Sense of Reality (500627)
Date: 27 June 1950
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
There’s nothing wrong with starting and resolving a case quickly. But picking up the patient’s sense of reality is very important. Should be done at the beginning of the case, I seldom dive on a case without looking it over fairly carefully But then you want to do something there. You want to dive then and resolve that case as fast as possible in its initial stages. That’s vital.
Male voice: Oh, I have seen five, ten, fifteen minutes at the beginning of a session on pleasure moments. Is that time wasted?
Oh no, that’s never time wasted.
Now, here’s what I am most anxious to demonstrate to you, is the dullness of tackling a case with a brutal, hard approach when you don’t know where you’re going in the case. Because you could very easily slug a case around, get him all tangled up, stuck in fifteen places and snarl it enormously.
What you want to do is get the painful emotion off of this case as fast as possible; get off the painful emotion or the physical pain engram in which the patient is held. You want to relieve that case quickly. Make the patient—although your primary consideration is not patient comfort, patient comfort is an index of how far you’re getting, and an index of whether or not BP is satisfied. BP knows all about this. [gap] (After a gap the recording resumes with an auditing demonstration in progress.) LRH: Okay, how about closing your eyes. How about going back to a moment when you were having a lot of fun; a moment when you were having a lot of fun. Enjoying yourself. (pause) Enjoying yourself, (pause) Okay, what you doing?
PC: Riding my horse down the lane.
LRH: Okay, how’s the horse smell?
PC: Like most horses.
LRH: Yeah, okay, like most horses? Doesn’t this horse have a particular odor of his own? How about the leather?
PC: The reins.
LRH: Okay, the reins.
PC: The olfactory has always been dim; it’s still dim. I can get vague impressions, but that’s all.
LRH: Okay. How’s the horse look?
PC: Fine. Chestnut horse.
LRH: How do the ears look?
PC: Um. . .
LRH: What’s he doing with his ears?
PC: Fairly good ears. He’s moving them back and forth slightly. Mostly pretty well still.
LRH: Aha. And he is doing what? Cantering?
PC: Yeah, at this point, we’re cantering.
LRH: All right. How’s it feel?
PC: Feels fine, I . . .
LRH: What’s it doing to your breath as he canters?
PC: Sort of a slight bounce each time he hits a stride.
LRH: Okay. The file clerk will now give us the incident which is necessary to resolve your case. Your somatic strip will go to the first moment of that incident. Count from one to five, you’ll give me the first words of the incident. One-two-three-four-five. (snap) PC: “Ouch.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Ouch.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Ouch.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Ouch.” LRH: Next line.
PC: “That hurts.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Ouch, that hurts.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Ouch, it hurts.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Ouch, that hurt.” LRH: All right. Any bouncers in this incident? Somatic strip will go to any bouncer in this incident. The bouncer will flash into your mind when I count from one to five. One-two-three-four-five. (snap) PC: Kind of a jumble of “You can’t come in,” it seems to be.
LRH: All right, go over that line.
PC: “You can’t come in.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “You can’t come in now.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “You can’t come in now.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “You can’t come in now.” LRH: Contact it more solidly. Go over it again.
PC: “You can’t come in now.” LRH: All right, any bouncer? Any “get out” or “go away”? Anything like that, the somatic strip will go to that part of the incident. When I count from one to five, it’ll flash into your mind. One-two-three-four-five. (snap) (pause) What is it?
PC: As a bouncer, I got “Stay here.” LRH: All right, go over that, “Stay here.” PC: “Stay here.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Stay here.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Stay here.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Stay here.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Please stay here.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Please stay here.” LRH: All right, let’s go to the denyer in this incident. The somatic strip will go to the denyer. When I count from one to five the denyer will flash into your mind. One-two-three-four-five, (snap) PC: “You can’t tell. It came in long before your time.” LRH: Okay, let’s go over “You can’t tell.” PC: “You can’t tell” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “You can’t tell” LRH: You can’t tell what? Go over it again.
PC: “It might take a long time.” LRH: Let’s go over that again.
PC: “You can’t tell. It might take a long time.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “You can’t tell. It might take a long time.” LRH: Contact the somatic with this. Go over it again. [gap] Mm-hm. All right, let’s go over that again. “You can’t tell, it might take a long time.” PC: “You can’t tell, it might take a long time.” LRH: Okay, go over it again.
PC: “You can’t tell. It might take a long time.” LRH: All right. Let’s contact the beginning of the incident. Contact the beginning of the incident. “Ouch.” The word “ouch.” PC: “Ouch.” LRH: What’s the jostle just before “ouch”? Somatic strip will locate this. Let’s contact it. (pause) Okay. Let’s contact it.
PC: Mm-hm.
LRH: All right.
PC: (mumble) I don’t know why.
LRH: Okay, that’s all right. Is there a pain shut-off in this incident? Yes or no. (snap) PC: Yes.
LRH: All right, let’s contact the pain shut-off. Somatic strip will go to the pain shut-off when I count from one to five, give it to me. One-two-three-four-five. (snap) PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over that again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Get the somatic, go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t feel anything.” LRH: All right. Let’s contact the beginning of the incident, roll it. The somatic strip will go to the first part of the incident, “Ouch.” PC: “Ouch.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “That hurts.” LRH: Continue.
PC: I feel like I’m making this all up . . .
LRH: Good. Let’s roll it.
PC: “Ouch, that hurts. Ouch, that hurts. What are you doing that for? Ouch, that hurts. What are you doing that for?” “You’ll feel better in a minute.” Now it seems to be building up a little bit.
LRH: Continue.
PC: “Ouch, that hurts. What are you doing that for?” “You’ll feel better in a minute.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “Oh, doctor.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “Oh, doctor.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “Oh doctor, I wish we could get this over with.” LRH: Let’s go over it again.
PC: “Oh doctor, I wish we could get this over with.” LRH: Go over that again.
PC: “Oh doctor, I wish we could get this over with.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “It’s all right.” LRH: Continue.
PC: Oh, brother. Here comes some more . . .
LRH: Continue. “I wish we could get this over with.” Repeat that.
PC: “I wish we could get this over with.” LRH: The somatic strip will go there to the moment that’s in this sequence which destroys the reality of it. When I count from one to five, it’ll flash into your mind. One-two-three-four-five. (snap) (pause) What do you get?
PC: “That’s the same,” or something like that.
LRH: All right. Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “That’s . . . That’s the same.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the. . .” (coughs) LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Contact the sonic on this. Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Shift into your own valence. Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Into your own valence. Go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “That’s the same.” LRH: Continue. Continue, (pause) Next line.
PC: “Always. That’s the same thing it’s always . . .” (cough) LRH: Go over that again.
PC: (coughs) “That’s the same thing.” LRH: Into your own valence.
PC: “It’s always that way.” LRH: Let’s go over that again.
PC: “That’s the same thing. It’s always that way.” LRH: Into your own valence.
PC: Oh, boy. “That’s the same thing it’s always that way.” LRH: Okay. Continue.
PC: “That’s the same thing, it’s always that way.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “Well, you’ll be better soon.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Well, you’ll be better soon.” LRH: Next line.
PC: “We’ll just see if we can’t make you more comfortable.” LRH: Continue, (pause) Continue.
PC: Sliding out of valence.
LRH: All right. Into your own valence, go over it again. “Make you more comfortable.” PC: “Let’s see if we can’t make you more comfortable.” LRH: Into your own valence. Into your own valence, (pc coughs) Continue. What’s your mother saying?
PC: “Well, I hope you can. I don’t want to go on like this.” LRH: Go on over that again.
PC: “Well, I hope—I hope you can, I don’t want to go on like this.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “I hope you can, I don’t want to go on like this.” LRH: Continue. Next line.
PC: “Oh, we’ll have you fixed up. We’ll have you fixed up pretty soon.” LRH: Go over that again.
PC: “Oh, we’ll have you fixed up pretty soon now.” LRH: All right. Go over it again.
PC: “Oh, we’ll have you fixed up pretty soon now.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “Oh, we’ll have you fixed up pretty soon now.” LRH: All right. Next line, (pause) Next line, (pause) Shift into your own valence. Pick up the next line. What do you get there? Any impression of sound there in your own valence?
PC: Not a sound. The words just changed.
LRH: All right, that’s okay.
PC: Um, something got changed in here.
LRH: All right.
PC: Um, I wonder if I can get the next lines.
LRH: You know the next line.
PC: Something about, “Well, I guess that’s about all I can do now.” LRH: Go over that again.
PC: “Well, I guess that’s about all I can do now. I’ll be going now.” LRH: Let’s go over that again.
PC: “Well, I guess that’s about all I can do now, I’ll be going. I’ll be going now.” LRH: Continue, PC: “All right, doctor, thanks very much for having to come out.” I get the impression it’s on the farm.
LRH: All right, let’s go over that again.
PC: “Thanks very much for coming out, doctor.” The farm was about fifteen miles out of town, and the doctor had to ride fifteen miles.
LRH: Okay, PC: “Thanks very much for coming out, doctor.” “That’s all right. If anything more turns up, call me.” LRH: Okay, All right. Let’s return to the beginning of the incident. The first moment of disturbance of this sequence now. Right at the beginning of it. Now shift into your own valence. Let’s run it. Let’s run it.
PC: “Ouch, that hurts.” LRH: Continue, PC: (coughs) LRH: Continue. Into your own valence. Continue.
PC: “Ouch, that hurts.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “What are you doing?” LRH: Continue.
PC: “You’ll be better soon now.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “I hope so. I can’t go on like this.” LRH: Continue, (pause) Continue.
PC: “We’ll get you fixed up here.” LRH: Continue, (pause) Continue.
PC: Mmmmm.
LRH: Attaboy. Roll it. Shift into your own valence, pick up the rest of it. (pause) “Everything’s the same,” go over that.
PC: “Everything’s the same. Everything’s the same.” LRH: All right. What’s the phrase? The whole sequence.
PC: “Everything’s the same.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “It’s always that way.” LRH: Let’s go over that again.
PC: “It’s always that way.” LRH: Let’s go over that whole phrase.
PC: “Everything’s the same. It’s always that way.” LRH: What’s the somatic with it? Let’s go over it again.
PC: It’s not so much somatic; it’s hot as hell.
LRH: All right. Let’s go over that again. “Everything’s the same.” PC: “Everything’s the same. It’s always that way.” LRH: All right, continue.
PC: “Well, that’s all right. We’ll have you fixed up pretty soon.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “That’s all I can do now. I guess I’d better be going now.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “All right, doctor, thanks a lot for coming out.” LRH: All right. Is “can’t come in” in this sequence anyplace? Yes or no? Is “can’t come in” in this sequence anyplace, yes or no?
PC: No.
LRH: All right. Let’s roll it from the beginning. Let’s roll this thing through again. Let’s pick up the tactile on this.
PC: “Ouch, it hurts.” LRH: Okay. Keep rolling it.
PC: “Ouch, it hurts.” LRH: Next line.
PC: “What are you doing?” LRH: Continue.
PC: Mmmm. . .
LRH: You know what it is, just roll it.
PC: “Ouch, it hurts. What are you doing?” LRH: Continue.
PC: “You’ll be better here in a little while.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “You’ll feel better. You’ll feel better in a little while.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “I hope so. I can’t go on like this.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “That’s the same. It’s always like that.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “Same. It’s always like that.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “Well, we’ll have you fixed up right in a few days.” LRH: Continue. Shift into your own valence.
PC: (sigh) “We’ll have you fixed up in a few days.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “I feel like—something about the medicine in there.
LRH: You know what that is. When I count from one to five, it’ll flash in your mind. One-two-three-four-five. (snap) PC: “If you get this prescription filled, I think that will help.” LRH: Go over that again.
PC: “If you get this prescription filled, I think that will help.” LRH: Continue.
PC: “If you get this prescription filled, I think that will help.” LRH: All right. Let’s go back to the line “She’s sick all the time.” (pause) “She’s sick all the time”? “I’m sick”?
PC: “She. . .” LRH: What is it? She’s what?
PC: “It’s—it’s the same. It’s always like that.” LRH: Let’s go over it again.
PC: “No, that’s the same. It’s always like that. I’m always sick at my stomach.” LRH: Ah. Let’s go over that again.
PC: (yawn) “It’s always like that. I’m always sick at my stomach.” LRH: Shift into your own valence and run that.
PC: “That’s the same, it’s always like that. I’m always sick at my stomach.” LRH: All right. Let’s go over that again.
PC: “That’s the same, it’s always like that. I’m always sick at my stomach.” LRH: Contact any somatic on that now. Let’s roll it again.
PC: A few twitches, but I can’t seem to get any somatic.
LRH: Ah, you know about it.
PC: I don’t seem to.
LRH: All right. Will you contact this incident when Dick runs you?
PC: Yes.
LRH: All right. Come on up to the time you were riding a horse.
PC: Yeah.
LRH: How big of a horse?
PC: A big horse.
LRH: A horse?
PC: Middling horse.
LRH: Medium-size horse? What’s he doing?
PC: Cantering through some field.
LRH: How do his hooves sound?
PC: Well, not very much on the turf.
LRH: All right, but listen to those hooves on turf.
PC: Just a thonk.
LRH: All right. Pick up any saddle creaks there?
PC: Sort of. My niece was saying, “Oh, look at the baby colt.” LRH: Yeah. Okay. You enjoying yourself there?
PC: Yeah.
LRH: Air fresh? How’s the air on your face?
PC: When I’m riding or . . . ?
LRH: Yeah, riding.
PC: Okay. It’s sort of blowing.
LRH: Okay. Come on up to present time, five-four-three-two-one.
PC: (mumble) LRH: Mm-hm. Well, at least the file clerk gave us the grouper. What was the grouper?
PC: “It’s always that way.” LRH: Go on, what was it again?
PC: “That’s the same, it’s always that way.” LRH: Let’s go over it again.
PC: “That’s the same, it’s always that way.” LRH: Okay. [gap] [to class] · . . demonstrating to you, however, is not the fact that Belknap can be sick at his stomach from morning sickness received some—how long ago was it?
Male voice: Actually St. Georges seemed to reduce one incident of that considerably and since then I’ve been . . .
Good. Well, anyway, just merely demonstrating the technique here more than anything else. Now, the technique in this particular case wasn’t working too smoothly. Now, the reason it wasn’t too smoothly up there at the beginning is because Belknap is working under self-control. [to pc] Who in your family desired that you be very self-controlled?
Male voice: My father, I guess.
Has he ever told you that you have to control yourself?
Male voice: Yes, as a matter of fact.
Yeah, because obviously, you see, now you ask for a bouncer and you get a holder. You ask for a denyer and you get something else. You ask for a denyer, you get a grouper.
Male voice: But when you ask for those, while you re asking for it the old analyzer starts searching a whole string . . .
That is right, and that is the manifestation of an auto-self-control mechanism at work. “Control yourself, control yourself.” A person is fully equipped to control himself without having an installed light trance that he carries around his whole life so he has to tell himself what to do and back and forth, vice versa.
Male voice: You don’t have to.
That’s right! You don’t have to.
Now, the bulk of the slow starts and minimal success runs happen because people don’t realize that the somatic strip is doing exactly what they ask it to do. They will assume that because they’re not getting data immediately that the somatic strip is not doing what they have asked it to do, and so they’ll ask it to do two, three, four things at once before they get anything out. The somatic strip by this time gets pretty fouled up with the bank. And then it is hard to move it. Then the person gets stuck. Then you have to go through the procedure of finding out what it’s stuck on.
I want you also to note the use of the forcing technique of counting and snapping one’s fingers. This doesn’t work too well on Dick because somebody back in an early part of the bank is telling somebody to count to five. And when you count to five, this means something very bad. However, if you run up against that, just recite from A to D or something like that. “When I count from A to D and snap my fingers this will flash into your mind.” Male voice: You’ve used that a couple of times.
Right. How many times did I use it?
Male voice: I think four or five times.
Mm-hm.
Male voice: My flash comes out five. My conscious remembrance says three.
Your flash is right. But your conscious remembrance of the thing is interesting. Here is a very workable technique whereby you merely tell the patient to close his eyes, you install the canceller (as I didn’t do with Burke, he doesn’t go into a trance). You flash him back down the line, you just tell him to go to the front part of the incident, “The somatic strip will go to the front part of the incident” of such and so if you were working one yesterday Or if you know what you want the somatic strip to go to, you just tell it to go there and then just count to five and get the first phrase flash forth. He’ll recount the first phrase, pick up the somatic. Spot the thing so he’s not going to bounce out of it. Spot a bouncer, spot a denyer—in other words, chop it full of holes before you run it—and then just start in at the beginning and run right straight on through the incident.
Male voice: I still have no feeling of reality.
Something that has to be rehabilitated. Your feeling of reality is very . . .
Male voice: I seem to get more in that one than I got in my previous one.
Oh yes? Well, whoever has been running you, Burke, has been neglecting the rehabilitation of that very fact. Second male voice: How do you feel about present time reality?
Male voice: Oh, I’m here, all right. It’s all right.
Were you on the horse?
Male voice: Yeah, after a fashion.
After a fashion.
Male voice: It sort of flashed in and out.
The horse did?
Male voice: I mean the visio. There’d be black and then I’d get a glimpse and then black again and then I’d get another glimpse.
Well then, here’s something that you must, as auditors must keep in mind is that you’re not going to establish any reality of incident with the person. That is to say, you are going to run across people who don’t know five minutes ago was real, who are really floating about eight feet off the ground as far as reality is concerned. One isn’t asking them to face the crude, sordid reality or anything like that. They’re merely trying to put them in contact with the living world a little more solidly And it is very much worth your while to spend a lot of time trying to find out who knocked out reality for this person. Now, that can be done on a straight memory basis sometimes. As a matter of fact, the straight memory circuits are set up to validate reality. And what they get is real. As far as the bank is concerned, that is real. The person knows it is real when he knows it’s real. There’s no sense in going back into prenatal and running a lot of stuff out and chopping around on it if you haven’t made a person’s sense of reality come to the fore. Because we’re not asking a person to go back and play with delusions. Because the incidents are there. The worst enemy of a man’s stability is a sense that everything is false and unreal. It compounds the felony. In short, the aberration is now not only furiously active but also pronounced utterly unreal. Now, between these two things he gets pretty well cornered.
This seems to have sort of descended on us in the last fifty years since the promulgation of Freud’s theory about “all insanity is delusion which took place in childhood. And one has a delusion in childhood and becomes insane as an adult.” In other words, he left himself without any cause. He also left the society without any cause. Because insanity is delusion, well, sanity happens to be reality. So therefore you have to be able to contact a reality. But in order to do that, you have to contact the things which made reality unreal. And the chief factor in this society today that makes a reality unreal is a large section of the small group of the world—and it is a small group that are devoted to mental healing—their pronunciamento that all was delusion. So the poor fellow tries to go back and he tries to contact a reality. And if he does so with some of these past schools of mental healing, very often people have gotten into birth and into the prenatal period and all up and down the line somewhere. And then immediately be challenged by the healer to the effect that what he was remembering was delusion. And one of two things would happen: His case would get worse or he would get angry. And he would get angry and this remarkable situation that we ran into over here of the psychiatrist that told two people who were remembering back into birth and prenatal, he told them both that no, there was no validity to their memories about any of this. And so the people started in just remembering with each other and at the end of a year had practically every psychosomatic illness that was on file in the reactive mind bank in furious restimulation. So the auditor spent five hours, two-and-a-half hours per each, showing them, “This is the book, now, this is Book Three. You start in here and read. And don’t do it any other way than this because you’re going to keep on getting in trouble.” And worked on their cases to a point where they were fairly straightened out and comfortable. They had everything, they had arthritis and bursitis and so on. So the practice of knocking out reality has more than one repercus-sive result. But if a patient has an impeded sense of reality, that sense of reality is impeded in pleasure as well as in pain. You should rehabilitate it for the later moments of his life. Now, he can be sure about these later moments, and they’re more easily validated. So make sure that you know whether or not he considers yesterday real. If he doesn’t consider yesterday real, for God’s sake, do something about it. The little fifteen-minute technique, merely where you tell the guy to remember, “Who told you this, whose fault was it?” and so on, “Who destroyed it, who did this to it?” “Destroyed it” by the way, is a bad word which I’m using here because you infer that it has been destroyed which it hasn’t been.
Male voice: Supposing he doesn’t think that even today, right now, is real?
Well now, then he is psychotic. And we have to practice Institutional Dianetics on him.
Second male voice: But it’s a funny thing when I try to concentrate on one of these incidents, the reality sort of fades out But that incident we just contacted, or reading a book or something you sort of flash me back, I can flash back into almost anywhere on the time track and it seems perfectly real, but the moment I try to pin one of them down and really get into it then the reality of it sort of fades away.
Well now, that is the first factor then in Burke’s case which needs solving. That is not too hard to solve. But it had better be solved now before the whole track is chewed up from one end to the other, instead of some time hence. For instance, to us as auditors the reality of his morning sickness there was unquestionable.
Male voice: That was unquestionable all right, to me too.
Sure. Glug, glug, choke, choke.
Male voice: No doubts about that Nevertheless, if he hasn’t got a straight recall on it after he’s run it, a lot of it’s wasted time.
Male voice: Of course.
Sure. All right. Let me then check this with you. Who was of the opinion that imaginary things were bad?
Male voice: Papa. I was just going over that in my own mind.
When did he used to say this?
Male voice: Well, he said it more or less all along that you have to draw a sharp line between what is real and what is imaginary. And you have to be very careful not to begin to consider the imaginary things as real [gap] (After a gap, the recording resumes with a session in progress.) LRH: No older brothers, no older sisters. All right. Was your mother very imaginary, or had she ever tried to practice any of the arts?
PC: Piano.
LRH: Piano, What did your father think about her piano playing?
PC: Oh, I don’t think he was set against it or anything LRH: Uh-huh. What’s interesting to me is, on this, did he ever encourage any artistic lines in you?
PC: He never discouraged them. My mother would encourage them . . .
LRH: Did you ever try to write any stories?
PC: As a matter of fact, he did.
LRH: He’s written a lot?
PC: No, not fiction.
LRH: Not fiction. Oh, no. I’m beginning to get this boy’s number.
PC: As a matter of fact, he has done some fiction.
LRH: All due respect to your papa, he is writing fiction every day of his life. The hardness of reality. Well, when did he used to beat you around about telling him a lie?
PC: Well, that was number-one sin.
LRH: That was the number-one sin. What happened to you if you told a lie?
PC: Oh, I learned about it.
LRH: You learned about it. All right. Now, tell me this. When did you . . .
PC: Oh! I remember one incident that really had me unsettled, because I’m sure to this day that he told me at some point that if I saved up enough money then I could buy a pellet rifle.
LRH: Yeah.
PC: So when I was about eleven or twelve I had saved enough—$5.85 I believe was the figure—and I went over to the little local country store and bought myself a rifle and proudly brought it home and he said that he had never said that.
LRH: Mm-hm.
PC: And boy, was I confused, because I was sure he had. I never would have considered buying it if I hadn’t been sure he had said it. But he was sure that he hadn’t LRH: You remember this?
PC: Very definitely I remember this. It’s never been completely validated. . .
LRH: Because he told you what?
PC: Well, he told me that he never had said that. He was very sorry that I had thought he had, but that he hadn’t. And I was quite sure, and I told him so.
LRH: Now, what were you to do with the rifle?
PC: Well, as I remember it, he sort of put it aside for a few days while he thought it over and I eventually kept it.
LRH: You eventually kept it.
PC: Yeah, within a couple of days after he thought the situation . . .
LRH: You were feeling very proud and triumphant the moment you brought this home though.
PC: Yeah.
LRH: And what happened?
PC: Well, we started off to talk about it.
LRH: Okay. Now tell me this, how many incidents were there earlier than this, where one thing was told to you . . . ?
PC: There was a flash when you—just after you asked how many incidents, and I got three.
LRH: All right. Let’s take it on a straight memory circuit, straight through the standard banks right down the line now When did you tell the truth and were accused of lying?
PC: There re definitely times in there. They’re floating just back of consciousness.
LRH: Mm-hm. But not quite as far back as they were a minute ago.
PC: No.
LRH: Mm-hm. All right. Let’s check this now. What’s the first incident that you can remember when you told what seemed to you to be the perfect truth?
PC: That’s the first one that I can remember.
LRH: All right. Are there earlier ones?
PC: The flash is yes.
LRH: All right, let’s contact them. Straight memory.
PC: I can get a phrase of mine in one of them. Either “But I did tell the truth” or “But I am telling the truth.” LRH: Mm-hm. About what? What was the furor that got upset? What was the big upset? (pause) You can remember.
PC: I’ve got a book keeps flashing into mind.
LRH: Hm-hm. Big upset.
PC: I think there s something to do with George Washington wandering around in there. “I cannot tell a lie.” LRH: Mm-hm.
PC: That was more or less the idea under which we were brought up, that it wasn’t so bad what you did, but to lie about it was—made it a hundred times worse.
LRH: All right. We want the time now when you told the truth.
PC: “But I am telling the truth” is my phrase.
LRH: It upset the whole household. Big furor. You told the truth.
PC: I can get an impression of Daddy there. Mother’s sort of staying out of it. She generally did, in battles like that. Later on I learned that it was no good to argue with my pa.
LRH: Mm-hm.
PC: So I stayed clear of arguments. If he said the moon lived in the house next door, I said, “Yes, Papa” and let it go at that.
LRH: What’s the score on this early one? This early incident.
PC: I really don’t know.
LRH: Mm-hm.
PC: Even the reality on this doesn’t seem to fit.
LRH: Who said it was unreal?
PC: Something about “You’ve got to learn the difference between what’s true and what’s not true.” LRH: Mm-hm. And you’ve just got through telling the truth in this incident, and it’s been stated that that is now a falsehood.
PC: Yes.
LRH: You stood up to this, how long?
PC: Five minutes is what comes to mind. I mean, I think at that point I think I was sent upstairs.
LRH: Now listen, we’re going to set this up as a little homework for you.
PC: Okay, I’ll work on that.
LRH: Dick is going to run you in a few minutes.
There is the crux of the situation. There is a lot of stuff like that in there, up and down the bank You don’t have to have it there because I said so.
PC: No, I know.
LRH: I’m just demonstrating there that . . .
PC: Oh, I know it’s there.
LRH: The rehabilitation of a sense of reality can actually best be accomplished by stimulating the standard memory. Okay? [to class] And reality is most commonly knocked out by (l) a psychiatrist, (2) a psychoanalyst, (3) Mama, who is very frightened of the child remembering back to what she might have done to him (which knocks out memory and also knocks out a sense of reality) and (4) Papa, who doesn’t want something bruited about, or Mama who doesn’t want something bruited about the neighborhood. So that when little Johnny says so-and-so, then it must be categorically denied by little Johnny, because what little Johnny was saying was true as hell and the family . . . [to pc] I’m not talking about yours . . .
PC: I know. Yeah I know. I was just trying to see if that fit in but it doesn’t. This was nothing like that, this was just a simple case of cutting the pages in a book or something like that. [gap] [to class] This case was interesting. Papa and Mama were dull enough to let themselves get caught with an AA in progress. And little Johnny, in great terror, goes and tells a neighbor child about it, and it’s all over the neighborhood in a hurry. And Papa has to use heroic measures, and of course invalidate everything that little Johnny says. And he knocked out—first, little Johnny’s AAs were keyed in at that moment. He was in great terror and now the giants descend upon him and, I think, in this case Papa did use an electric shock to teach him better.
This is something for you to check, and this is why you should use a diagnosis on the beginning of the case, why you should check a person’s sense of reality, why you should check the character of the family and so on. Naturally, although this gets validated on the straight line memory bank circuits, you haven’t achieved the primary source of it. But having gotten that far, when you get to the primary source, the source itself will be accepted. Because there is material like this in actual engrams.
One could stand around, however, and hammer at a person that he is wrong, that he is wrong, that he is wrong and practically destroy the person. The person has to stand up pretty darn solidly on his two feet. And once a person’s sense of being right is knocked out by the connivings and hammerings and infiltrations of aberrees around him, he is almost done for. So the mind is set up to be right. Even though a guy is working from an engramic background, even though he himself has the feeling that he might be, remember that is still data that is in the computer, and until it is relieved it is still right. Don’t go around being wrong, in other words.
A big computation goes on in this society today that “Well, you’re too fond of being right,” or “You insist on being right all the time” and so forth. Hell yes! Insist like fury on being right. And if you have somebody around you who insists continually that you’re wrong, that you don’t understand, that you don’t know, that that’s not the truth, that you’re getting a continual knockout of your data, your conclusions and so forth, there are only two things to do to him: either a la Rigoletto wrap him up in a sack and give him the deep six, or use Dianetics on him and shut him off as far as having much validity with you is concerned. Because it’s a cinch that one human being in a fairly alert state who is thinking, who is not in an institution, absolutely cannot be wrong 100 percent of the time.
Arguing with that person is—it’s the whole computation of that person’s insistence that he is right. If his conduct seems aberrated, to buck that conduct, to break the dramatization by telling him back again he’s wrong, he’s wrong, he’s wrong, he’s wrong, is a foul trick. And if one wants to drive a person insane he can use two methods. One, he can convince the person absolutely that he is wrong, and wrong forevermore.
The analytical mind is so set up that when it recognizes that it has made a miscomputation, when it actually recognizes this on its own power and determinism, it hastily reevaluates the situation. But if the analytical mind has to accept on somebody else’s force this thing of being wrong, has to admit it is wrong because somebody says it is wrong, then your analytical mind has received another engram which says it is wrong. Or it has received a lock on an engram which says it is wrong. In other words, there is no reason involved in this. One, a person can’t argue very much against engrams. He can push buttons and he can handle them in other ways, but to blunt them and to use force against them is an impossible. And on the other hand, well, to make a very brief statement on it, when a man is right he knows he is right; and if he analytically discovers that he is wrong, he will recorrect the computation. He actually will.
Remember yesterday we were running you, Dick, and you found out that the woman wasn’t mean to you. Your mother had told you at the end of the engram that the woman hadn’t been mean. You had gotten angry at your mother because you knew the woman had been mean. We run the engram and we find out the woman hadn’t been mean. All right, your mind quickly reappraises the situation and says, “Well, the woman wasn’t mean. My mother was right about that.” You were perfectly content that you got that right.
Okay. Any questions on this?
Rehabilitation of reality. That also covers the field, of course, of the maintenance of your own sense of reality. This is pretty important to you, because you’re going to get a lot of patients when you’re tired and so forth that may argue with you and try to knock you around.
Where an ally has said the person is wrong—which can be remedied, because the second you start to discover that this person has no recollection, you can’t force him into analytically remembering such an instance, you know that it’s pretty deeply messed up in the engrams. You can still head for those and ease those if you know what you’re going for.
It’s quite ordinary for Grandma to be the great ally, to have saved the child’s life, to be very pleasant toward the child. But the only way you could spoil a child is the way Grandma quite often employs, which is to give the child everything and let him own nothing, to make the child undetermined about things, to undermine his determinism.
The child says, “I want to go outdoors and play.” And just because Grandma wants to be the boss and so forth where the child is concerned, she wants to show the child that she is really caring for it nicely, she says, “No, the sun is shining too hot.” So he has made up his mind one way, but he was wrong to have made up his mind that way, so she says, “Why don’t you go down and play with your blocks.” So he rather long-sufferingly may go play with the blocks. But all of a sudden it starts to rain. So he says, “Hurrah, that’s fine,” and he gets all squared around ready to go outside and play. But Grandma says, “It’s now raining.” “But you said it was too hot. It’s not hot outside now, it’s raining.” And Grandma says, “Well, that’s different.” He says, “But what’s the matter? I don’t understand this.” And she says, “Well, you’re not supposed to understand. You’re too young. I’m going to take care of you.” He goes and gets a new pair of shoes. “These are your shoes, your shoes, Georgie. Now, you’re to wear these shoes and they’re all yours.” But then he starts out to wear the shoes and she says, “Why are you wearing those shoes today? Why aren’t you wearing your old shoes?” In other words, he is kept in a continual state of indecision. He is never permitted to make up his mind for a moment.
Well, he is in an area, an environment where his mind finally becomes terrifically confused And as such he is not a happy child. His sense of reality is being destroyed because he isn’t getting a chance to be right, ever.
You want to know this, realize it, recognize it for what it is because you’re going to find this in lots of patients. Lots of them. Grandma is the great ally. She took care of the child when she was sick. Or the nurse was the great ally or somebody else was. But that nurse or Grandma, the ally, never gave the child a chance to be right; the child was always wrong. But the child had to depend upon that ally for his very existence, according to his reactive mind.
A period of illness: “Now, I will take care of you, I will take care of you, Oswald. I’m going to take care of you. Now, I’m right here. As long as I’m here you’re all right. Now, you just do what I say and get well. Now, do what I say. Now, you want to do what I say. You want to, don’t you? Now lie back and you get this nice cool towel on your face” and so forth. And maybe the kid’s in a complete delirium while all this chatter is going on. So afterwards he does exactly what they say. But supposing Grandma now says, “You know you’re wrong. Why are you always so wrong about these things?” He’s got to do what Grandma says. You can break out a whole chain of “you’re wrongs” by finding out why the child had to believe so implicitly. You knock out the reasons the child had to believe somebody so implicitly and all the rest of the computations go out as locks. For instance, Burke’s got a computation he has to believe his father. He has to mind him. Otherwise he would have argued with him. It’s irrational for a child not to fly in his father’s face under such a computation.
Come to remember—my father told me I was wrong two or three times in my life. But only two or three times. Because I had a big computation that I had to mind my father which had gotten parked and negated against completely. That bird was sudden death as far as I was concerned. He was not to be tolerated at any moment. None of his adjudications could be considered right. So he says, “Mind,” scratch his eyes out. That was the instantaneous reaction. So when he would go around telling me I was wrong, he would get hell raised with him.
Now, that’s a fact. I went back down the line and sitting there isolated in conscious memory was when I was about two years of age, he comes in and says, “You never finish anything you start. Now, you ought to clean up this stuff around here.” And I said, “Go to hell, you son of a bitch! Get out of here. You’re the one who never finishes anything you start.” And I’ll be a son of a gun if he didn’t back up. He was a quarterdeck naval officer, that guy, too. And I looked back on this and I was amazed when I first remembered this, amazed at the temerity. But the strategy was perfect: I turned his dramatization on him. He restimulated resistance, so I just threw it back at him and he folded up on me. My father always treated me with the gravest respect when he could treat me at all.
Male voice: He learned that early.
Yeah. But he had a set of dramatizations which, if they had been permitted to take root—I would come in, for instance, I would say to him, UI was just down to the . . .” And he would say, “Oh, you were just down to the corner.” “No, I was down to the store.” “Oh well, corner, store, what’s the difference? So you were just down to the store, huh? And what were you doing down to the store? Up to no good, I suppose.” Well, I was about to tell him about the fact that I had spotted a kite down there that I thought I was going to buy, you see. And anything I would say. . . And then he would pun my words so that they would be all lopsided and my meaning was all horsed up2 one way or the other.
So, I got even with him though, once. He was having a big, important meeting there, a lot of officers around and so forth. I was being patted on the head, I was about five years old, I guess. This was a brilliant recollection. Being patted on the head. And my father was—these other guys, you know, a little kid, they take a moment out for him. My father was telling some long-winded tale about some time when he was down in South America or something of the sort. I looked at these guys and I said, “You know,” I said, “don’t believe a word this guy tells you, he’s the awfullest liar in the world.” Now, this doesn’t mean that a child was terribly hurt particularly, but it does mean that a child could and would take extraordinary lengths to safeguard his own right to be right. Because if I had ever permitted him to do anything else, he would have proven me so wrong he’d probably have wound me up in a spinbin someplace. So I never permitted it, and I wouldn’t mind him. I couldn’t accept anything he said, because that was sudden death.
Now, on the other hand, we run into somebody who will accept the statement of a person. There’s a reverse computation on it. The child has accepted the computation that he must mind.
Your father is undoubtedly an ally of yours. A reactive mind ally. Right?
Male voice: Well, I accepted the minding part, but I never accepted what he said. I kept my own mental reservations that I was right and he was wrong but the only thing to do in the situation was to let him go on believing that I did accept it Okay. Well, that’s a surrender. The mind won’t really recognize a compromise down in its deep depths. Do you know that as I say it?
Male voice: Yeah.
Okay. Unless there are any other questions, that’s thirty. Any other questions?
Okay.