’s very worthwhile to go at it on this other  THE FAILED CASE 18  basis, you see, and cut it down to size because this other basis can be reached, because he’s been sitting in that ever since the day he threw his little brother in the river. Now, the unchanging condition comes from a postulate-counter-postulate.

So an overt which created an obsessive problem or which sought to solve one hangs in time and becomes both an overt act and a present time problem. Even though it’s not in present time according to time span and calendars it’s in present time according to the mind. And you’ll find out that most overts are committed as solutions.

So you have another little in* whereby you could trip this case into a change and you could trigger off a chain reac- tion in this case that’s committing overts all the time. It’s just accidental that you would – you would hit it because he’s not much in communication, you see. He’s – almost every session he’s further out of communication than before, you see.

He’s really sending himself over Ni- agara Falls without even a barrel and a publicity agent. And nothing could be drearier, could it? You’ve got this other one, is you handle the overt as a PTP that he is trying to solve and you cut in – try to cut in back of it.

You understand you’re trying to do this with this guy who’s the failed case – who’s committing these overts. You’re trying to do this with some- body who isn’t in communication with you anyhow but is just pretending to be, see. So don’t pat yourself on the back and say, “Well, we can always trigger it,” because you won’t.

It’s worth – it’s very worth trying and it’s very valuable on other cases, see. It’s very valuable on cases who aren’t, who are just normally going along trying to get better. A very valuable pro- cess is just find out what present time problem they’re trying to solve with their overts.

It’s very amusing. It’s very amusing that you’ll all of a sudden have a stream of overts pour into view that the person doesn’t even remember having done. This is very amusing.

I mean, if you want to suddenly expose to the pc’s view over here a whole chain of actions that he never suspected that he himself had done or would never have considered an overt and has now totally got occluded, just start approaching overts as solutions to some problem. Go in through the back door, don’t you see? There’s a thousand ways you could dream up to do this even on a repet – I’m not try- ing to run down repetitive processes.

The repetitive processes are – can be repetitive processes only when they can be answered. See, when they can be answered with good reality on the part of the pc and he knows he’s answered the question, why, you can ask repetitive. But you can’t ask him on something that is far-fetched as “What have you – what harmful act have you committed, you know, that you consider harmful?” And he says, “Well, I did so-and-so,” and he doesn’t think so and it’s not a harmful act and he’s got it totally justified and so – it doesn’t answer the auditing question, so the guy is even further out of session afterwards.

But approaching this other one now – approaching that as an overt – a harmful act is an effort to resolve a problem. Ninety-nine percent of the cases you collide with – oh, a higher percentage than that – this just works like a bomb. A terrific process, all the time, but it even works on the guy who is categorized at some tiny percentage of the time, see.

You find out, well, all men are Martians or something wild, see. That’s the problem he’s trying to solve. * “in” here: access (Ref.: World Book Dictionary)  THE FAILED CASE 19  How to get rid of the Martians or… It’ll be probably some crazy problem that hasn’t got any- thing to do with reality, see. This is fact.

It’ll be some problem that existed a long time ago that doesn’t exist any longer or something. But the obsessive commission of overts means that their – the pc must have some oddball problem that’s got a tremendous lie connected with it somehow or another. And all things that persist have lies connected with them.

And you could try it from that door. You could try to open that door. The only reason that it’d fail is you don’t get problems, you get a whole bunch of mo- tivators out of such a case.

A normal case you say, “Well, what problem are you trying to solve with overts?” You said something like that and he’d say something like this. Well, he’d say, “Well, a continuation of my business. I have to commit one God-awful number of overts to keep afloat.” “Well, how do you have to commit these overts?” “Well, actually I commit them against the customer by cheapening the product.

And I commit them against the staff by demanding more work at less pay. And, uh – actually, you know, it’s the goddamned government. If they weren’t taking…” And then he’d say some- thing like this to you, you see – “If they weren’t taking the additional profit that I might be making, you see, then I might not have to commit that many overts.

Hey, you don’t suppose I’m trying to make the government guilty, do you? My God, I am! Hummm!” See, one of these brassy, ten thousand-volt cognitions, don’t you see.

You’ve all of a sudden done something very tricky with a case that looks absolutely magical, see. What you did is, you recognized that overts are an effort to solve some problem. Not all overts are efforts to solve some problem – some are accidental, some are habitual, see.

I mean, some are just ignorance. There are different kinds of overts that are harmful acts a guy can commit, see. He didn’t intend to commit an overt.

Well, an overt and a harmful act nor- mally requires some intention, don’t you see. Even the law – accidental death, you know, is manslaughter and homicide is premeditated – even the law makes a difference between what was intended to happen and what happened, don’t you see? Well, all of these various wild considerations, they – you needn’t tangle yourself up and get too involved with them.

I’m just trying to say that it isn’t true to say that every overt that was ever committed was an effort to solve a problem, don’t you see? That’s one of these data like “jewelers never go anywhere,” see. It’s completely non sequitur to anything type of data, you see.

It’s a total generality. It doesn’t work. Not all harm in the – in the world stems from the existence of problems, see.

You could run this down. You’d probably make a pretty good case for it, don’t you see, but it’s going to – its logic is going to fail some place or other along the line. But where a fellow is absolutely a dedicated hombre – where this bird gets up in the morning and crosses his heart and takes the hilt of his tie pin and presents it to his forehead and before the mirror, on how he’s going to get even today – he’s solving a problem.

And this person is going around saying, “Well, I really don’t want to commit the overt, but I’ve got to.” This also gives us a strange view to it all. THE FAILED CASE 20  See, he’s withholding committing the overt but he’s got to commit the overt and so forth. Well, now look at that.

Get an insight on this. He’s obviously trying to solve some problem, isn’t he? No other avenue of solution, so he commits the overt as the last resort.

Usually an intentionally committed harmful act – this is ordinary in life – an intentionally committed harmful act is committed in an effort to resolve a problem. And so, when you get some horrible thing that the person has done in life – as threw his little brother in the river – he agreed it was an overt. He knows it’s an overt now.

It wasn’t just an accident. He didn’t drop him in the river. He picked him up and he threw him in the river, see.

And we’ve got this thing now and he knows it’s a bad thing and you know that’s a bad thing, too – it’s not – it’s not done. And now he’s answered the question, don’t you see? Well, when you ask him on the reverse current, you see, why that wasn’t an overt, you’re unlocking the door to an ancient problem of some kind or another, see, and you’re tak- ing locks off of it.

So you let him chatter on and on and on and give you more and more and more on this one question until all of a sudden the real reason – the real reason it wasn’t an overt – shows up and you’ve unlocked it. He will say, quite incidentally, and pass it off shortly after his cognition, that that was a hell of a thing to do. He’ll say, “Well, I just didn’t figure – I just didn’t figure I’d ever have anything, if he was that young.

He always used to tear up my things. Parents would buy everything for him.” You’ve already heard all these things, why it wasn’t an overt, don’t you see, but he explains it to you. He’ll sum it up.

It was a problem. It was a problem actually in havingness. So why he threw his brother in the river was a problem in havingness.

Don’t you see? And you can sometimes be completely magical with this and very lucky. If your pc is very bad off, you’re very lucky if you make this work, don’t you see, because his recognition of responsibility is out the bottom.

He’s not about to be responsible for any quarter of any- thing he’s doing or has done. And he – therefore, he’s not even responsible for sitting and being a pc in your auditing session, you see. So trying to reach this gone character, this totally failed case, is – blahh.

But this may even occasionally work with him, don’t you see? Treat his overts as an effort to solve a problem. I don’t care how you treat it.

You say, “What problem are you trying to solve? Now, you know, let’s see, what have you done…” This is a good gambit on such a thing, “Let’s see, what have you done in the last twenty-four hours that was pretty antisocial?” Ahhh, but he – before he starts to even say, “Ohoh-oh-oh. Well, nothing, you know,” well, you already got this guy taped, you know.

Just brush it off, don’t even acknowledge it. It’s a lie anyhow. “Let’s see, now. What would it be in the vicinity of?

Would it be something to your family or somebody around that’s close and near and dear to you, or would it be me, or the organiza- tion? Well, the needle just fell on me. Now, what have you done to me?” Actually, the last time he left the session, he – you couldn’t find your overshoes.

Well, he took them and threw them in the garbage can or something like that, see. You run it down. You say, “All right.

Now, let’s take this – let’s take this – let’s take this action now, and what problem were you trying to solve with that?” See? Let’s go at it on a kind of head-on proposi- tion so he really doesn’t get the motivator off. Sometimes by lucky chance, you’ll come  THE FAILED CASE 21  through.

You could ask him, “Well, why wasn’t it an overt act?” He could give you a lot of justifications, don’t you see. He could give you a lot of other things and so on. But you could also undercut the thing and have some chance of getting through just with a blunt, “Well, what – by being mean to my possessions, what problem are you trying to solve?” And he’ll some way or another start coming up with, “Well, I’m trying to solve the problem of how the hell I’m going to stay sick.” Of course, your immediate response, “Well, why do you want to stay sick?” see.

You probably would ask him that, really before you could check yourself. You’d be too startled, something like that. An auditor should never be startled, but they occasionally are, me amongst them. “Ah,” he’d say, “Well, I’d cease to draw a pension.” “Well, what problem are you trying to solve by getting auditing?” “To show them how sick I am.” But I’m afraid this really failed case would not have that much insight or that much di- rectness to approach it.

You can try, you understand. With other cases that are having trouble and so forth, oh yes, this will work. They’ve got some responsibility for life.

They’re going to do something in life. They’re of some use and benefit to somebody in existence and so forth. Yes, these processes are terrific.

I probably err in putting such processes at this lowest, un- workable level, don’t you see. I’m showing you – just trying to show you these processes are terrific processes, work on almost any case. On this case they sometimes nudge it, sometimes budge it, sometimes get it off of the kick, sometimes straighten it out and get it along the line.

But you must know what you’re dealing with when you’re dealing with this failed case. You must know what you’re dealing with. You are not dealing with a person who has committed overts in the past.

You are not handling a problem that has to do with the past. You are handling a problem that has to do with today. You’re handling a problem that has to do with the session yesterday, to the session today time period.

You’re handling that consistently and continuously. You handle that with every case that you have anything to do with, one way or the other, to some degree, don’t you see? Well, with this case it’s all totally hidden.

It’s all gone. You’re never going to find out about it and he’s not enough in communication to tell you and you probably can’t hire enough detectives to find out about it, don’t you see? So you are actu- ally not failing in any quarter except failing to restrain an individual from committing so many overt acts that he can’t be audited.

And that case is the failed case and that’s the only one there is. You can say, all right, well, there’s another failed case: the fellow who died. No, I don’t know that he’s a failed case.

We’ll pick him up later on. You keep Scientology going and workable, you pick them all up, see, no matter what happened to them. So that doesn’t classify, see.

And of course somebody who’s unconscious and can’t be talked to and that sort of thing, you can get them into communication with their pillow and wake them up. I mean, that’s quite interesting. THE FAILED CASE 22  And we got a dog up to the point now where all she does is try to talk.

It’s probably – it’s having an awful time trying to get along without vocal cords – trying to make up for vocal cords: Yummm wumm gumm yumm yumm. Through a little bit of processing from day to day, or from every couple of days to every couple of days and that sort of thing – just Touch Assists sort of thing, you know – why, she’s coming up in tone. I notice her communication level is rising, rising, rising, rising, rising.

And she’s up to a point now where she – well, at first she would only moan and groan around about her chow, see, something very intimate. Now she moans and groans around because she’s glad to see you. And now she’s gotten up to a point where she’s moaning and groaning around in other – using other voice intonations now, complaining about how cold it is outside.

So these things – these things are not terrific barriers, see. You can process almost any- thing or anybody up along the line, providing you haven’t got this other condition. And what you’ve got to recognize in dealing with cases at large, is that when easy auditing isn’t there with continuous case progress – when that isn’t present – that you are facing a circumstance which has to be remedied before ordinary auditing works.

There’s something odd about the case or something peculiar. There’s something that has to be handled about the case, and this is very, very general. This isn’t isolated, but it is handleable.

It’s very easily handleable. It’s only when you don’t recognize that something is there which has to be handled, that you then have any trouble with the case, and that you would fail on a case, you see. Now, there’s a big difference between that, you see, and the failed case.

Now, cases which have appeared to fail in your hands have only failed for technical reasons and for lack of remedies. And you have The Book of Remedies now; it is very easy to use and it’ll be out in a few days. This you will see is going to make an immediate difference.

Because I notice in doing auditing session reports on somebody who’s busted down in the line of auditing and so forth, we don’t give them anything new. We’re giving them stuff that’s very old and creaky and antique and so forth: “Look over the auditing report and find the first time the pc set a sour goal. Now go back to the session immediately ahead of that and sk – and investigate that session.” It’s almost perfect formula, see.

Pc set a sour goal: He hadn’t been running well since 1958. What? Well, it doesn’t have to be that extreme.

But you might run somebody down to an unflattened process, don’t you see, or something of that sort. And you set that up and they all of a sudden flatten that process up and zooommm – they’re away, don’t you see? Something has happened, they’ve left a process unflat or a process has been messed up or something has occurred and so forth.

It’s just sensible material of this particular kind and it takes that sort of thing. I recog- nized that I had not, in actual fact, released all of the technology of Scientology, through not having released the auditing remedies used by – in case supervision, which was done over the many, many years – and that was to a point when the student came to Saint Hill, why, of course, he got case supervision of one type or another. He got case supervision, see.

And then in trying to relay this material on, the material was too complex to be relayed at a breath, don’t you see? There are a lot of them; there are a lot of them. There’re – well, it’s around a hundred or less, but they look – they look bewildering at first glance.

THE FAILED CASE 23  You know, I mean, if you – if you didn’t have any book and you had no guide and you had no map, no chart of anything of this sort and you try to teach somebody – sit down and teach him – he actually would have had to have had each one – one each almost – of all of these various case manifestations, which aren’t very many. There are less than a hundred of them. Each one of them would have had a different manifestation, don’t you see.

He’d had to have handled the case each time. Well, they don’t happen that frequently. And it’s very hard to train on a practical – experience basis.

And I all of a sudden realized that section was miss- ing and so got together and “writ it up.” And then I corralled Mary Sue, who is old-time expe- rienced Supervisor from way back when in HGCs, and so forth, and I went over all of those and, that she could think of, and we got a bunch more and put them all together in a ready- reference type of form. You’ll have to learn how to use that book, but that takes care of the cases that you normally are considering cases that are hard to audit or cases that you’re failing on and so forth. I wanted to make it very clear from this point on what a failed case was.

And a case that is utterly an unauditable, God-help-us, catastrophic bust – with you, with The Book of Reme- dies with some area of auditing, with somebody able to do something for the case, the case doesn’t progress at all – you’ve still got this one case left, you see. He’s committing overts faster than you could ever get them off. And through that, why, you will occasionally spell yourself a disaster.

So I’m pointing that one up as a great big – great big set of rocks that lie under the water up there someplace on some case. And if, after you’ve done your very, very best to handle the case and done everything possible that you could possibly think of, and you – so forth and so on – why, just hark back and recall this one. There is such a case.

Now, if you want to hire – have him hire a couple of private de- tectives to chase him around and lock him up in a hotel room and so forth, you could still solve his case, you understand. But under ordinary auditing conditions, his case is unsolvable and so therefore would be a failed case. Okay?

Thank you.

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