It will be found in processing the various case levels that running overts is very effective in raising the cause level of a pc.
The scale, on actual tests of running various levels of pc response, is seen to go something like this:
I. ITSA — Letting a pc discuss his or her guilt feelings about self with little or no auditor direction.
I. ITSA — Letting a pc discuss his or her guilt feelings about others, with little or no auditor direction.
II. REPETITIVE O/W — Using merely “In this lifetime what have you done?” “What haven’t you done?” Alternate.
III. ASSESSMENT BY LIST — Using existing or specially prepared lists of possible overts, cleaning the meter each time it reads on a question and using the question only so long as it reads.
IV. JUSTIFICATIONS — Asking the pc what he or she has done and then using that one instance (if applicable) finding out why “that” was not an overt.
Advice enters into this under the heading of instruction: “You’re upset about that person because you’ve done something to that person.”
Dynamics also permissively enter into this above Level I but the pc wanders around amongst them. In Level III one can also direct attention to the various dynamics by first assessing them and then using or preparing a list for the dynamic found.
There is no reason to expect any great pc responsibility for his or her own overts below Level IV and the auditor seeking to make the pc feel or take responsibility for overts is just pushing the pc down. The pc will resent being made feel guilty. Indeed the auditor may only achieve that, not case gain. And the pc will ARC break.
At Level IV one begins on this subject of responsibility but again it is indirectly the target. There is no need now to run Responsibility in doing O/Ws.
The realization that one has really done something is a return of responsibility and this gain is best obtained only by indirect approach as in the above processes.
The commonest cause of failure in running overt acts is “cleaning cleans” whether or not one is using a meter. The pc who really has more to tell doesn’t ARC Break when the Auditor continues to ask for one but may snarl and eventually give it up.
On the other hand leaving an overt touched on the case and calling it clean will cause a future ARC Break with the auditor.
“Have you told all?” prevents cleaning a clean. On the unmetered pc one can see the pc brighten up. On the meter you get a nice fall if it’s true that all is told.
“Have I not found out about something?” prevents leaving an overt undisclosed. On the unmetered pc the reaction is a sly flinch. On a metered pc it gives a read.
A pc’s protest against a question will also be visible in an unmetered pc in a reeling sort of exasperation which eventually becomes a howl of pure bafflement at why the auditor won’t accept the answer that that’s all. On a meter protest of a question falls on being asked for: “Is this question being protested?”
There is no real excuse for ARC Breaking a pc by
1. Demanding more than is there or
2. Leaving an overt undisclosed that will later make the pc upset with the auditor.
Do not use the following words in auditing commands. While they can be used in discussion or nomenclature, for various good reasons they should be avoided now in an auditing command:
No unusual restraint should be given these words. Just don’t frame a command that includes them. Use something else.
Overts give the highest gain in raising cause level because they are the biggest reason why a person restrains himself and withholds self from action.
Man is basically good. But the reactive mind tends to force him into evil actions. These evil actions are instinctively regretted and the individual tries to refrain from doing anything at all. The “best” remedy, the individual thinks, is to withhold. “If I commit evil actions, then my best guarantee for not committing is to do nothing whatever.” Thus we have the “lazy”, inactive person.
Others who try to make an individual guilty for committing evil actions only increase this tendency to laziness.
Punishment is supposed to bring about inaction. And it does. In some unexpected ways.
However, there is also an inversion (a turn about) where the individual sinks below recognition of any action. The individual in such a state cannot conceive of any action and therefore cannot withhold action. And thus we have the criminal who can’t act really but can only re-act and is without any self direction. This is why punishment does not cure criminality but in actual fact creates it; the individual is driven below withholding or any recognition of any action. A thief’s hands stole the jewel, the thief was merely an innocent spectator to the action of his own hands. Criminals are very sick people physically.
So there is a level below withholding that an auditor should be alert to in some pcs, for these “have no withholds” and “have done nothing”. All of which, seen through their eyes is true. They are merely saying “I cannot restrain myself” and “I have not willed myself to do what I have done.”
The road out for such a case is the same as that for any other case. It is just longer. The processes for levels above hold also for such cases. But don’t be anxious to see a sudden return of responsibility, for the first owned “done” that this person knows he or she has done may be “ate breakfast”. Don’t disdain such answers in Level II particularly. Rather, in such people, seek such answers.
There is another type of case in all this, just one more to end the list. This is the case who never runs O/W but “seeks the explanation of what I did that made it all happen to me”.
This person easily goes into past lives for answers. Their reaction to a question about what they’ve done is to try to find out what they did that earned all those motivators. That, of course, isn’t running the process and the auditor should be alert for it and stop it when it is happening.
This type of case goes into its extreme on guilt. It dreams up overts to explain why. After most big murders the police routinely have a dozen or two people come around and confess. You see, if they had done the murder, this would explain why they feel guilty. As a terror stomach is pretty awful grim to live with, one is apt to seek any explanation for it if it will only explain it.
On such cases the same approach as given works, but one should be very careful not to let the pc get off overts the pc didn’t commit.
Such a pc (recognizable by the ease they dive into the extreme past) when being audited off a meter gets more and more frantic and wilder and wilder in overts reported. They should get calmer under processing, of course, but the false overts make them frantic and hectic in a session. On a meter one simply checks for “Have you told me anything beyond what really has occurred?” Or “Have you told me any untruths?”
The observation and meter guides given in this section are used during a session when they apply but not systematically such as after every pc answer. These observations and meter guides are used always at the end of every session on the pcs to whom they apply.