This article is a transcription of an important preliminary discussion by Ron of his investigations out of which have come very practical advances in the handling of communication and the discovery of the preclear’s level of reality in processing. The talk was given at a Staff Auditor-ACC Conference of April 4, 1955.

… I’ll give you a quick rundown on some data which has just materialized here - it’s an experimental scale and this experimental scale is quite interesting. It really is a Scale of Awareness. A scale of awareness would begin at the top with, of course, AWARE OF BEING AWARE. If a person were really aware of being aware it would be sufficient communication for him merely to be aware of the existing environment. If he were simply aware of the existing environment he would feel he was in communication and would feel very good — he wouldn’t have to talk about it. You get that level?

All right now, we drop down from there and it’s easier to describe from the bottom up. On the bottom is COMMUNICATION WITH SELF WITH SIGNIFICANCE. Worry. He can communicate with himself and he can worry. Now that isn’t the exact bottom of the scale, but the next lower level — and that’s UNCONSCIOUSNESS — becomes questionable as a communication level. But nevertheless, it really belongs with this scale. So we look at this and we find out that the guy could be aware of thinking a thought containing much significance, but not expressing it. Immediately below this level, as I say, is unconsciousness, which, of course, goes off the awareness scale and is the reverse of awareness.

But, as we work up from absolute unconsciousness we find UNCONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ONLY THING WHICH EACH HIGHER STEP HAS IN COMMON WITH THE LAST STEP UNTIL WE GET TO TOTAL AWARENESS OF AWARENESS. So each one of these steps is to some degree salted with unconsciousness, and up to the moment when you would get to ABSOLUTE, complete unconsciousness, every one of these steps would have some unconsciousness in it. But, absolute, complete unconsciousness happens to be an absolute. It happens to be unobtainable. Complete unconsciousness is not obtainable. Nobody has ever been or ever will be completely unconscious. And this is a fact, because processes do work out on unconsciousness, so the bottom of the scale would be absolute, complete unconsciousness, but it’s not the bottom of the scale, because that can’t exist.

So we would go up there to lesser and lesser degrees of unconsciousness and greater and greater degrees of consciousness. Now one of the best descriptions around that I have written on this unconsciousness business is Self Analysis. The first few chapters on Self Analysis is a discussion of unconsciousness. And when we consider alertness, we are considering ability. Now, we’ve been talking about this for some time. We consider alertness, then we consider ability. Awareness. If a person is aware of something he normally can control it.

All right, we look this over, and we find out that the place for a person to be on the tone scale would be at AWARENESS OF AWARENESS and we find out that he, there, would have sufficient communication just with his environment to stay cleared. Get that? He could stay cleared. But, now let’s start out from this level of complete unconsciousness — let’s go into the first point on the scale which is actually there on the scale. Some small, no matter how small, awareness that he is thinking a thought and communicating with the thought he is thinking. And that level includes the deepest anaesthetic possible, and it includes death. He always has some tiny little spark of awareness there, in spite of the ambition of the medico, the anaesthetist, etc.

He is aware that he is thinking something, no matter whether he thinks that it’s somebody else’s thinking or not. He’s just aware of some thinking.

The next broad level here is COMMUNICATION WITH SIGNIFICANCE. (Of course, in between, thinking a thought and thinking it to himself we get gradients of that, so the individual knows when he is thinking a thought, and knows when he’s not thinking a thought. Naturally that’s part of that same scale.)

The next broad level is this: COMMUNICATION WITH SIGNIFICANCE WITH SOMEBODY ELSE. You know what we mean, “with significance,” it’s got to have a reason, it’s got to have meaning, there has to be an intent. The next big broad scale that’s parked right up above this is SIMPLY COMMUNICATION, WITH INTENT TO COMMUNICATE.

The next broad level up above this simply requires THAT ONE KNOWS OF THE EXISTENCE OF COMMUNICATION.

And the next level above that is simply AWARENESS OF AN ENVIRONMENT AS SUFFICIENT COMMUNICATION.

Now, as we go down from that to the bottom we find out we are more and more fixed and less and less capable of spanning attention. So let’s look at communication between two people as a fixed double-terminal affair. The individual is less aware of his immediate environment. At Communication with Self he’s not aware of his environment out here at all. And so we get the contracting perimeter of the dynamics, which we’ve discussed before. As we go down this Awareness Scale, which is also Communication Scale, we get the individual closer and closer in until — one of the early symptoms of it — he doesn’t think anybody could possibly hear him unless he’s standing with his face right in their face. And the next spot below that is real worry. Now this individual may be across the room. It doesn’t matter. Now let’s add to this, and we get the actual name of this scale. And it is the Scale of Reality. That is the name of the scale. Now this seems strange, if it has to do with awareness and communication, that we call it the Scale of Reality, because it is the scale, a practical scale which is useful in processing.

Now, how is it useful in processing? We’re looking at a preclear that can’t find anything real very easily. We suspect he doesn’t even know he can’t find anything real. You know, it’s just the way the case behaves — it’s kind of spooky. Well, this guy, the realest thing he could do would be to think a thought and know that he thought the thought. That’s the realest thing the guy could do. Now, if you were to graduate him upscale from this, the next thing he could do that would be real to him would be to get the idea of saying something to somebody that has lots of significance to it, and having that person say something to him. Mythical personnel. And that’s their reality. With significance.

Now we go up above this, and we find out that the individual could have something real just by “hello” and “O. K.” And one of the reasons we’re using hello and O. K. is that it is an unreal communication. If a preclear can handle hello and O. K. without balking and consider it a real communication, this preclear is at that band. If he insists that that’s a bad reply — you know, he “really wouldn’t say hello” and then somebody else “wouldn’t say O. K.”—he would go at it possibly on hello’s back and forth, but he would go on it much better with significances. “WHAT COULD YOU SAY TO Pop?” “What could you say to your Mother?” And he’d give you significances. “Now, what could your Mother say to you?”

The funny thing about this is the way this scale was traced out. It’s very interesting. It was traced out by watching the separation of universes, and when these universes come apart they first come apart as a WORRY, WORRY — then, “Think a thought”—”Think a thought the other fellow would think”—”Think a thought that you would think”—”Think a thought that the other fellow would think,” and all of a sudden the individual differentiates between the kind of things the other universe thinks and the kind of things that his universe thinks. So we get this differentiation.

Our next differentiation up the line would be SOMETHING YOU COULD SAY to that other universe and something it could say to you. And significance, significance, significance, and then I discovered that we had a point in the separation of each one of these universes when hello, hello, hello, with the answer hello was REAL. Perfectly real and acceptable. The preclear was not even vaguely uncomfortable about it. And then hello and O. K. —a perfectly real communication. And then, THE FACT THAT THE PERSON EXISTED was itself communication, and then THE FACT THAT THE UNIVERSE EXISTED AND THE REST OF THE ENVIRONMENT EXISTED, too, was a sufficient cognition without any further processing.

When you start to pull universes apart on the individual, these universes have a tendency to go through that span, and the universes we don’t see are the universes which are totally introverted. An individual is actually BEING his body, you see. He is in his body. He is actually, really being his body, and then his body is being his father’s universe. We could start in by thinking that the most BASIC universe to separate would be father and mother from him, but this isn’t the case at all. It would really be the thetan. So you could separate these other universes, but don’t forget that we have an artificial enclosure of universe with the thetan in the body and here we’re immediately talking about exteriorization, aren’t we?

So you could be almost any one of these universes. You’d find you’d go up on this gradient of reality. At first you could have the preclear think a thought and think a thought and think a thought, you of course making him express a thought, you’re making him communicate with you, but he doesn’t notice that. And think another thought, think another thought. Now, what kind of a thought could this other universe think? Another thought the other universe could think, another thought. When these become at last flat and squared away you’ve got these universes well on the way towards separation and then you can go into communication and separate them. Now, this is not a hard and fast rule because I have to do considerable more experimentation on it. I’m just letting you in on a particular echelon of the spirit. This might not hold true, we might be able to separate them all, all the way up the line, by simply thought, thought, “Think a thought,” “What kind of a thought would the other person think?” “What kind of a thought would you think?”

The way I’ve been doing it with great success has been just: ask the individual what he could then SAY to his father. Now, he has just discovered he can separate out his father’s pattern of thinking from his own pattern of thinking. Now, it’s time to communicate. Now we’ve got a distance, so we get “What could you say to your father?” Well, have him say, “Okay.” “That’s fine. Now, what else could you say to your father?” etc., and then you get this very flat.

In its turn THINKING A THOUGHT itself became flat, THINKING HIS FATHER’S THOUGHTS became flat, and then we got COMMUNICATION WITH SIGNIFICANCE flat and then we got BOTH WAYS flat on that, and then we got to this point where it is ENOUGH FOR HIM TO SAY “HELLO” or have his father say hello. And he says hello and his father says hello; he says hello and his father says hello, and then you could — you don’t have to — move him out of that bracket and have him say hello and his father say O. K. And this is still real, good communication and then he becomes AWARE OF WHERE HIS FATHER IS and at that moment you run into Spotting Spots. Got this? Up to this time all spots are misplaced with connection with this person. But, right about that time the spots start to go into their proper places.

The same phenomenon occurs somewhere in that band of “Hello and O. K. with Pop” if it’s sneaked up on in this fashion as occurred in running 8-D in a limited number of cases, and all of a sudden his universe starts to un-spin and he’s aware of this and aware of that and aware of where his father has been and aware of where he has been in regard to his father, and he starts to get directionally accurate. DIRECTIONALLY AND DISTANTLY ACCURATE. And up to that time it’s just enough to be aware, as far as his father’s concerned just be AWARE OF EXISTENCE of father and NOT AWARE. That’s enough, that’s a cleared sphere. Now, do you see where we sneak up on something like this?

Well, that’s an interesting scale. It’s a scale of reality. I’ve been working for some time trying to get some way to sneak up on reality.

Now, how does this fit in with the real universe and objects? Well, there’s a little kicker in here. Along about the time of “What could you say to your father?” and “What could your father say to you?” and “What could you say to your mother?” “What could your mother say to you?”—in other words, separating part of these universes — we know that sooner or later we would take up “What could you say to a body?” “What could a body say to you?” We know we will run into that one, but that’s not so real sometimes. We’ve got to get him out of some other universes before we get him out of the body’s universe.

Right about the point where we would pass from that into communication by hello-hello, the individual on an 8-C level can spot unrealities. Isn’t that good. He can spot unreality. Your pc today, Crystal, was just about ready to take a look at the environment. But, he could spot unrealities much faster than he could spot realities. Now, you know what I mean by unreality. Supposing you ran 8-C on unrealities. It’s along about that point you could take up something like this if you wanted to. You’d run 8C— “Spot something unreal in this room,” “Spot something else unreal in this room.” Then the individual would spot a lot of things, the wall behind him might be unreal, or something like that, you see, and he’ll get out to a point where he’ll recognize that his sight line to the horizon is real, but beyond that it’s unreal, and he gets the idea of sort of living on a saucer. It’s a little saucer which goes exactly out to the horizon and no further, and everything beyond that is unreal.

Ask him to spot some unrealities in his environment until it’s real to him. It sneaks up on the preclear after a while because he finds out things are getting LESS AND LESS UNREAL. It’s as-ising unreality.

When we’re graduating a pc up the line it is very easy for the auditor to monitor the pc so that the pc can apparently run the most impossible, complex, the most advanced processes you ever heard of and just stall right there. The pc goes right on running them, “It’s all unreal and it doesn’t matter anyway,” and he just goes on through it and the auditor kind of monitors the preclear in every step and sneeze if we just keep on going. Well, there is where we sometimes come a cropper in auditing. We audit somebody in a rather advanced process and it’s unreal. Now, we’ve just had an experience of this happening. The guy apparently was just going bangity, bangity, bang, and yet it wasn’t real.

Well, it won’t do them any good unless it’s real. This is the way to sneak up, then, on a preclear and make sure it’s real all the way.