We have some cases in progress today, I believe. The elements you are now running in presessioning, plus the processes which you’re running, should get you pretty well along the line.

The presession elements consist of taking up this survive-succumb activity on the part of the pc — taking up help, control, communication; and, of course, survive-succumb would also take up the interest Actually, there are only four points, but one of those points might be repeated twice.

Now, let’s go over these accurately and swiftly. The survive-succumb proposition: now, when everybody is trying to live, Uve, live; die, die, die goes on automatically. Isn’t that right?

Audience: Mm-htn.

All right, just look at the mechanics of the aspect and you’ll find out that die, die, die goes on automatic and live, live, live goes under the control of the pc. Now, what would be the final result of this? Actually, it is — unfortunately has nothing to do with the intentions of the pc, actually. It’s simply the sheer, overpowering mechanics of it because all cases are inversions of the first sixth dynamic. Therefore, mechanics take enormous precedence with a case. This is not true of all of livingness. It’s just that cases, when they are trying to struggle up the line, are in the condition that mechanics take a tremendous precedence. That’s all. You show a fellow a picture and the picture says, “I have an awfully sick stomach,” or “I have a headache,” or it’s a picture of somebody with a headache or something like that, and he gets a headache.

Well, why is that? These mechanics are much more under the auditor’s control than they’re under the control of the pc. That’s because other-determinism is being furnished by the auditor and the other-determinism is the thing missing in the bank. So therefore, you could order a man’s pictures or a woman’s pictures up, down, backwards and forwards and then turn them into small, vertical banks and spins. You do anything you want to with anybody else’s pictures.

Well, that’s because these people are the effect of the sixth dynamic; they’re tremendously the effect of the sixth dynamic If you don’t believe it, look over road statistics and you’ll find out that those who have smashed into walls don’t survive. Well, fellow was a passenger in the car, he didn’t intend to die, but he died. Well, how come he died? He didn’t want to die, but he died. So therefore, death is on automatic.

It’s this fantastic simplicity. It’s so fantastic that all the philosophers of the ages have been making mistakes concerning it.

This fellow feels like he wants to die; he feels like he wants to die. Well, all he needs is some slight reason to put the automaticity into full cry. See, the reason is very slight, and bom, he’s into it fast.

Now, childhood is the most actional area of current lifetimes. Therefore, there being more action or motion in childhood, you would expect the pc to be pinned more thoroughly in childhood. So much for this idea of “maturity,” the idea that people are not mature. Well, a much more factual way of putting it is people do not progress easily through childhood but tend to get stuck in childhood pictures; that’s all, because there’s more action around a child than there is around an adult unless the adult picks up bad habits such as war or auto racing or something of the sort.

Now, if this is the case — if this is the case, then once more we see that the person is being the effect of the sixth dynamic. Now, being the effect of sixth dynamic includes the fact that matter is not alive, and one is being the effect of things that are dead. So this, of course, adds even more strongly to this automaticity of the case’s death line. You see, if they’re being the effect of something that is — they consider dead or they consider inanimate but capable of motion, then of course this factor expresses itself in the case. You dig that?

It merely reinforces the automaticity: People are trying to live, live, live and they leave die, die, die on automatic, see? Well, the effect of the sixth reinforces this stuff because they consider that matter is dead, and yet they’re the effect of matter. So, once more you get an automaticity in that particular direction. All right.

Let’s look at help. We look at help and we find that matter does help or can be made to help. You’d say that a machine-age society is simply a society which has specialized in getting matter to help. That’s all. It’s a specialization, getting matter to help. What do you do? They build a lot of matter into a thing, and it’s a motor and they put a lot of matter together and it’s a washing machine. And you pour clothes consisting of matter into the washing machine. And then you apply energy to this thing called a motor, and the washing machine goes dank, dank, and the clothes are washed. And what the hell happened to the laundress? You see, she didn’t help.

Well, there’s another thing about life and death which is quite interesting — is people die when they no longer feel they can help. This is quite remarkable. It can be made as — not just an apparency but a very sweeping statement If you want to look over very carefully the lifetime period immediately previous to the pc’s last death, you’ll find that somewhere in there he decided he was no help. And after that, he went zoom, bang, thud, down the avalanche, and we had death.

So death is the answer to no help. That’s one of the basic things that death is the answer to. When a person can no longer aid or assist — help in any way, why, the best answer is to get out of there. Skip it.

Now, the funny part of it is that not-help is a dynamic thing. Withholding help, being interested in not-helping, and so forth, is quite dynamic. The most seriously stalled areas of the track are areas of no no-help and no help. When you get a pc’s consideration accurately balanced to the fact that he was neither withholding or restraining help, and he was not helping, and so forth, you get long, stuck, odd areas.

They are the areas of the track that are the most thoroughly gummed up. These, of course, tend also to be the areas of childhood. They tend to be the areas when people were just — you know, on a total automaticity of — well, even though the fellow maybe was district governor or something of this sort, or baron of the castle (whatever it was), he was not keeping people from helping anything and he was not helping anything, and he was not not-helping anything. And here he is, you see, and he’s just sort of drifting along the track. And you’ll find out that is the most gummed-up area that your pc can run into. They look in vain for answers to commands and look for purpose and intention in life, and they can’t find these things. Life is purposeless and without any reason.

So one would say that the most fundamental reason for being is to help. And when the Help button is badly dented, we get an automaticity of death kicked in. So, the live, live, live on total purpose and the die, die, die on automatic gets very easily triggered when the pc decides he isn’t helping. He’s already got one there to trigger, you see? And he decides he’s not helping, he’s not not-helping. He is merely a drifting entity; he is something that means nothing, that’s going noplace. And that’s it And that comes about when no help occurs.

Now, it is so low that it is the actual period of death. In other words, it’s a synonym. You could almost get — not entirely — but you could almost get the same result in running off the automaticity of death. Well, let’s take a process like, ‘Tell me something worse than death.” Tell me something worse than death.” All right That would run off the automaticity of dying which waits there in the abyss for the pc, you see? That takes care of that automaticity. And some automaticities are so strong that if you’d ask that question of the pc, you’d get a brrrrr. He gets a — wow!

You’ll find out that a lot of PTPs are bound up in this thing, and so forth. “PTPs are worse than…” You get the idea?

Well now, you could get almost the same result if you could express the command because this basis of no help and, you see, not helping and not not-helping — just a zero on the line — well, that’s a death. So you could say, ‘Tell me something worse than not helping and not not-helping.” It’s a not expressible command, don’t you see? And you’d get something — something equivalent to the same answers as you would get with “Tell me something worse than death.”

Perhaps it’d run. Perhaps you could say, ‘Tell me something worse than a total absence of help,” or something of the sort. But it’s so inconceivable that just the fact of being alive makes one conceive of help. You can very easily conceive of help if you’re alive. Even if it’s only to conceive of the fact that it would be nice to have some even though it is totally absent and nonextant. See, it gets that low down.

You ask some psycho something like that, and you’re liable to get some very dizzy answers. But they’ve at least got no-help in them, you see?

Now, let’s go up one further rung of the ladder, and we find that control is an influential point here. When things are totally out of control, why, there’s nothing for it That’s it. One has had it.

I don’t know of any sicker feeling than to stamp on one’s brakes on a long incline and realize that one’s brakes aren’t moving, and to twist the steering wheel and find out that it has ceased to steer, that there is no way to guide or stop the car in any way. And it’s going down along slow, picking up speed with every second.

Now, in that state of mind, a fellow goes into a very thorough apathy, and you might say, he would practically die before he went off the curb into the ditch or hit the tree, don’t you see? He’s totally predisposed to death. As a matter of fact, you’re not quite sure but that death doesn’t occur just before that, you see?

It’s quite interesting trying to run out the impact of such a situation because it very often is not discoverable. Thetan went out of his head before he hit He said, “Well, I’ve had it, that’s it”Now, therefore, the absence of control could be seen to add up to something very like death. A person can do nothing about life, can do nothing about energy, can do nothing about any part of existence; can’t get anything to move to the left or the right or front or behind. If some traffic cop suddenly discovered that no traffic of any kind whatsoever obeyed any signal he made, no matter what he did, he’d fall into a similar state. He’d probably drop under the first wheels of the first car. Once more, we’re looking at the life-death ratio when you’re looking at control or its absence.

Now, as far as communication is concerned, communication, of course, equates to death very easily. The talking dead are usually known only in fiction or legal cases. You can, of course, stick a hole through the back of the neck of a corpse and push a speaking tube up through its mouth and have it make its last bequests after it’s died. Makes interesting legal trials, these things do — happened many times.

But the proof of death is that a person isn’t communicating, doesn’t respond in any way to anyone else’s communication and doesn’t himself communicate. That’s a demonstrable fact of death. And that is the legal demonstration of death. Unresponsive. But we in Scientology would have to say “unresponsive to what?” To whiskey? Or unresponsive to electric shocks, or — so forth. Well, it’s just unresponsive to communication, that’s all. He isn’t communicating and he isn’t answering up.

Furthermore, if you were to punch him or something of the sort, he wouldn’t answer i up either; whereas an unconscious person very often will have a reflex against the punch.

I A dead person does not, as far as a body is concerned.

So, the absence of a thetan is denoted by the absence of communication. The less a person can communicate or the less communication he is in, with regard to his body, the deader he feels. That’s very easily followed. And when he is not communicating, he actually is restraining himself so hard that he keys in death. He pulls himself in very hard, see? (snap) Death.

You could make a fellow shut up hard enough to drag in the death automaticity and kill himself. This is a fact You could shut him up hard enough and quickly enough, and so forth, that he would die. Because, you see, he stops all outflow. And when he stops all outflow (he’s already got death, you might say, on the front burner), and if he snaps anything in that’s in his vicinity, he’s on an automaticity of death right then.

You very often find thetans are walking around with mock-ups of guillotines, spears about to enter their chests, all kinds of weird mental imagery that is all rigged up so that if he suddenly pulled everything in on himself, why, he would go raooing — boom. Well, he might not kill himself all by himself like that, but he’ll have a feeling that he’s trying to.

You give a man bad news, he does not want to communicate into the vicinity of the bad news and he’s liable to go into shock. This is not unknown. You give a person terribly bad news, you say the family has just been killed or something of this sort, you know, and he goes thunk, bang. Well now, the fact that the bad news contained the word kill would influence it also. He’s trying to avoid that.

But supposing the bad news simply had to do with the fact that all of his business enterprises all over the place had failed, and that was it He pulls back, he stops communicating. And these automaticities, which have in them the death which we first talked about, are pulled in against the body.

So that he gets the sensation, quite independent of his own postulates which come in afterwards, that he has a desire to die. You see, he will tell you that he intended to die at that moment; where as a matter of fact, he’s probably going on a secondhand postulate that was contained in some of these automaticities, don’t you see?

The sensation to die may not be the immediate sensation or desire at all, but may be backtrack. That is why somebody comes and sits down in an auditing chair and doesn’t get well but wants to live, but is sure they’re going to die, and the meter reacts to the fact that they’re going to die. You say, “Do you want to live or die?” Well, obviously, the pc wouldn’t even sit still and let you process them, knowing anything about Scientology, if the person really wanted to die, don’t you see? You’re looking at the apparency, you see? You’re looking at the apparency that he wants to die when you see it fall on the E-Meter. You’re looking at the automaticity of death.

Now, the trick question there on presessioning is simply, “Do you wish to improve a body or leave it?” and watch which one falls, you see? And repeat your question a couple of times and you’ll see that leaving a body seems to be far, far more desirable than improving a body. The funny part of it is, this means that there’s an automaticity there which is centering your pc’s interest on dying. There are postulates present which are in the direction of death, don’t you see?

The pc himself is rather aghast at this whole idea. Pc really doesn’t want to die. It seems to be an operational mechanism, however, which is necessary to the resolution of the situation. And that is the whole consideration as far as that’s concerned.

You see, it’s only apparent that the pc sitting in the chair does not want to live. But this apparency — even though he himself basically wants to live — this apparency, you see, is nevertheless sufficiendy strong that the automatidties of death will inhibit the case from improving because apparendy there’s no help, don’t you see, present.

And the more automaticity that’s keyed in on the subject of death, the less help is acceptable, the slower the case runs. The more apparency of death that is keyed in on the case, naturally, the less control an auditor can exert on the case; the more death, the less communication which will arrive or be given forward. You see this? Furthermore, it cuts down the pc’s ability to as-is these death automaticities. So cutting this down makes it apparent that the pc has no effect upon his bank.

The basic consideration is, “You can’t help dead bodies” and that, “Dead bodies are of no help.” This is a basic consideration, even though a very false one. Now, it’s very easy to help dead bodies. You can help a dead body. You can help a dead body by making it more dead. You could cremate a dead body. That would help a dead body that wanted to be good and dead because there’s still some cells alive in a dead body. You could do all sorts of things. You could, as far as a dead body helping anything is concerned — why, grass responds wonderfully to fertilizer.

But it’s just a MEST object, and you’re asking something on the order of, “How could you help matter, energy, space or time?” You see? People who can’t answer that question glibly or easily, of course, will say that it’s very difficult to help a dead body or they can’t think of an answer to help a dead body.

Now, wherever a pc is making slow gain or wherever a pc has a chronic somatic, a desire to die and cease to exist — not here in present time, but somewhere on the track — is so thoroughly in restimulation that the pc’s cyde-of-action is toward destructioa And that cyde being toward destruction, as you move the case along, the case will either hang fire through survive or worsen in the band of destructioa So adjusting a case on the cyde-of-action is a necessity. If you make the case make progress and the case is somewhere in the latter part of the center of the cycle, the case will progress into feeling more dead. That is to say, the automaticity of death will move through — you gotten that?

Now, your auditing is not bound by a cycle-of-action. In the first place, the cycle-of-action itself is only an agreed-upon apparency and a rather weak one. There shouldn’t be any reason why the cycle-of-action shouldn’t go: After you’ve survived for a while, you create, but creation causes more survival There’s no reason why a cycle shouldn’t run that way — survive, create, survive. Of course, it’d be kind of funny. The very fact that a tree out there was surviving meant that it would suddenly create things. And that it was creating would mean that it would suddenly survive.

You’d say, “How we going to get rid of all these trees?” Well, that’s the problem you were confronted with when you first agreed to this idea of create-survive-destroy. Afrer things survive for a while, why, it’d better pack up because we don’t want it around or something of the sort.

Now, the adoption of a cycle-of-action in the first place simply denotes an absence of control of the state of things, their presence or absence, in your environment You put their (this is the overt) — you put their existence on the automaticity. And you say, “Well, after they’ve been created, they’re going to live for a while and then they’re going to pack up and we won’t have to pay any attention to them anymore. And therefore we won’t get this environment too crowded.”

Well, that didn’t depend, then, on any further action by you. You didn’t come in the room and say, “I’m awfully sorry that that old chair is still around,” and say, “I’m awfully tired of it After all, Louis Quatorze, and so forth, was an awfully long time ago,” and say, “pshew” — no chair.

Well, instead of that, we put that on automatic and as a Louis Quatorze chair, when Quinze and the rest of them come along, of course, is deteriorating, and by the time we get the period of no Louises, why, you have a nonextant chair, too. It has fallen to pieces without any further attention from us. But look what you did by adopting that cyde-of-action: You got all sorts of mass in the universe and debris in the universe which is never disposed of in any way, shape or form.

Actually, it’s an irresponsibility for making something absent that brings on this cyde-of-action So, taking a responsibility for the presence of things, as in havingness — which has many numerous factors, all of which are quite esoteric — taking responsibility for the presence of things tends to start discharging irresponsibility for their threatened absence. And you get the cyde-of-action breaking up anyway. Just by running Havingness, it starts breaking up this cyde-of-actioa.

But the automatidties of death come about because the sodety at large forbids it It is frowned upoa I don’t wish to exate your incredulity, but in this sodety at this time, if you were to kill somebody or somebody were to kill you, there would be a great deal of trouble. There would be people investigating, filling out pieces of paper, there would be undertakers and pomp and ceremony and all kinds of things that never happen to live people. There would be papers and dossiers accumulated about the dead man which could never be of any possible use to anybody because the fellow is never again going to do anything. And it’s quite remarkable. The formidable — utterly formidable masses of documents which would be accumulated — how many actions would have to be taken?

Well, all of these actions actually are an effort to supply a missing action. The relative dying denies the rest of the family that relative. They get very, very greedy for the relative’s possessions. The sudden absence of the relatives cause everybody to dive in like a bunch of hungry dogs. If you ever watched this thing, it stands your hair on end. It makes them look like a bunch of vultures. Actually, they’re just following this automaticity of: The person is absent, and in this frantic effort to get the person back, why, they lay their hands on every piece of bric-a-brac of the person as they possibly can. Their havingness drops, in other words.

Well, the oddity is that that was on automatic Nobody willed this person’s death, but it happened. This starts all sorts of rumors about God and things of this character. Nobody willed this death. It was not visible. Where did it come from? How did it start? Well, obviously it started way back on the track when people were still willing death. And it’s caught up with somebody. That’s all.

Actually, it’s a rather disgraceful activity. Instead of going calmly and taking a body and putting it on a bed and crossing its hands properly and then going off and doing a bunk, you know, and picking up a body in North Hampshire or something like this, and going on, why, they do all sorts of wild things. They have to have big justifications for this action, you know. They have to put them in automobiles and smash up other people, and they leave blood all over the place and get chemists all mixed up with poison, and — ah, they do all sorts of crazy things.

Well, those are just automaticities. Death isn’t even that difficult to accomplish. It’s very simple. But as long as it’s on automatic, nobody has any control of it.

Now, you could say this isn’t a technical — this is not factual, it’s simply an apparent (and it’s a good way to understand it) — but the entirety of presessioning, all the steps of presessioning are intended to recover this automaticity and get them out of the auditor’s road. Understood in that wise, why, presessioning is an adjustment of the pc so that he will go upward. And every spot in presessioning is simply a polished-up effort to get him to Live rather than die. Well, we’re not even trying to get him to live. We’re trying to get him not to have death on automatic, please, sitting in the auditing chair, getting in the road of every process we try to run. Because the automaticity itself, misunderstands our actions — if it could be said to misunderstand anything — and it thinks we want this fellow to survive in a body, trapped from there on out This is the person’s usual reaction to this sort of thing.

Actually, auditing, on a final goal, puts death under the predear’s choice — and it wouldn’t be death, anyway. A thetan can’t even die. This is one of the silliest lies that ever got on the track, which of course makes its postulates so unreliable and so subject to all sorts of things.

Do you understand presessioning a little better?

Audience: Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Audience: Thank you.