Q and A means “Question and Answer”.

When the term Q and A is used it means one did NOT get an answer to his question. It also means not getting compliance with an order but accepting something else.

Example: Auditor: Do birds fly? Pc: I don’t like birds. Auditor: What don’t you like about birds? FLUNK. It’s a Q and A. The right reply would be an answer to the question asked and the right action would be to get the original question answered. TR 4 (handling origins) can apply here. The moment TR 4 is violated (Ack and return the pc to original Question) and the original unanswered question is not again asked the Auditor just drifts along with the pc. Things get restimulated, nothing gets really handled or run.

In Administration the same thing can happen. The executive gives an order, the junior says or does something else, the executive does not simply TR 4 it and get the original order done, and the result is chaos.

Executive: Phone Mr. Schultz and tell him our printing order will be there this afternoon. Junior: I don’t know his number. Executive: Don’t you have a phone book? Junior: The phone company didn’t send one this year as our bill was overdue. Executive (the fool) goes to Accounts to see what about the phone bill. Mr. Schultz never gets his call. The printing order arrives but Mr. Schultz doesn’t know it…

Example:

Executive: Do target 21 now.

Junior: I don’t have any issue files.

Executive: What happened to them?

Junior: Mimeo goofed.

Executive: I’ll go see Mimeo . . .

Q and A is simply Postulate Aberration.

Aberration is non-straight line by definition.

A sick thetan who is all caved in can’t direct a postulate at anything. When he tries, he lets it wobble around and go elsewhere.

The difference between a Degraded Being and an OT is simply that the DB can’t put out a postulate or intention in a direct line or way and make it hold good.

The insane are a great example of this. They are insane because they have evil intentions. But they can’t even make these stick. They may intend to burn down the house but they usually wind up watering the rug or do some other non sequitur thing. It’s not that they don’t mess things up. The whole point here is that they can’t even properly destroy what they intend to destroy. Even their evil intentions wobble, poor things.

But not all people who Q and A are insane. When a person is running at effect he Qs and As. He is confronted by life, he does not confront it.

He is usually a bit blind to things as his ability to look AT is turned back on him by his lack of beam power. Thus he gives the appearance of being unaware.

His emotional feeling is overwhelm. His mental state is confusion.

He starts for B, winds up at — A.

Other not too well intentioned people can play tricks on a Qer and Aer. When they don’t want to answer or comply they artfully bring about a Q and A.

Example:

Bosco does not want to staple the mimeo issue. He knows his senior Qs and As. So we get this.

Senior: Staple that issue with the big stapler.

Bosco: I hurt my thumb.

Q and A Senior: Have you been to see the Medical Officer?

Bosco: He wouldn’t look at it.

Q and A Senior: I’ll go have a word with him. (Departs.)

Bosco gets back to reading “Jesse James Rides Again” humming softly to himself. For HIS trouble is, he Qs and As with the Mest Universe!

Some people Q and A with their bodies. The body is, after all, composed of Mest. It follows the laws of Mest.

One of these laws is Newton’s first law of motion: INERTIA. This is the tendency of a Mest object to remain motionless until acted upon by an exterior force. Or to continue in a line of motion until acted upon by an exterior force.

Well, the main force around that is continually acting on a human body is a thetan, the being himself.

The body will remain at rest (since it is a Mest Object) until acted upon by the thetan that is supposed to be running it.

If that being is an aberrated non-straight line being THE BODY REACTS ON HIM MORE THAN HE REACTS ON THE BODY. Thus he remains motionless or very slow. When the body is in unwanted motion, the being does not deter the motion as the body is acting upon him far more than he is reacting on the body.

As a result, one of the manifestations is Q and A. He wants to pick up a piece of paper. The body inertia has to be overcome to do so. So he does not reach for the paper, he just leaves the hand where it is. This would be no action at all. If he then weakly forces the motion, he finds himself picking up something else like a paper clip, decides he wants that anyway and settles for it. Now he has to invent why he has a paper clip in his hand. His original intention never gets executed.

Some people on medical lines are just there not because of actual illness but because they are just Qing and Aing with their body.

People also Q and A with themselves. They want to stop drinking and can’t. They want to stop or change something about themselves or their body and then disperse off onto something else.

Freud read all sorts of dire and awful things into simple Q and A. He invented intentions the person must have that made him “sublimate”. All Freud succeeded in doing was making the person introspective looking for wrong whys.

The right why was simple — the person could not go in a straight line to an objective and/or could not cease to do something he was compulsively doing.

The very word ABERRATION contains the idea of this — no straight line but a bent one.

THE CURE FOR THIS SORT OF THING (Q and A with a body) IS OBJECTIVE PROCESSES.

And a very willing and bright thetan CAN simply recognize it for what it is - not enough push!

And instead of going to the MO for a slight ache, he just pushes on through.

As the ache is a recoil of body Q and A in a lot of cases, the ache itself goes away as soon as one simply pushes through.

Painters and artists buy the idea they are benefited by aberration. “Be glad you are neurotic” was a trick being played by the late and unlamented psychiatrists on artists.

One paints because he can push into execution what he visualizes. The best painters were the least aberrated.

Greenwich Village or Left Bank artists, when they don’t paint, never suspect it’s because they just can’t overcome hand inertia to push a paint brush!

People live Q and A lives. They never become what they desire to be because they Q and A with life about it.

Schopenhauer, the German philosopher of doom, even had a dirty crack about being able to do things: “Stubbornness is the will taking the place of the intellect.” By this, one is “intellectual” if he Qs and As.

People who can’t get things done are simply Qing and Aing with people and life. People who CAN get things done just don’t Q and A.

All great truths are simple. This is a major one.