Want to talk to you now about 8-C — of all processes, 8-C.

Quite an amazing thing that 8-C is still with us. Opening Procedure by Duplication and Opening Procedure 8-C are still good processes. But we keep 8-C around for some very good reasons.

But before I tell you anything about the reasons, I'm going to read this about Opening Procedure 8-C, quite rapidly, so that we can go into it with more length:

"Opening Procedure of 8-C is one of the most effective and powerful processes ever developed and should be used as such." Well, it's not as powerful as something we have today, but it's still effective.

"Step 'a' of Opening Procedure of 8-C is: (quote) 'Do you see that object?' (unquote), the auditor pointing.

'When the preclear signifies that he does, the auditor says, (quote) 'Walk over to it' (unquote).

"When the preclear has walked over to it, the auditor says, 'Touch it.'

"When the preclear does, the auditor says, 'Let go,' and designates another object — a wall, a lamp — calls it by name or not, and goes through the same procedure once more."

And that's all there is to Step "a." Now, it says here, unnecessarily, that "It is important that the auditor specifically acknowledge each time the preclear has executed the command above."

For instance, if you told the preclear to do two things and then acknowledged once, he would become confused. Or before he had executed something, tell him to do something else — huh, you've been his father.

A matter of fact, I've broken cases simply by asking them, "Which one would you rather have had run 8-C on you, your mother or father?"

Now, Part "b" introduces the idea of decision. It is notable that anyone must be very strong before he's considered even vaguely clear in the power of choice, power of decision. The commands are:

"Pick a spot in this room."

You see, there we've introduced choice. "Pick a spot in this room." When the preclear does, say, "Walk over to it."

The preclear has, we say, "Put your finger on it."

When the preclear has, we say, "Let go."

And each time, the auditor acknowledges the completion of the command with the preclear, signifying "All right," "Okay," "Fine," and so forth.

Now, you see, we broadened his power of choice by letting him pick the objects. At first, we were picking the objects — the auditor — and then we broadened his power of choice.

Now, let's go to the third part of this.

"Part 'c' of Opening Procedure of 8-C introduces further decision. It goes as follows:

"The auditor says, 'Pick a spot in this room.'

'When the preclear has, the auditor says, 'Walk over to it.'

"When the preclear does, the auditor says, 'Make up your mind when you are going to place your finger on it, and do so.'

"When the preclear has, the auditor says, 'Make up your mind you are going to let go, and let go."

And "The auditor each time acknowledges the completion of one of these orders."

Now, it's interesting that there is another part, there's a Part "d" of that, which is, you tell him to make up his mind to do something and then change his mind and do something else, walking around the room.

Now, why do we still have this old process? Well, in the first place, it has never been used for what it was designed. It was designed to drill a thetan exterior, not a body. It is a milder process than Start-Change-Stop, much milder. It has turned many a psychotic into a sane person. It has taken alcoholics off the bottle. It's done remarkable things to cases that we just couldn't get close to. And so it is a good, today, light process which doesn't get the auditor into very much trouble with the preclear.

But, what is the main importance and why are we devoting a whole lecture to 8-C?

Instructor could teach you that very easily, anyone could. Any old auditor knows 8-C. Well, that's because it produces sufficiently small quantities of phenomena and reaction in the preclear to permit an auditor in-training to keep his wits about him. Do you have that?

In other words, you don't produce so much dynamite that the auditor who is still learning has to handle origins, acknowledgments, command, being in the same room with another human being, having just this morning cracked his own case or felt that it was never going to be cracked. And then in addition to that unloaded on his head a tremendous amount of complicated preclear who would give all sorts of wild reactions like rushing to the window, opening it up, throwing it out and calling, "Police!" you know? Standard preclear reaction under … (laughter)

Now, here we have — here we have then, a process which is a very useful process. It does do a great deal for cases. It does remedy havingness more or less as it goes, because the preclear is in contact, you see, with actual masses. And in addition to that, permits the auditor to do something very precisely with little or no fireworks as a consequence. Any gain that old Opening Procedure 8-C made was made very quietly; it was a quiet gain. SCS, that's different. Start, Change and Stop — boom!

So, in early sessions, and until one feels, oh, what competence in handling a preclear, 8-C is a highly recommended procedure, very, very recommended.

In the first place, it'll make the case feel better. Second place, it'll make people cognite. In the third place, it gets the auditor all over the idea that it's bad to control people. And if he still has that idea and tries to run SCS, then we are liable to have a complete chaos, a debacle. You see how that would be?

Most human beings have an idea that it is very bad to control other human beings. The end product of this is to be found everywhere in the world where there are slums, degradation, anything else that man considers very disdainfully. The end product of a feeling one must not control is an end of the race.

You can see the final finish of the human race when nobody in it is ever going to control anybody else in it in any way, shape, form or fashion and that'll be the finish of that. You see, in the first place, it'll be the end of all dynamics except the first. All we will have will be a bunch of dug-in thetans who are walking around trying to get out from under all other thetans. Chaos. There will be no third dynamic certainly.

At this moment, the United Nations — a hopeful dream that was brewed up by some fellows who had some good ideas and couldn't execute, at San Francisco right after they found out about the A-bomb — was dished in the first few moments of its chartering. They just threw it in the slop pail. Any of five powers could veto any decision made by anybody in the United Nations; any one of them suddenly get the idea that, boom, that was going to be that. It wasn't that bad, but any one of them could veto war.

What was that? That was a feeling they couldn't control. Let me assure you of something, that was not a desire to control, that was a craven terror of controlling something!

If anybody were to walk up to me and tell me that I had to have all kinds of provisos and so forth and it was absolutely impossible for me to control a certain group of people, something of this sort, I'd think they were slipping their wheels. It might be quite something else to have a reason to control them or to want to control them, but to be able to isn't something that enters the mind as being bad or good if you're in fairly good shape. A bunch of people are running around trying to put out a fire. They seem to don't have any order at all. Well, that's because nobody's got control of the situation.

Give you an idea. I had a landing craft one time come back alongside of a ship. One of these big fifty-foot LCMs came back alongside of the ship; it was full of wounded men. There was an officer, a lieutenant commander, standing on the deck; there were a bunch of ratings standing there. The landing craft came up alongside in a rather heavy sea and there was no net to drop to the landing craft. And the landing craft came alongside and struck, in this heavy sea, against the side of the ship so as to let its ramp down. Of course, in just a matter of minutes that landing craft would have flooded and sunk. It was full of wounded men and that lieutenant commander ran away! He didn't suddenly grab hold of a couple of ratings and say, "Cut those lashings and get that net down." He didn't turn around to the winch and get it manned in a hurry so that they could lower away something to hold that boat up. No. It was not his department, and he ran away.

I was a guest on the ship. And after I saw the bosuns and others — the officer go and the bosuns just still standing there looking down into this sinking landing craft, so forth, why, I gave a rating a shove in the shoulder and told him to go over there and cut those lashings in a hurry. And he did and it sort of galvanized things and after a while one of the ship's officers came up and took over the situation. The landing craft, however, would have sunk long since.

In other words, what was the matter in that area? It wasn't that I was being a bleeding 'ero. I was acting in a very aberrated fashion as a matter of fact, because I got furious! You could have heard me halfway across the Pacific. It shows I was aberrated. But what was wrong in that situation? It was because there wasn't anybody there willing to take control of the situation.

If you get two or three fellows all of whom are willing to take the control of any situation they meet, do you know they don't stand around and argue about who is boss? This is an oddity, you know, but they don't. They say, "Well, you be captain today, Joe."

I actually saw a very smart little patrol craft one day, running like this. They had ordered three ensigns aboard and nobody could find out who was senior. And they were all very good young chaps and they were all captain. Nobody had ever designated a captain on board. They were just getting along splendidly. I thought, "Good heavens! If the Bureau of Naval Operations could only see that example." Because all they were doing was fighting for control. One doesn't fight for control if he can control. Remember that. Because you as an auditor will never have to fight for control of a preclear if you yourself are willing to control the preclear. It's almost on a direct postulate basis.

Now, how do we get into such condition that we become allergic to controlling things? Why is it that people say, "We mustn't control this and control that and do things"? That's because control gets into an aberrated band and it becomes bad control. But it isn't control at all when it's bad control.

What is bad control? Well, we can imagine somebody who is "teaching" (quote, unquote) a runner out here on a track. And he's teaching this runner and he says, "Now this time, now you want to lift your knees just a little higher."

And the fellow goes up the track and comes back.

And he says, "What are you lifting your knees for? I didn't tell you to lift your knees."

The fellow said, "Yes, you did."

"Well," he says, "no, I didn't, really. I told you to pick them up more smartly."

Change it, change it, change it, change it, change it until the fellow doesn't know what he's supposed to do. You can't really call that control. Control is the ability to start, change and stop. The only reason a cannonball can knock your body's head off is your body long since forgot how to control cannonballs. You got the idea?

Start, change and stop is all there is to control. It hasn't any moral connections. When men in the majority are incapable of controlling, when they no longer desire to control anything, then things will not run anymore at all.

The only reason World War II came along is because certain nations — England and the United States amongst them — were unwilling to go on controlling the German nation. And they threw it into the soup. And they let the Weimar Republic be formed. And then they didn't even control the Weimar Republic. And then a little mutt came up who was so anxious about control that he had to control everything without being able to control anything, and we had World War II.

Well, I suppose men have to get into a game condition, but in view of the fact that some of us here were kind of mauled around in that particular game, I think we have a reason to look over the antecedents of that.

Now, it was an unwillingness to take responsibility for. And when you take control and translate it into responsibility for, you see where and what we are looking at with control.

Now, we could say this auditor — we could say very carelessly — this auditor doesn't have very good luck with preclears because he's unwilling to take responsibility for the preclear's case.

Sure enough, responsibility, taking responsibility for, is a game condition. An ideal thing is to have no responsibility for anything anywhere and be, of course, sitting in a total serenity eight miles north of nirvana. That's it. But that isn't a game condition and life doesn't function that way.

Now, a fellow can get into a compulsive control, a compulsive responsibility and that we call guilt or blame or self-blame, don't you see? Now, that is simply a reversed responsibility.

Now, responsibility, just said like that, is actually of no value to an auditor, it's just merely words. We sort of have a feeling of what we mean when we say "responsibility," but we just kind of feel what we mean and, you know, we know that and … We don't know anything. We have to realize that responsibility is a willingness to control and that the anatomy of control is start, change and stop before we can then actually put responsibility into effect. You follow me?

Now, if an auditor is unwilling to take responsibility for a preclear's case, it is certain that somewhere along the line he's going to give some incorrect auditing commands, he's going to do an incorrect Start, Change and Stop someway or other.

He's going to start the preclear and realize he'd made a mistake and change his order. Don't you see, there is something going to fall down here. He's going to stop the preclear when he should have started him, he's going to change him when he should have been starting and stopping him. Something else is going on here rather than what the preclear thinks is going on.

So what is really wrong with control, if there's anything wrong with it at all? And what is wrong with responsibility?

Well, there is something wrong with control and there is something wrong with responsibility, when it's on an unknowing basis. Just select out all the other factors and just run that one in.

When you are being controlled and you don't know it, it will react unhealthily on you. Follow me? You're being controlled and you don't know it. You had no choice, no power of choice exercised at all.

Now, this is represented when you grab somebody at the nape of the neck and say, "You have to be audited. You're going to go into session or get your head knocked off." And then we say, "I wonder why that preclear doesn't improve?"

The way to do is to get covert with him and start asking him to explain why he doesn't want to be audited and he'll, of course, as-is it and run it out. There are ways to solve this particular problem. But the wrong way to solve it is for the husband whose wife is very aberrated to come in and push the wife in with a big whip in his hands, you know, saying, "She gets some auditing."

You know what I always do? I solve this problem just like that. (snap) I normally have discovered that it wasn't the wife who needed auditing. So I always take the person who insisted on the auditing and I just use that rule of thumb always and invariably. I don't care what the circumstances are, I just cut right straight through to it.

One of the ways you do it is you convince him that he has to set a good example and then set him up for seventy-five-hour intensive.

Just ignore just ignore, no matter how bad it seems to be or anything else — ignore the state of case of the person who was being pushed into the session. You follow me?

Now, therefore, unknowingness is all that is bad in games condition. One is playing games he doesn't know he's playing. That's bad. Follow me? It's an unknowing condition, unknowing games condition.

Couldn't be anything wrong with playing a game if you knew you were playing a game. The number of men who have suffered arduously from playing football are very few. Broken shins mend, but broken minds require a Scientologist.

Now, where we have, then, a person who is obsessively controlling things, he is unknowingly on a control manic, you might say. You got that? It's in an unknowing condition.

He sees a bunch of people milling around and he just can't rest, he just can't wait until somehow or other he gets in their road! And you know that person doesn't really control them. He merely gets in their road and stops them somehow or another. See, it's a hectic condition. You'll see this condition.

And that condition then, convinces him that he can't control anybody, but he wasn't controlling anybody in the first place. How could not stopping people convince him he couldn't control people, since he wasn't really controlling them?

There are ways and means of controlling people. Maybe they weren't known before this time but they are certainly known now, right here in Scientology. You see that? If people know they are controlling things and can control things, then you will have people around who are willing to take responsibility for things but don't have to. They also can receive orders — such a person.

By the way, it's quite remarkable. You find somebody who is very, very efficient in running a company. He's very successful — I don't care whether it's a company that sells cornflakes or a company that charges mountains (same thing). And you come along and you go into conversation with him and you find out he's acknowledging your origins and it's all back and forth; it's very easy, very simple two-way comm. Nothing to it.

And you find something else too. Major comes along, his superior, or the board of directors or somebody else comes along and they say, "Do this or do that," or something of the sort. And he looks it over and he says, "That's okay." Or if he doesn't like it, he turns around and tells them that he doesn't and straightens it out so he can do something about it.

A fellow who is obsessively controlling, normally, when he is ordered to do something, simply shuts up and runs around like a robot. You never saw such a destructive wake in your life as that which pursues a person who implicitly and always obeys exactly what the order is. See, and this is pretty wild. See, he just turns into a robot.

Therefore, we control the preclear. The preclear is there to be audited, by which he means to be controlled to some degree, and he will jockey around with you trying to convince you you can't control him as a sort of a game for a little while and then finally give up and go through the auditing. But he's there to be controlled in order to put him under his own control. Do you follow me? It's covert to some degree because preclears at the outset sometimes fail to understand and appreciate this. They sometimes tell you, "You're trying to control me."

Well, the thing for you to say at that time is not, "No." It's "Yes. I'm going to control you so that you can get up to a point where you can control your own body. And this is just a graduated scale of this and that's what we're doing. Now, I want you to — the point here, that's Part A and over here is B, and I want you to move from A to B," and so on. And the person will cognite pretty soon.

He goes through this. He'll give you a little protest, but what's kicking back at you? Actually, the thetan isn't. It's a machine or an aberration which is kicking your teeth in. Always remember that when you get a resistive preclear. Don't try to knock the preclear's head off because he's resisting. Actually, the preclear is cooperating. His machinery is resisting. If he could control his machinery, he would cooperate with you. That's why auditing works.

So you put a person under control so a person can control. And one of the first and foremost things you do for a case is show him that control is not bad. He's just gotten mixed up.

I'd like to see somebody drive a car that was incapable of knowing control. As a matter of fact, just looking out the window right here, I see several people are doing just that.

If you wanted to sort out all of the bad drivers and all of the automobile accidents, all you'd have to do is put people who come up with a driving test through a little test with an object, just make them start, change and stop it on a desk. And if they comm lagged on it, flunk them. Just that. Don't audit them, just test them that way — start, change and stop. And if they couldn't do these three things rather easily, if they didn't understand at once what you were talking about, so forth, don't give them a license.

If you gave that person a license, he'd go out on the road and he'd kill somebody. They do. It's only about 10 percent of the drivers cause 90 percent of the accidents. It's a real small proportion.

Now, your preclear is doing what he is doing because he can't stop what he is doing or he can't start doing something else. And, of course, basically he's doing what he's doing because he can't change what he's doing. And that's all control, isn't it? So it all has to do with responsibility, doesn't it?

And we see 8-C work some minor miracles simply because, in a rather indirect way, it overcomes some of this.

But the best process, of course, is SCS. But this is a process that should be run by an auditor who is in excellent skill! He should be in very fine condition as an auditor. He should really know his stuff. Because a case under SCS will sometimes blow up and knock your whole roof out — you're going to start selling insurance for that sort of thing.

Now, 8-C, then, is a very wonderful training process and it is also a very good process if you don't know what to do with the patient. If you just don't know what to do with him — you figure he's too touchy, he's too quivery, too nervous — run him on 8-C Part "a," graduate him eventually up to "b" and "c."

Let us say you're afraid to really tackle this case head-on, you're afraid the case will explode in your face. Case has a history of five nervous breakdowns in the last five months and you can only put in four hours auditing the case.

What would you run? Well, it'd be a rough thing for you to sit there and talk with him. They're liable to go into another breakdown; their havingness is practically zero. You could mimic them and get somewhere or you could run 8-C on them.

If you had a lot of time to do it in, you could just run SCS and blow the case to pieces, pick it off the walls and put it back together again and have the guy walking out in beautiful condition. But given limited time and certainly given a doubt of the ability of the case to stand up, 8-C is still the top-rank process.

The conditions of auditing, however, are best established by running 8-C. And people who are in class and who are being audited by auditors who are not yet sure of themselves are best run on 8-C, let me assure you. Because they make gains even then, they make gains very nicely. All right.

In studying auditing, it's best to take a process that gets the auditor into a condition where he is not afraid of controlling somebody, where he finds controlling people and walking them around is very easy, where he finds out that he can give orders, when he finds out the orders will be obeyed and that nobody drops dead as a consequence. And that's the first and best lesson that an auditor can learn.

Actually, although we — you might think we overstate it, today Scientology isn't a mild thing. Today Scientology is handling a lot of dynamite. But if you do your procedures and you are only going to do something like 8-C, something like that, you'll find there's no dynamite involved at all.