According to the letters I have been receiving SOP 8 fell like a minor bomb in some quarters: and all the letters are reporting the sudden resolution and dissolution of cases which had previously been considered very difficult. Some of the letters reflect the fact that none of the materials of Scientology had been available because the auditor had been out of touch. But the main thing which is being reflected is the sudden understanding of what I’ve been trying to do in Scientology. It had not occurred to many that the effort to treat the reactive mind was lengthily unnecessary if one could actually separate out the analytical mind and bring it up to a point where it could handle any reactive mind. Where we want the strength in validation is of course in the analytical mind. I went into this pretty thoroughly in Issue 1 5-G of the Journal of Scientology released a short time ago, and it is wonderful and beautiful to me (l) how auditors everywhere completely missed the point and (2) how I had overlooked telling them what the point was. It is very gratifying in some quarters that this realization alone makes us all friends again.

I am also getting some early reports on groups and some suggestions concerning the handling. One of the suggestions is of very great interest. After one has a group formed and is group processing it, it is very well worth his while to take the names and addresses of his group members and make a personal call around on these people, without any formal appointment, and ask them how they’re going along and if the group processing did them any good and so forth. This all by itself seems to produce the personal contact necessary with some to ask for private and personal auditing. This is a pretty easy thing to do after all. One simply makes sure that he gets the names and addresses of everyone who comes into the group and then one calls around on them personally after they’ve been there a time or two and finds out how they’re getting along. The same auditor also remarked that most of his preclears came from the vicinity of preclears where his results had been successful, and that he did his best acquisition of preclears by writing to all of his old preclears at regular intervals and asking them how they’re getting along. In other words, after he’d processed a preclear, he made a point, about a week later, of writing him a letter asking him how he was getting along. About three weeks after that he wrote him another letter. About a month after that he wrote him another letter. And then he let a period of about three months elapse and wrote him again. This quite often produced an additional intensive run and it certainly produced, in the vicinity of the preclear, new preclears.

I have also received the comment that hardly any auditors ever took me at my word when I said that one could simply go out on the street and stop people who had things obviously wrong with them, make an appointment and process the person and get paid for it. Every auditor who has tried this has found that it was a successful method of getting the word around. One simply stopped somebody on the street, inquired after his health, asking him how he got that way. Then he simply tells him he’s going to give him some processing. An auditor who has a professional card on him with a definition of Scientology printed on the back of it, can give the person a card, but he should not count on the person to make any advance because that person is out of communication. If a person has anything wrong with him, that person can be reached but that person will not reach. Therefore it’s up to the auditor to do the reaching. If he sits and waits for the public to come to him, the public who has anything wrong with it cannot and will not come to him simply because they cannot reach out away from themselves and communicate, but they can be communicated to and can be reached, and are actually quite obedient to anybody who reaches to them. This is such a workable method of getting a practice going that we are considering installing it as a necessary act in professional training.

I received a letter not long ago from an auditor who had gone around the manufacturing plants and had pushed his way in to see a big enough name to get action with the proposition that he cut down the loss of work hours of the company by giving emergency treatment to absentees who were just then costing the company money. He also stated that he was able to walk through plants and pick up the names and addresses of people who were absent and then tell the management he was going to send them back to work, which he did. This was intensively productive of interest, and was quite remunerative.

Remember and do not forget that in the building of a practice and its continuance, one is dealing only with people who can be reached but who will not reach. These people are dramatizing “must not reach,” but only a few of them are dramatizing “must not be reached”; and all of them can be reached but it is up to the auditor to go out and do the reaching. Any occluded case is actually dramatizing to some degree “must not be reached.” An auditor who is an occluded case is liable to take himself out of the general swim and wait for the lame, halt and blind to come to him. The lame, halt and blind do not come to him for the simple reason that they are waiting for him to come to them. They do not know he exists.

Many of you would consider it brassy in the extreme to go from house to house down one block after another and ask at each door if there were anybody chronically ill in the household; then explain what he was there for and say he was going to straighten them out and make an exact statement that his fee was so-and-so. An auditor who would not do such a thing actually is going to have a poor practice. An auditor who would not do such a thing is suffering from stage fright. Under new techniques which you will know about, this auditor should simply run the concept in brackets: “Audiences exist” “Audiences do not exist”, and not fumble about any uncertainties but simply run the positive and negative of the fact that audiences do and do not exist. This stage fright will turn on and off and go away; and after that he can go out and procure preclears. He can run in concepts, mock-ups or in brackets “People exist” “People do not exist” and without touching any in-betweens discover, after he’s done quite a bit of this, that he’s capable of reaching people. In order to have any kind of a practice it is necessary for the auditor to reach people because the practice which he will build will be built out of people who must not reach. Anybody who has anything wrong with any part of his body simply cannot get into communication with it. This means he cannot reach that part of his body. If a person cannot reach a part of his body how can he reach another person? And how can he reach an auditor? An auditor who waits for people to come and apply to his group for entrance, who waits for preclears to come and knock at the door, is liable to sit there for a very long time. He must practice on quite a few people in any given area before the word starts to get around. All he has to have is a few successful cases and the word will begin to get around and people who can reach will be bringing around people who can’t reach. But even so, this is a slow way to go about it.

The number of hours of auditing which preclears need is steadily reducing and an auditor could actually start building his practice in terms of very short sessions, seeing a great many people for a very short time rather than seeing one person for a long time.

It has been observed that a lot of auditors impede their practice by standing around trying to explain what Scientology or Dianetics is to somebody. A patient doesn’t want to know what Dianetics or Scientology is: he wants to get well. The auditor is most successful with new preclears who simply says, “I am a consulting Scientologist; we handle all sorts of human difficulties and malfunctions. Now what’s yours?” And sails on from there to get results. By explaining there is something new in the world he is immediately bringing the preclear into the state of uncertainty of “Will it work or won’t it work?”

Burke Belknap wrote in to say that one of the first things he did with a preclear was to run concepts on the basis of auditors were no good, the thing wouldn’t work on him, nothing would ever change. This is very excellent. Under present techniques this could be run in this fashion: “Nothing will ever change” “Everything is going to change.” One runs this in concepts, mock-ups, brackets, and runs it until he has a preclear that’s going to change. It doesn’t take very long to do this. He will immediately discover that the preclear isn’t changing because the preclear’s afraid that if he starts to change, everything will go into complete confusion. When the preclear discovers it doesn’t, he is then willing to change. You could work the most beautiful techniques in the world on a pc who was trying madly to stay stable, and produce nothing if you did not first shake loose the fear of change. You are trying to change this pc’s communication lines, therefore it’s necessary for you to hit the case on the basis of change. Another thing: you want to make your pc more aware; he will get as well as he becomes aware. If you want anybody to become aware, you have to raise their communication line. If a person is madly holding onto communication shut-offs, how can he become more aware? The test as to whether or not a case is getting well is whether or not that case suffers a communication change. The communication lag index is the most important method of telling whether or not a person is sick or well. A person who answers quickly (and rationally) is in much better condition than a person who answers after a long consideration. A person who’s being impartial, conservative, etc., is hung up on a maybe so hard that it would take tugs to get him off.

One old-time auditor has written in to tell me that auditing still remains an art and no matter how hard I try to teach it as a rote, it will still be an art. This has some truth in it. Therefore, if an auditor wants a pc to get well, the auditor had better be a shining example of something that is well. This in itself inspires certainty and confidence. More important than this, a person has to have a very high level of communication before he can indulge in art. One is actually to date creating new people rather than repairing old, broken down homo sapiens. Creation is the work of the artist. In order to do very well, run “Something can be created” “Nothing can be created” on himself until he recovers all those artistic impulses of his youth. True enough, it will help his auditing.

I recently had an interesting example of how case level influences the numerousness of a practice and the number of results which an auditor got. Two auditors were in the same area. One had had a lot of successes and had a good practice; the other had had several failures and had a very poor practice, and was, in fact, thinking of chucking it all when SOP 8 and the Group came out and revived his activities. The second auditor was an occluded case. Now, with these techniques which take apart an occluded case, there isn’t any excuse for an auditor to be occluded and be low in tone. By the way a trained Scientologist can to a marked degree audit himself. This isn’t possible for somebody who isn’t trained in the subject because that somebody runs across all sorts of computations and circuits and starts to figure, figure, figure, and almost drives himself mad because he’s into so many maybes. A person can stay in the field of certainty and audit himself. He’s got to have enough training and enough sense to stay in the field of certainties and not wander off into uncertainties and speculations. Anybody who starts self-auditing should audit to technique which is laid out in front of him. Anything I am giving you in the way of technique in this bulletin can be done by an individual on himself. However, he should be very careful not to stray off. The technique starts exciting circuits into action and the auditor starts doing figure, figure, figure, which is very far from certainty.

In Issue 16-G, which may be a bit delayed, I am laying out this whole subject of Scientology as “Science of Certainty.” Scientology deals now in nothing but certainties. Those things which are uncertainties, such as metaphysics, spirits, other worlds, space opera, whole track, GE Line, are all being put into the bin called para- Scientology. The auditing we do is directed towards the establishment of certainties, and in itself works only with certainties. Prenatals, engrams and facsimiles — anything which anybody would consider uncertain does not belong on the main line.

What is the level of awareness which we will accept as being a level of awareness? It would be: Can a man stand looking at a tree and know that he is standing there looking at a tree, or if he is blind, can he stand there and feel a tree and know that he is feeling a tree? This man is sufficiently aware to be considered for our purposes fairly sane. Awareness goes from there on up into expanding certainties. How aware is awareness? It is as aware as it is certain. What is knowledge? Knowledge is certainty. Is data knowledge? No, data is not knowledge. A certainty is knowledge. Therefore knowledge depends upon perception. Is certainty an absolute? No, it is relative. What are the two ends of the spectrum of certainties? Here you’re looking straight at the theta-MEST theory. There is nothing, there is something. Here you have the nothingness of the static and the somethingness of all motion. Now, what are we considering, then, at the bottom level of all acceptable certainty? It is a certainty when one is standing looking at a tree and one sees a tree; or, if one can’t see, having no MEST vision, one can feel a tree: that is certainty. And that is the bottom level of certainty that we’re going to accept as a certainty. What’s the top level of certainty? Well, we’re not interested in the top level of certainty because it goes too high to observe. In the last bulletin I talked about three universes. There are numbers of viewpoints of these universes and one is as certain as he is certain of these three universes. But one can become more certain than that to the degree that he is aware. Communication establishes awareness as a mechanism. The three universes give us something of which to be aware. Therefore, this perception is in itself certainty and this certainty is in itself knowledge and thus we can achieve what we would consider an acceptable certainty. What is an acceptable certainty? It is a certainty that the three universes exist in terms of perceptions: one’s own universe, the MEST universe and the other fellow’s universe. When we have established these, we will find that an individual can assume viewpoints which are not dependent upon the body and can perceive these universes as an analytical mind directly. We don’t ask anybody to be certain of this until it happens. Thus from these three certainties with MEST eyes, we go into these three certainties on a direct level. What we will call a “stability” for want of a better word at this time and to replace the word “clear” about which there is a tremendous amount of confusion, would be one who can, without the assistance of MEST eyes, perceive with complete certainty the three universes from many viewpoints. We reach this state with a person by leading him up the gradient scale of certainties, taking him at the certainty level where we find him, wherever that is — even if it is psychotic, neurotic or normal level — and raising him on upscale until he is certain of his own universe, the MEST universe and other people’s universes.

You have observed the phenomenon of people who were theta exteriors getting back into the body and not being able to get out again. This is because they were actually insufficiently aware and because they ran into this one single aberration: “They must not reach away from MEST.”

If you think for a moment that it is the purpose of Scientology to produce something intensely spectacular like a ghost that can move cigarette papers or mountains, you have definitely gotten the wrong idea. We are interested in well men, we are interested in people with well bodies who think straight and who co-operate on optimum solutions. We are not making magicians. There are a great many things which a thetan or the analytical mind can do, but all these, until you are certain of them, belong in the field of para-Scientology and are only interesting data. We have no interest in their truth or untruth. If you start filling your pc full of an education about the whole track and electronic incidents and other doubtful things, you are giving him more and more uncertainties and he’ll start on down tone scale. By giving him a gradient scale of certainties, you will surely and securely bring him up the line to stability. The actual horrible truth of the matter is that an individual below the level of what we are calling “stability,” will continue throughout the remainder of his life going on down tone scale. We can make a 4.0 in Dianetics by very arduously swamping up via negative-gain processing the reactive mind, and he will remain relatively stable and with greater longevity, and is as defined in the first book; but we have not put aside the normal course of ageing in the body nor have we completely proofed this individual against the shocks and upsets of existence which would come from new incidents of pain and unconsciousness. It has been completely overlooked that the first “clear” was a relative thing and definitely not an absolute thing. It was an intensely hard thing to gauge. An auditor had to be a very good expert on the subject to produce anything like a 4.0 because the uncertainty in the auditor himself about what he was doing would introduce uncertainties into the pc and so would impede the processing. I fought this for a couple of years before I got it through my own head that pcs reacted to my certainty, got their recalls back simply because I was certain they would, and were content to drill never beyond their own depth but always in the level of what they could reach when they could reach it. A few auditors achieved this but they were all certain people. Even so we got lots of clears, but the bashfulness of the beast dropped him out of sight, for everybody insisted on making a circus curiosity of him and everybody was so uncertain about his state that they very often took an uncertain clear and turned him into an aberree again. I have had this thing happen to theta clears. Man is not exactly kind to his fellow man. Man is basically good, but, believe me, he has a long way to travel up the tone scale to reach that basic goodness. If you don’t believe that Man can be slightly unkind, look what the more aberrated amongst us say about yours truly.

Now you have some sort of idea about what I mean by a positive-gain process. A positive-gain process is a positive-gain of certainty; a negative-gain process, although it eradicates engrams and alters the pattern of behavior of the individual, actually makes that individual at times more uncertain than before, for he has been plunged into things he didn’t know were there and in fact has been made wrong. If you keep on using negative-gain processes such as erasure, remember to back them up right away with positive-gain processes. Otherwise you’ve not brought the pc up toward being a “stability.”

Now in the last bulletin I told you I’d resolved this problem and sent to most of you SOP 8, “The Factors” and Short 8. I sent those along so you could get acquainted with them, not because they contain all the basic information you should have to work them. There is a philosophy and goal behind that modus operandi which must be employed in order to produce the results which are expected. And you don’t have the final technique on this, for that requires the essay which follows. There is a whole process which is devoted to and dedicated solely to cases of Step IV and V. This we call SOP 8A. SOP 8 solves these when they are not too bad, but SOP 8A should be immediately employed the moment it is discovered the pc’s very uncertain of his own mock-ups or if he is occluded. The IV and V steps work in SOP 8 but there is a much faster way of going about it which blows the occluded case. Within these faster processes and SOP 8A we also resolve at one fell swoop special kinds of trouble; any pc who steps up with a special somatic or a special worry is run on SOP 8A. It then is actually an office technique and in 10 or 15 minutes produces quite marked changes in the individual. I will not say how many hours it takes to resolve a completely occluded case, since some cases are more occluded than others, but it doesn’t take very many hours. All this got shockingly simple, and if you don’t do it simply, you’re simply working yourself unnecessarily, putting the pc through a lot more things than he should go through.

In the first place, in the use of SOP 8A, we omit any explanations to the pc. If he happens to know Dianetics or Scientology, that’s tough, but it is included in the techniques of SOP 8A. These things can be self-audited, but remember, auditor, that they can only be self-audited by a trained Scientologist. These buttons are hot. It is not even a dramatic statement to say that one had to walk along the edge of hell to find these techniques and that these techniques lie straight through insanity itself. Thus, when one is auditing a pc, he can expect momentarily, even in one he has considered very sane, fantastic reactions.

An auditor recently mentioned to me that everyone around a certain area considered anything I had labelled as “unlimited technique” and a “positive-gain technique” as a necessarily faint or weak technique. Just because a thing could be done forever seemed to indicate also that it was weak in its operation. The matter of two anchor points to the back comer of the room and holding them there was considered by the auditors round the area to be a faint technique. Actually that is about the hottest technique you ever threw a pc into. To understand this you will have to understand that “reach” and nothing but “reach” is in itself the basic center of the hurricane called insanity. You have somebody reaching with theta energy to the comers of the room. He is not supposed to reach away from MEST. You could run simply the concept of must not reach away from MEST and produce some very interesting results in an individual. When a person has been told to hold the comers of the room in this fashion as in SOP 8, an auditor should expect repercussions, if not during the session, certainly during the next day or two. The technique has to be done over and over because there is an enormous amount of material which it sets loose. The individual is made thereby to let go both sides of the engram. He is holding the engram in to him and not knowing that he is doing so and he feels the effect of doing so and holds it out from him. You’re asking him simply to let go and reach MEST. He’s reached MEST, he’s not supposed to reach away from it. Certainly all of his old holds on the bank will disappear and the technique is very effective and it can be done for long periods of time. Do not think for a moment it is a faint technique; it definitely isn’t. Any of those unlimited techniques are powerful above and beyond running engrams as the Empire State Building is bigger than a doll house. So make up your mind to the fact that you have a handful of dynamite. You have to use it for a little while to discover this and then use it for a little while longer to be certain that, carried through, it brings about the desired result.

It is definitely none of my business how you apply these techniques. I am no policeman ready with boards of ethics and court warrants to come down on you with a crash simply because you are “perverting Scientology.” If there is any policing done, it is by the techniques themselves, since they have in themselves a discipline brought about by their own power. All I can do is put into your hands a tool for your own use and then help you use it.

Now one further comment: There is a further issue of “The Factors” which contains two or three new lines. The basic motivation and the reason behind the decision to be is the desire or curiosity, the enforcement and inhibition of production of effects. Don’t mistake it for a moment and think this is not the center button. It is the reason behind beingness: the production of effects, the enforcement of effects, the nullification of effects. All the pc is trying to do when he first comes to you is to produce an effect upon you; don’t forget this. He is using sickness to produce effects. Any effect is better than no effect. Anything is better than nothing. Any sensation is better than no sensation. Any circuit is better than no circuit. And as far as badness and goodness are concerned, these things are evaluations, determined by viewpoint. So anything bad is better than nothing. This should explain human behavior to you as nothing before did. What is your pc trying to do? He’s trying to produce an effect. How sick is he? He’s as sick as he has to be in order to produce an effect. If he’s sick at all, it means that he hasn’t been able to produce effects without being sick. If you try to take away from him the modus operandi of producing effects, i.e. his service facsimile or his sickness, you’re in for trouble. Thus you have to rehabilitate in him the belief that he can produce effects and that he could obtain good effects from others. His goal is to produce effects upon others and obtain good effects from others; that’s all his goal and that’s why he’s being what he is being. That is the reason behind the decision. You’ve many times asked what is the reason for all this? The answer is to produce an effect. What is the basic mechanical operation of producing an effect? It is reaching, pushing and pulling. Reaching is the keynote of this. What is the basic certainty? The basic certainty is dual; there is a positive and a negative certainty; there is no in-between certainty: there either is an effect or there isn’t an effect, so the basic certainties are “There is an effect” “There is no effect.” The next basic certainty to that is “There is no beingness” “There is beingness.”

I am not going to try to give you very much in this bulletin. There are other bulletins to follow. I want to know whether or not you want these bulletins. Thus I am writing down here the basic heart of SOP 8A which follows:

In order to be and to produce effects one must have knowledge. Knowledge is certainty. Certainty is awareness. Awareness change is the indication of effect. One must then be able to produce changes of awareness, which is merely changes in communication, in order to be certain he has produced an effect. Certainty of the production of effects and uncertainty as to the production of effects are the up and down of lifetimes.

“There is something here” “There is nothing here” are the basic certainties of beingness. One runs a chronic somatic simply by picking out an area of the body which is painful or numb and having that area of the body alternately state to the pc by having him run the statements in that area or having him run feelings which approximate the statements in that area “There is nothing here” “There is something here,” “There is nothing there” “There is something there.” Does one for a moment ask what the something is or let the pc evaluate about the something or nothing? No, he certainly doesn’t. All manner of queer sensations, covertnesses, malice and so forth turn on in the areas; we’re not even vaguely interested in these reactions and these effects. The pc will try to pass them off on us as effects; we’re not interested in that, we’re interested in getting that area of the body alive or over its pain. Any numb area of the body run in this fashion will recover feeling; any pain in the body any place will recover a normal state if this is done.

To realize the full value of SOP 8A one must know something about entities. The pc has compartmented off various parts of the body for which he takes no further responsibility. These appear to be individuals operating against him. Actually these parts of the body have individual characteristics and answer up on E-Meters. These are basically demon circuits but they are the things which produce the circuits; they are the things which hold on to facsimiles, they are not themselves facsimiles. Each one of these is holding on to numerous facsimiles, and they supply these facsimiles to the pc. The pc says he’s not responsible for this. We run in each area where there is any disturbance, first in the pc and then as though it’s happening out in front of the pc alternately, “There is something here” “There is nothing here,” “There is something there” “There is nothing there.” This knocks out the entities and, therefore, automatically knocks out the mechanisms which are making the pc sick. We don’t care whether there are entities or aren’t entities; it’s simply that he is certain that something is deviling him from a certain area. He is certain of this; we can be certain of it because he complains of it. We use this technique to knock it out. The word “entity” simply designates an area of the body which has an independent point of communication.

Going back to the theory of epicenters, one then finds that there is a sub-brain in various parts of the body. When one is dealing with a Case IV or V, he is dealing with the reactive mind and he has to take apart the reactive mind to some degree in order to produce freedom for the analytical mind. The epicenters would be such parts of the body as the “funny bones” or any “judo sensitive” spots: the sides of the neck, the inside of the wrist, the places the doctors tap to find out if there is a reflex. These thin