This is a lecture of — date?

Audience: 25th.

October 25th, 1954.

Want to talk to you about communication. Actually, I can probably stand here and talk to you a long, long time about communication.

I want to talk to you about the basic fundamental of communication. And one of these days, long blue sparks will jump, and you'll know all about this. I am going to talk to you about Elementary Straightwire — communication in relation thereunto. Okay?

We call it Straightwire. It has been called Straightwire for more than three years. I invented the term to designate the stringing of a line between the preclear and his past. And if that was a straight line, then the preclear could remember his past, but if it was a crooked, bent line with lots of vias in it, why, he was not in communication with his past then, was he?

It is indicative of this that somebody writes in a diary. He has got to go through a via to get to his past. If you can't remember your past without a diary, why, that's too bad. Looks like you'll get aberrated sooner or later.

Now, a person should feel at will to string a straight line between him-self and any point in his past without fear of consequence. And the whole process of Straightwire is to demonstrate to somebody that he can freely communicate with any part of his past, whether this life or any other life, without immediate consequences. That's its purpose, that's its function and that is all we are trying to get him to consider, and sooner or later he will come to this consideration — sooner or later — that he can remember, without consequences, any part of his past.

Why do we call it Straightwire? Well, the original concept had to do with a telephone line. If you ever review old lectures and so forth, 1950 I was talking about this. We take a telephone line and we string it straight from one person to another.

But if it has to go to Joe to be relayed to Bill, to be relayed to Oswald, to go through several switchboards, and so forth, it becomes less and less workable as a communication system; becomes more and more complicated, doesn't it?

If a person has a bunch of machinery which is remembering his past for him, he's in trouble. Got that? He's in trouble. No modification on this. If a person has a bunch of machinery which is remembering his past for him, he's in trouble.

What do you think a facsimile is? What is this thing called a facsimile? This idea of pictures, called in psychology — in the back end of a couple of old forgotten and neglected texts — "eidetic recall," covered in psychology a little bit; covered very, very thoroughly, and remediable by, Book One and the processes therein.

What is this whole subject of energy masses around a person? Take 1952, the discussions on ridges, discussions on all kinds of odds and ends there — electronic phenomena, one kind or another. What is that whole subject?

That whole subject is again the subject of a person using some kind of machinery in order to recall things for him.

It has an additional significance. These masses are very often preserved by the individual to act as barriers or barricades which hide him or hide something else from him — protective barricades, defenses. But how on earth do any of these defenses come into existence in the first place, except by a person having somebody else remember for him.

Actually, this is true. The initial entering wedge is getting something else to remember for him — his unwillingness to string this communication line from himself to the past.

But how does it get this way? Well, he gets unwilling to have a communication line strung between himself and something else in the present. And then this unwillingness carries on into the past. You see? This is a very simple mechanism.

So he believes he's still defending himself from things in the past. Well, if something else beside himself was counted upon to break the communication line — now, let's be real distinct about this — to break the communication line between that lion and himself … See? If he counted on something else to break the communication line rather than himself — a completely direct zap (if he didn't like that lion) — he was in trouble that moment, and that moment is continued as a moment of trouble all through the past. So that when he tries to remember something, he gets into this intricate and interesting state of affairs: "There are other things there which must break the communication line." Now, you, as you sit here right this moment, what do you think you're using to break communication lines? Now, let's just look over a few. Is there anything here in the present that you are using to cut a communication line other than yourself?

You find some?

Look around.

Are you using something else?

How about the sun? Are you using anything to cut the communication line between you and the sun?

How about these very sentences I am giving you? What are you doing with them? Is anything hearing for you? Why can't you hear straight? Why couldn't you hear directly? Would it be harmful to you to be hit with the impact of sound, to vibrate to yourself these various wavelengths, vibrations?

Now, you sit there in a body. If the sunlight were to pour in straight upon you, without the interruption of the earth's atmosphere, you'd get fried, wouldn't you? So it must be that you're protecting something else than yourself.

How about yourself? Would you, an awareness of awareness unit get fried if the sunlight hit you? Couldn't, could you? Not unless you put up something to get fried. Well, maybe a body is just the process of putting up something to get fried.

So every minute of the waking day, if one considers himself trapped and immersed and of necessity compelled to use a body, he is adding up — I hate to tell you this really — he is adding up a long, consecutive channel of defenses which will therein and thereafter impede, amongst other things, simply his memory.

By introducing barriers to protect — to own, to hide (you know, own-protect-hide) — by introducing barriers to do this trick after this moment is past, after this moment is past, it cannot but f o l l o w , having counted on some-thing else to shunt communication lines … And remember, we don't care how solid the communication is. Some communications are more solid than others. Having entered ownership, protection and hiding into your present, now recall back through that line is to some slight degree similarly impeded.

Now, these past lines, past moments, can only get involved if you're still sitting there, depending upon the protections of those past moments. Want to know what happens to somebody's memory? He owns, protects, hides — barricades, barriers, vias and so forth — in each successive moment of present time, and then doesn't go to the direct source of what he's trying to remember, but remembers back through all of these devious mock-up barriers which represent the past moments. He gets to a point finally where he's carrying along a whole bunch of pictures representing the past situations.

Now, trying to get an energy line through them would be difficult enough. Simply trying to recall straight through them is quite difficult, so that man commonly considers practically a complete state of amnesia as a fine memory. What man considers a fine memory should be considered almost a complete state of amnesia.

Now, I dare say, sitting right there at this moment you can recall very well picking out those barriers which were interrupting you. Can you recall doing that easily? Can you recall that easily? Is it difficult or is it easy?

Now, we have introduced the idea of a barrier there, haven't we? It was a subject that was appertaining to barriers. Now, let's recall a time in the past when you used a tremendous defense. Just recall a time when you used a defense.

Now, let's recall a time — whether you got that or not, it doesn't matter; this is not a processing session — let's recall a time when you felt you could operate without defenses. What period of your life was that? Wasn't it a period of your life before you had been taught that everything was dangerous? Hm? Wasn't that the period you hit? Childhood — some such period. Regard-less of what it is, you're dealing with these present-time energy barriers which represent past energy barriers. And there is a dependency all in it-self which impedes Straightwire.

Now, the truth of the matter is that theta, as you might say — people talk of theta as if it's a commodity — a theta activity would simply banish all that. I mean, you just wouldn't pay any attention to the routes and vias. The more you validate these dependencies and so forth on the part of an individual, the unhappier he gets.

Now, I probably, as you're sitting there, made you feel very unhappy. I tried to make you remember through barriers after telling you that you couldn't. Dirty trick, huh?

All right, let's pull a much better trick. Now, let's pick out something right now that you'd feel free to communicate with. Got something you'd feel free to communicate with? Get something else you'd feel free to communicate with. Look around. Something else you'd feel free to communicate with. Got some?

Look around your actual surroundings. Let's find some things that you're free to communicate with, or which you feel free to have communicate to you.

That make you feel better? Did you find some? Make you feel better? Of course it made you feel better. You weren't validating the intervention of barriers, were you? No barriers.

Now, here is a very interesting fact. This universe is a game consisting of barriers. And those barriers are space, those barriers are energy. Did you ever see an energy barrier? Did you ever try to swim a tide race or something like that some time or another? That's a barrier in motion rather than a solid barrier. Matter, energy, space and time — each one of these things are barriers. Time is a barrier. Where is 1770? And it is actually the key and principal barrier — the principal barrier: time!

One measures time by the flux and change of form, and so the particles which were there in 1770 have changed in form so that over there in the wall is probably a speck of rust from a flintlock rifle. And there is probably out here in the dust of the street a bit of a feather on an Indian arrow. Certainly in this very ground this area is situated on, here in Arizona certainly, there is shards. And if one were hearing this in London, of course, he'd probably be sitting on old bits of slings and stuff like that.

These atoms have departed from their original form and have taken part in some other form, and so we have the illusion that time is very destructive. Time is actually destructive of nothing but form. Change. That's in this universe.

So here we have these barriers. Barriers of space are quite interesting. It's a very, very effective barrier between here, for instance, and the moon for a person in a body. It's very difficult to get a body up to the moon. In the first place, space-station commands are fitted for people about one meter tall, and they're certainly not fitted for people who are about 5'3" to 6'6"; that's a different size range. It's rather hard.

Furthermore, these meter-tall people can subsist much more evenly upon oxygen — low oxygen content, and so forth — than these bigger bodies. An amusing idea — the fact that there's space, you see; space is a barrier.

If you were going to construct a prison and keep somebody in it, you would have to teach him that he was something else which could not be transported. See, that would be an absolute necessity if you were going to make a prison or a trap. You'd have to teach him he was something else that couldn't be transported. Nontransportation. You ran nontransportability.

Science-fiction writers love to write time-machine stories, just as though the past forms were still there. Well, a time actually could still exist in various forms. Actually, if you went back in time and you started to mock up and spot spots in — just as though they were there — and mock up 1770 again, you could probably create, to your satisfaction, a pretty darned good 1770.

If the people of earth just decided that everything was just like it was in 1770 and moved in that direction, of course we'd have such a broad agreement, and so on, that we'd be all back to flintlock rifles and Tower muskets.

No, the Tower musket didn't come in just then; Tower musket was issued to the British troops … Oh well, that's — we'll get off of that. I remember the issuing order. Anyway … !

It said, "Hereinafter as aforesaid, troops will not refer to this weapon as 'Brown Bess.' " It was decided that this was derogatory. Anyway! You have a very complex thing — time, space, incidents.

Now, incidents spot, seemingly, forms, don't they? Incidents consist of combinations and motions of forms. Right? Isn't that an incident? Combinations and motions of form. Of course, you have to add to it significances, ideas. And that's an incident.

Now, if you are certain that incidents must consist of form only and the motion of that form, and that that is what makes the happenstance or incident, you're in trouble to just the degree that you have to have in order to recall. For instance, can you think back to the moment when I was asking you to feel how free things were? — you know, get things you were freely in communication with? Hm? Do you remember that moment well now? Hm? Do you? Do you remember that one well?

Well, what do you know, you didn't remember the time when I turned you loose into barriers very well, did you? Hm? You remember first I asked you what things were intervening between you and the sun, and so forth. Remember? And then a little bit later I asked you to recall that. Well, then I asked you what things you were in free communication with. And now I've asked you again to recall that. Which did you do the most easily? Do you get my point?

Now, we start out with the assumption in all Straightwire and communication, unfortunately, that there's some difficulty going to ensue on the re-call. That's a basic postulate with which we start. That's an unfortunate thing, isn't it? Nevertheless, it seems to be perfectly justified by the fact that if we ask somebody off the street to come in here and tell us what he had, not for dinner last night, but for lunch, what kind of an answer do you think you'd get? How much comm lag do you think you'd get?

Now, let's ask him what he has in his pockets, and when he put it there. Dahh! Guhhh! Be an interesting experiment — so that it's very reasonable for an auditor to assume that people are going to have difficulty recalling the past.

Let me assure you of something. A person is going to have as much difficulty recalling into the past as he himself is counting upon facsimiles, or has in the past depended or counted upon facsimiles, to give him his past on a silver platter.

The fellow who recalls 1770 and is presented with a facsimile of 1770, and then recalls 1770 because he's now seen a facsimile of it, isn't doing too well. He is still depending, you see, on some kind of a mechanism to give him the past. He's going via.

All right, worse than this is the fellow who has it all black. Duhhh! See, it's all black, totally. The mechanism has been depended upon so that he was no longer authoring this mechanism. And the mechanism doesn't work any-more, but he has depended on this mechanism, hasn't he? And now it doesn't work anymore, and yet his dependency is still there, not unmocked. In other words, the dependency continues to exist after the mechanism has broken down.

Why did the mechanism break down? Because he was the only one that could put a mechanism there. Get that very clear: Who could put a mechanism of assistance of memory into the bank? The preclear. Even when some-body else gives him an idea, it will depend upon, originally, his own mechanisms. The idea he is given cannot be otherwise than simply a lock on his own dependencies and postulates in this particular direction.

So we look over the whole subject of Straightwire, and we look over the subject of freedom. Freedom consists exclusively of having a straight unviaed, uncrooked, =relayed line between the preclear in the present, and the ideas and concepts of the past — not the barriers of the past. Straightwire has as its goal "return of idea or conceptual memory with the absence of all fac-simile or machine assists." To accomplish that goal it is only necessary for an individual to be practiced in remembering to a point where he can abandon the mechanisms which are assisting him.

Now, I'll give you a case history. I had a preclear one time who has had hallucinatory images, gone down through blackness, and had a complete in-version, so that it was enough for this person to think of something to be presented with an entirely erroneous picture of this somethingness. You know, an erroneous picture. The way this person was remembering — (quote, unquote) "remembering" — was to remember what you said a half an hour ago with an entirely different sonic, and then tell you absolutely that you, a half an hour ago, spoke in a high treble and you had recited the Declaration of Independence. And this was what you had said a half an hour ago. In other words, this person was batty. And this person had at one time been occluded, and the occlusion had turned into a terrific amount of hallucination, utterly out of control.

Well, the solidity of energy masses around this person was something marvelous to behold. Now, I've had a lot of psychos like this. It is a characteristic of a particular kind of psychosis that we used to call the "wide-open case." This person would be asked to mock up something or copy something, and would get a copy of it far, far more solid than the original sitting right in front of their face. And there'd be something wrong with the copy. Ask this person to copy a window curtain, you know? Oh, we used to say "duplicate it"; we say today "copy it." All right. "Copy this window curtain." This window curtain (the copied version) would be far, far more solid and real than the actual window curtain, but there'd be something haywire with the copy — only recognized by the auditor, of course, by the auditor's utter insistence that this thing be described. Now, you're asking this person to copy some-thing; you're not asking this person to originate something.

It would be characteristic of a very, very high level thetan if he could mock up something so darned solid that probably other people could see it too. You see, that'd be something else.

But the difference is, he would be mocking up what he was supposed to be mocking up. You see, he'd say, "horse," you know, and he would get a horse. Well, not this other person, not this low-level manifestation of the same thing. You'd say, "Copy that horse," and this person would get a rocking horse, see — solid, very solid — and be appalled at the solidity of the copy.

Now, you'd say that person should be able to remedy havingness very easily. The only thing with it, you see, is these things were out of that per-son's control. And a little further explanation and a little further investigation on the part of the auditor would demonstrate on any such case something equally amusing: It's the auditor's command which makes it appear.

Just be alert to that. A little point I'll probably never touch again, and you'll run into sometime or another. You told them to copy the curtain. They didn't copy the curtain. You indicated a condition that the curtain had been copied. You see, by merely telling them to copy the curtain, a copy would appear. But who copied it for them? You did.

Otherwise this person is almost totally other-determined, and all of their machinery snaps and pops and salutes anybody else who comes along. Of course, that depends upon the earlier machinery which they have set up to do something like this. So this is where a dependency on some kind of machinery like this can go. An utter dependency upon other-determinisms straight across the board can become a very interestingly insidious thing. So that other-dependency, however, would have to do with the recognition of the superiority of all other beings except self.

Now, you . . . Apparently we've stretched one there, and I've gone awfully fast across a number of steps. But dependency consists basically and foremost upon the recognition of the vast superiority of the remainder of existence as compared to self. Dependency exists only when a person has admitted the vast superiority of the environment as compared to self. A piece of writing can be more valuable than a self. A soldier, for instance, carrying a battle message is, of course, far more impressed with the message than he is with his own life. He is trained that way; he's indoctrinated that way. Therefore, this message is a superior thing — to him; he'd lay down his life to get it there.

Well, this is perfectly all right. There's nothing wrong with this as long as it is a game. But to actually admit from that, that every message had more value than he had, that everyone's utterance was more important than his utterance, and to select this out as an activity in life — simply granting great importance to any printed page as being far more important than any-thing one could compose himself, or originate himself, or think himself or say himself (just the fact that there's a printed page there makes a person believe the fact that it's there, you see) — that kind of activity winds up in a resignation from cause. A person resigns from being cause.

One of the most amusing incidents along this line that I ever saw was a fellow one time was in a vast argument with several other engineers. He was an engineer, an electronics engineer, a very good one, and he'd had a lot of other engineers to dinner. And they got into an argument after dinner about a certain law, and they — its application in the field of electronics. And there was a lot of gab-gab-walla-walla amongst them, and they were condemning each other left and right. And finally the host, this engineer of whom I speak who was upholding this certain law, reached up onto the bookcase and got down a book (a very heavy book) and opened it up and pointed to a certain page, and they read there the words which substantiated what he was saying. And they were all satisfied and they stopped arguing, and the point was entirely and completely settled right there at that moment. And he put the book away.

Amongst them, I was the only one who noticed that he was the author of that book. I was a nice fellow. I didn't contradict him. Okay? Do you see the point there? They wouldn't believe him.

So it is a trick that all of the rest of the world plays on an individual, isn't it? What is agreed upon is true, and what you think — nahh! What is agreed upon is true. It's been through the test of time; it has even come down into a point where it has been indicted in print, black and white, and this of course makes it true.

Yet no written account of any battle ever fought is a true account of that battle. So wild is this, that the collection of stories for the three days subsequent to a battle in the earlier part of World War II, demonstrated from day-to-day an entirely different battle was being talked about. And finally, the official version of the battle which was released, which became part of news-papers and which became part of the history books, had very little to do with the battle that had been fought there — very, very little to do.

How can we actually, completely pervert present time? Well, let's just make a composite of everybody's viewpoint of it — you know, depend on that rather than some observer who was there, he saw it, so on.

We get a number of people witnessing an accident: They're all looking from different directions at this accident, they're all seeing different things, and they all have different restimulations with regard to this accident, and they all turn in different stories on it.

Now, how … What happened at the accident? It actually very often takes a court of law to decide what happened at an accident. And it takes it after it's listened to all these witnesses, one after the other. And then it makes a composite story which is the accident, but that isn't the accident.

Similarly, a child, when he becomes five, six, seven, eight, nine, is interested in hearing his parents talk about his early life, and he will take their composite views of the family — the composite views of the family — as a version of his early life. And so his early life will become occluded. Oh, you thought I'd went way off from Straightwire, talking about this, didn't you? Fooled you.

The account of the battle, the official family record of the battle, is probably the wildest departure from truth imaginable, and yet this person's sanity depends on his being able to recall or reestablish his own viewpoint — not the official viewpoint; his own viewpoint.

Now, we don't care whether that was correct, incorrect, bad, good, back-wards or upside down. All we care about was his actual concept or idea of the positions of masses and forms, and their ideas and intentions. That's what we're interested in when we ask him a question about his past. And we find nearly every child is totally occluded up to the age of four, five or six. There isn't any reason why they should be, you see, except that the family always has the official version. Now, if you want to cut through this Gordian knot, you of course don't even validate the official version. We're just going in now, "Why don't people recover recalls of the very, very early ages." Well, I will give you a preclear one time, who, all he'd talk about the first session or two, is he'd had a vivid recall when he was about five, of a time when he was six-months old. And there'd been a roast parked on the stove. He was in the kitchen and mopping around on the floor with his dress and so on, and the cook had opened the oven door and set this roast out on the oven shelf there. And the boy had been sitting there and a big dog came in, the family dog came in — pardon me, I think it was the dog next door — came in and picked up that roast, hot as it was, and ran outside with it and ran away with it.

And he'd remembered this vividly, you see. Only he couldn't talk. He couldn't tell anybody at that moment what had happened to their roast, and everybody was very upset about this roast, and so on, and it made quite an engram in the family, one reason or the other.

So the years went by, and when he was about three-and-a-half or four, he had told people what happened to that roast, you see, just as soon as he could talk and was in good communication with the rest of the family. What happened to the roast? Well, he told them. He said, "I was sitting there on the floor . . . ," And they all jumped in. They said, "Why, Johnny, that's impossible! That's utterly impossible. You couldn't possibly remember anything like this." Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

He went on for years like de Maupassant's piece of string, you know — that sort of a motive. He went on for years, protesting that he had remembered that, and eventually one day they convinced him that he hadn't remembered it. But he still remembered that he had remembered it, but he'd been convinced of this.

Well, getting into this, the closest approach that we got to it on Straightwire was something on this order: "Well, my memory isn't so good. A lot of people think they can remember things very early, and so forth, but that's all hallucination." But this was what he was dwelling on and talking about. But even letting him talk about this a little bit sort of as-ised it off. So I started looking for some specific recall that this fellow was evidently fishing for. And first we found something on dismay, on the order of forgetting things, and then we found something on the order of the family telling him he mustn't remember, and we all of a sudden sprung that one just like that.

We sprung the remainder of the invalidations, and all of a sudden he remembered remembering the roast. And a tremendous span of his early life turned on, merely because we'd hit the main suppressive button.

But this is an accident — hitting something like that, that dead center; hitting such a story. This is an accident.

All right. An accident like that isn't something an auditor wants very much to do with. We're not interested in the psychoanalyst's viewpoint. He believes that there's probably only one incident in the last seventy-four trillion years that's aberrated him, and if he could just get a recall into this incident, he'd be all set. That's not true. Not true.

Now, the most descriptive things there are in theta is this: affinity, reality and communication. And of these, the most important is communication. And communication is modified by the amount of duplication which occurs, which is reality. Reality is simply the degree of duplication. And affinity is the mass — distance factor.

Now, there's no need to go into it much further. But affinity is actually the size of the particle and the amount of distance, and possibly could even be figured out to have velocity connected to it. I have made no exact approximation of affinity, as such, in all of its operations and working — hold your hats — because it is the entire subject of physics and chemistry.

And if you want to sit there while we go over the entire subject of the various particles, compounds, interrelationships, cohesions, adhesions, repulsions, diamagnetism, paramagnetism, magnetism, fields, fluxes, and so forth, why, I would be happy to do so, but we don't teach physics here.

Affinity even has such things as the terminal manifestation. You get two terminals and there is an interchange between these two terminals. And actually, the exact likeness of these two terminals, trying to communicate with each other, greatly enhances a flow, and so forth. It's a tremendously complex subject which we don't need to have anything to do with, because there is where complexity enters the whole business of living — affinity.

We must remember this: The greatest affinity there is, is a perfect duplicate. And the more particles and the more distance you get into it, the less affinity there is. Somebody says, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." I have never found that to work out myself. Occupying the same space makes the heart grow fonder. And that I've seen work out many times.

All right. Here we have flows, ridges, fluxes and barriers under the heading of affinity.

Under reality we have the degree of duplication, and under communication we have cause-distance-effect with the intention and attention, and, of course, the interest factor. The interest factor is what marries communication to affinity — pardon me, the interest — disinterest factor. And the more disinterest there is, the lumpier the affinity becomes.

Why is somebody interiorized? Oh, you could work a tremendous number of things out here. Why is somebody interiorized? Well, he feels an affinity for his body. Well, how much affinity can he feel for his body? That means the occupation of the same form, same space, in the same time concurrently and immediately with it.

Now, how about this as this affinity falls off and goes into the DEI cycle — Desire, Enforce, Inhibit, and so forth? The person feels less and less affinity for his body and is trying to fight his way out of his body. Well, he'll eventually get buttered all around the body but will not be in it. And you won't be able to find him either. He's dispersed; the body is superior to him. Actually, if he was as good as the body, you see, if he had the idea, "I'm just as good as this body. I'm as smart as this body. . . ." There's a drill that goes this way, by the way. It's a little freak piece of processing which I don't advocate to you at all. "Now, which is the best: you or your body? Oh." Whatever answer, see. We finally get the question answered. "Which is the best: you or your body?" See? "Which is the most de-serving: you or your body?" And the guy will … It doesn't matter what he gives you as an answer, he's as-ising this nonduplication situation which brings about and assists the malaffinity, see, the misaffinity. Do you see the idea?

He doesn't even recognize he's in his body. The reality factor has fallen way off because, you see, the body is all-important; he's not important. He's degraded compared to the body. You see this? And therefore he isn't even occupying the body. And the body is everything and he's putting that forward. And he is nothing, and so the body isn't putting him forward. Get the idea?

And so we get a maladjustment of the terminal's reality, see? No duplication over here. We get no duplication in the field of reality, so therefore we get some kind of a misaffinity over here. And this misaffinity will go in to where we have a compulsive adhesion or cohesion between the thetan and his body. It isn't a matter of occupying the same space with free choice or free will; it's a compulsive, obsessive occupation of the same space and we don't get him exteriorizing.

Well, whatever you want to say about A and R and C, these are the three principal factors which make up understanding. These are the three factors which make up understanding. It's a triangle.

But that triangle gets compressed down to a (almost) dot by exterior determinism, you see. Right down, boom! See? But it never vanishes. As it expands upward, it finally gets pretty big, so a fellow has a large distance tolerance, you know. And he could control things a considerable distance, and all this sort of thing, you know — heal at a distance. Big distance tolerance is getting up here. And all of a sudden we get it out here, and as it starts to approach infinity, it disappears and it becomes complete knowingness.

So we get complete knowingness going down into the mechanics of ARC, which have a distance factor in them; and then that triangle more or less decreasing, so the fellow can have a game and barriers entering into it; and then the triangle collapsing on itself down to a minute point, because it is compressed from all sides. And it never gets to zero.

But a person at about 20.0 starts to misunderstand. And his under-standing starts to deteriorate. So that with a good understanding of life itself a person becomes relatively free. He's going upscale, isn't he?

Well, how about this fellow that doesn't understand his past? Supposing he doesn't understand anything about his past? His past is just the most in-comprehensible thing to him. He can't remember any part of it, really; he's, you know, Homo sapiens, average man. Recalls on a conceptual basis always, as sort of a blur that he — he was a … he was a … He had a hometown, and he went to uh . . . uh … school, and uh . . . he's had a jo . . . Well, uh . . . right now, he's working for uh . . . uh . . . Blitz and Company, but before this he .. . uh … Let me see, uh … uh … Yeah, well, he … uh … Oh, he came over here from Smith and Company, that's where he … Well, job … uh-um .. . Let's see now. Job before that … Now, let's see, it was when . . . uh … it was just before Maggie had kittens. Yes, that's right. Uh … No, it was the blizzard of the uh .. .

What is this guy trying to do? He's trying to relate other forms enough to patch up a world of incident which he can then look at. Well, Homo sapiens is in that kind of a blur. How do you resolve it?

We say that his understanding of the past has to be increased. There-fore, his freedom with regard to the past has to be increased. That's the most basic statement that you could make on it: He has to have a greater freedom with regard to his past. He has to be less constricted by his past, less held in the groove. And his ARC with various parts of existence has to be improved. So we have as one of the primary remedies that you already know, ARC Straightwire.

And he never did quite understand his mother. He never did quite understand his first wife. She never did quite understand her father. She never did understand her first three husbands. You know? Well, when they can't understand them they can't remember anything about them. Now, just put those two things right down side by side, and you've got it. And you'll know why we use ARC Straightwire: When they can't understand anything about them, they can't remember anything about them; if they don't remember any-thing about them, then they don't understand anything about them.

Just reverse it; it goes both ways. And that could be an axiom which you could very well follow with regard to people's past: If they didn't understand them, they can't remember them; if they can't remember them, they didn't understand them. The component parts of understanding are affinity, reality and communication. So therefore, hitting these three buttons will produce an effect. It'll produce quite an effect. A fabulous one, actually, if carried on any length of time. All right.

Now, we could enter this several different ways. We could clean up the fellow's immediate ease in his environment quite interestingly. We could clean up his unease and make him easy about something by simply discovering what part of his past he doesn't understand, or who he didn't understand in his past, or who he doesn't remember in his past. And then have him re-member something real, have him remember a time when he felt some affinity for, have him remember a time when he was in communication with this person. Just as easy as that.

Let's say this person is still living with Mother and he's forty-eight, and he's never been married — of course, he's got a couple of boyfriends. Boy, he doesn't understand anything about his mother, believe me. Furthermore, he can't remember anything about her. Here would be key personnel to blast out of existence in this person.

"Remember something real about your mother."

"Remember a time when you felt some affinity for Mother."

"Remember a time she felt some affinity for you."

"Remember a time when you were in good communication with your mother."

"Remember a time when your mother was in good communication with you."

"Remember a time that's really real about your mother." And the odd part of it is, he'll come up into an understanding of his mother. Isn't this curious?

All right. Now, let's say this fellow doesn't remember anything — he doesn't understand physics. You know, he had five years of it, standard university background, and he doesn't really know anything about or remember anything about it. He's gotten a job at Boeing and he's upset because he keeps designing planes that crash. No, Boeing wouldn't fire him for that. He keeps designing planes that fly. Yeah, they'd probably fire him for that.

And we get this boy, and he just doesn't seem to be functioning. If he could just remember his education, he says to you, he would be all right. Umum!

All right, let's get those two things side by side. You got a little clue to how you'd do this now?

He doesn't remember it; he didn't understand it. But you can now make him understand it by simply as-ising all those damn barriers and ridges which he had mounted up about it. And as you try to ask him to remember something real about his education, a time when he felt some affinity for it, a time when it felt some affinity for him, and a time when he was in good communication with it, and a time when it was in good communication with him; you would be amazed at the amount of chatter this fellow will give you about how horrible the stuff was and having to go to school and having to be confined and having to do this and having to do that and having to write out examinations and reports and … Well, we're just talking about barriers, aren't we?

Because what is a barrier? The common denominator word of barriers is restriction. So he was too restricted, so he couldn't remember easily.

Walking academies in Greece were far better than the modern university with four hundred students per class in a small room. I think they've gotten up above that now, but we'll be charitable. It was pretty bad right after the war. It may have simmered down now to three hundred students per class. But they put them on an assembly line and punch them as they go by. And you'll find these people coming out afterwards, not able to understand. Why can't they understand? Because there wasn't any ARC.

The first reactions somebody will get when you've done something to them is tell you they don't understand you.

All right. We write to Joe Jinks — as the CECS has been doing, and has now been stopped — telling him that his certificate has been cancelled. See, we tell him his certificate has been cancelled. We find this individual doesn't even understand the letter, communication or what was in the communication, and writes back some of the darnedest balderdash you ever heard in your life.

The most logical thing in the world would be to write somebody who studied for a certificate — didn't get a certificate — and to write and tell him something about his certificate, see. Let's just try and get in communication here.

We get all sorts of things. For instance, just this morning, such a person, trained and not certified by the Foundation a couple of years ago — the Foundation refused to certify this person — we wrote and gave this person a chance to restudy and get certified. You know, that's about the kindest thing you could do. Somebody wouldn't certify this person. Well, this person is convinced that this person's been certified, but it's right in the Foundation records as they came to us here in Phoenix, the person never was certified. See, it's right here. And this person is going to go to the postmaster general or something, and we don't quite know what this person is going to do, but it's something drastic and terrible — this we can be sure of. But the person never read the communication received. They don't understand it.

All right. So therefore, you drop anything into the category of entheta which would be misemotion, you see, on the affinity line, no duplication on the reality line, and a via-via communication at best, and do we get a non-comprehension. You could say bluntly that as desirable as it might be to police and punish, it is utterly and completely impossible to communicate in the presence of no duplication and no affinity.

There might be giants stalking this earth at this moment who are mad at men. Men would never even see them. They might be able to victimize men in all directions, and yet man would never see them — like Ambrose Bierce's thing of no color. And they might be there but he would just never see them, much less understand them. To get some idea that you don't understand, you at least have to start perceiving. So this is the way universes get stacked up, one to the other, and actually coexist. One never sees them. One has no affinity with them, duplication of them or communication with them, and so we would get a no-perception.

Now, how about this fellow that can't perceive? Let's give him an entire past which is without understanding, and then let's ask him to see the room. The room will have disappeared by this time. The only thing we could do for him would be to give him some ARC — the only way we could communicate with him. ARC would be possible. Have to get some semblance of duplication, some feeling of the kinder emotions, and some semblance of a straight line in order to get any understanding at all.

In view of the fact that we could call both Dianetics and Scientology simply an understanding of life … And it's too bad that man insists on everything being labeled, because that's a far more satisfactory definition of what we're doing. Dianetics, an understanding of man; Scientology, an under-standing of life. And we could call it that, simply because we are dealing exclusively in the factor of understanding.

But if there is understanding, of course, there's cognition. If there's understanding, well, there is perception. If there is going to be any understanding, there must be some semblance of duplication. In other words, a person has to be alive, slightly. That's one of the semblances of duplication: to under-stand life is to be slightly alive — at least faintly warm! And these people who don't understand life aren't faintly warm if you ever really wanted to touch them. They aren't running a temperature. Go around and shake some hands with psychologists some time. You've got to be alive to get into communication with life.

All right, it boils down to this — boils down to this as far as an auditor is concerned: An auditor can utterly and completely neglect the past of a pre-clear, because going to a better future through the clarification of the past is itself a via. Isn't that right?

So what is your test of any process? A test of any process would be simply this: How many vias are in it? How many curves does it take to arrive at a certain goal?

You want a better present and future for this preclear. You can't work with his future. You're sitting there with him in the present, hm? So one of the very best processes that you could possibly run on this individual would have to do with the address of the present and the complete neglect of the past. Leave it to the analyst.

Nevertheless, Straightwire is necessary. Why? He's so stuck all over the place, he is so incomprehending, he is so incomprehensible himself that you can't even get to him to indicate that there is much of a present. Well, clear up a little bit of the past, and you'll spring him slightly so that he will see some present. But remember that it's a via.

We have to remember how to do Straightwire. The best Straightwire there is, in terms of clarifying a person's past, is ARC Straightwire. Just that simple.

There is a present-time address to the problem of ARC, however, which we mustn't neglect. ARC amounts to freedom. ARC amounts to freedom. Complete understanding amounts to freedom. So we have a new common de-nominator, and we could call either Dianetics or Scientology sciences of free-dom. We could call either one a science of freedom, and it'll serve with fair accuracy.

So there would be a code word about the present. There would be a code phrase about the present that could be used that would promote ARC in all directions, and I just gave it to you in this lecture as a little test process: "Point out some things that you could be free to be, do and have," or "Point out some things you could directly communicate with," which is old Opening Procedure 8-C. But "Point out some things which you would feel free to be, do, have in the immediate environment" adds enough idea and significance to it to promote ARC in the immediate environment. And because this complies with the conditions of existence — because you cannot as-is freedom — it'll keep pushing the preclear on up the Tone Scale without dragging him down.

Stretch a straight line, make him free and validate freedom in your processing, and you will accomplish anything you wish with a preclear. Of course, if you wish him something bad, the best way to accomplish it would be to get angry at him, to jaw at him, to run an involved and complicated process that would take him through many vias and finally cave him in — would wind him up in a complete confusion of understanding nothing.

If you want to communicate, show affinity and show some semblance of duplication and you will succeed. If you want to miscommunicate, if you don't want a communication to arrive, why, be ornery, mean, upsetting in general, and you won't get a communication through, or any understanding either.

If a preclear complains that life does not understand him, you want to wonder sometime and process in this direction: How ununderstandable is he? And how far out of communication is he?

That's why people don't understand him and why he doesn't understand them.

Actually, there's nothing much to understand about people, except they're there.

Okay.