[Start of Lecture]

Thank you.

Well, the subject of this lecture should be randomity. But actually, I intended to talk a little bit more about teaching processes and the handling of groups — that you as Scientologists should be interested in.

First and foremost, we will examine the first threshold that anyone has to cross when handling groups or attempting to teach large numbers of people. That threshold is known as stage fright. Embarrassment. That's the first thing, and that is a threshold which has to be crossed by anyone sometime in his career. It is a fascinating phenomenon for everyone except the person who has it.

It's very remarkable, the instances of stage fright I have seen, but none of these made near as much impression on me as instances of stage fright I have experienced myself. These made a considerable impression on me. I remember very well in the field of radio, of overcoming the mike consciousness right here in Washington, going to the university. I had a fifteen-minute program every day. And it was fascinating, as time went on, how accustomed I became to handling that mike and going on, good weather and bad — mostly bad here in Washington.

And years later I was going to the Geller Theater Workshop in Hollywood, after the war. And I walked in, and was going through all the class — everything was going along fine, smoothly, pleasantly. I was learning to say "How now brown cow?" along with the young starlets and so forth. I was studying acting, was what I was doing, to find out how to make actors, because it seemed to me that there was an answer to the mind and to training in the field of acting. I felt that acting was a sort of a synthetic living. And what you could know about it as a synthetic thing you might then be able to apply to life and so understand life a little better.

I, by the way, didn't finish up there at all. I got vastly fascinated with other things. And I was a writer, not an actor, anyway, you see. And I became very enamored with other fields of action, and became particularly enamored with processing the young actors who were going there. And actually, to the last days I was in Los Angeles, these kids used to come up from there saying "I hear you can do something for me." And I usually did, one way or the other. I'd square them away on this subject.

But I walked in one day to their radio workshop with the rest of the class and there was a microphone. There it stood — pure, innocent and chromium plated — attached to exactly nothing. It didn't even go out to a monitor station outside the room. It was simply a dummy mike, and people were supposed to stand there and practice plays, and so on, reading, and how you handle paper, and how you talk, and so on.

And it came my turn, and I stood up in front of this mike and all of a sudden, boy, that mike had more motion in it, and so did I, than I would ordinarily care to experience. Brrrrrr! And I c-c-c- couldn't talk! Fabulous! The thing was a dummy mike. I went back and I sat down and I said, "That thing is a dummy mike! I've handled one of these things for years!" Tuhh! Coo!

Well, as the days went by, I got all right again. But it made an impression on me. I had actually experienced stage fright, which was very interesting — on a dummy mike! And I assayed one day to know more about this. Now, the only time I myself pick up stage fright in front of audiences is when they get up to a certain size. Up to about twenty-five hundred, strictly cucumber. Above twenty-five hundred, well, "My God, there's a lot of people out there."

And then a famous English actress started clobbering me in recent months to say something about stage fright. What was it all about? She called it "first-night nerves." She said, "Every actor on the first night has nerves." And she attributed it to the fact that they didn't know how the play was going to go; and they didn't know what was going to happen; and there was tremendous uncertainty; and they were watching themselves every moment in an unaccustomed scene, which would become an accustomed scene after a few nights, and so they would lose their upset. This is the theory on which man has worked and it is wrong. It is not the theory. It is not what is behind stage fright.

The essence of stage fright is simply this: It is the unwillingness to confront a mass. It is a "can't have" on the mass. That is all. That's all it is. And to prove that, it is only necessary to change one's mind or run a process in the direction of having that mass to instantly cure stage fright. It cures just like that. Remedy of Havingness. Why is it "first- night nerves"? Why, after fifteen years off the air, do I step up to a dummy microphone and get the shakes?

That's because for fifteen years I didn't have something which I had. It's the fifteen years of not having the microphone which make you shake the moment you have one, because you already had one and it didn't worry you. The first time you had it, you hadn't had it, don't you see? So there was no period there of not-havingness to overcome with some sudden havingness. But we go on, then, for a short time and have one a few years, and then all of a sudden we run this long span of no havingness on a microphone. The next time we meet one, snap!

The instant we get one, it's an important item; it is an important havingness. We are trying to have it all at once. It is motionless. There it is. It is obtainable, and available, obviously, but we try to get fifteen-years worth out of one second of microphone. And there isn't fifteen years worth in the microphone. You got that? There is only one performance worth.

All right. Now, let's take that audience. If you'd never had an audience, no audience would give you a quiver. If you'd never had one, you would never experience stage fright. You would be graceful and aesthetic and carry off the role like an old trooper. But having had an audience over a period of time, then not having an audience for a period of time, the next audience we get is going to make us go mnnnunyaaaa!

Why? During that one presentation, we are trying to get the entire no-havingness of audiences filled full during that period, because they're important. You see, it's an important havingness to have an audience. That's an important havingness. And it was a not-havingness over a period of time, and the no-havingness of it makes it a shiver. Now, this is a basic mechanic. There are considerations above this, but I am telling you the mechanic so that you can understand it as a principle which can be utilized in the curing and overcoming of embarrassment — both on the part of your preclears and on your part if you don't like to confront an audience.

Now here, in essence, is Remedy of Havingness on audiences as the cure. That is the only cure there is that is a good, reliable, standard cure. It's a good cure.

Have them mock up audiences, go and find audiences, don't you see? Find out what part of audiences they can have, what part of audiences they can dispense with. Go take them to a movie theater and stand back in the aisle someplace toward the back and have them point out the backs of audiences. That's perfectly all right. It's still mass — back or front. Make somebody go and talk to some people someplace. That, in essence, is having an audience. But making a person go and talk to a bunch of people gives him two things to do at once: both perform and have. And it's one too many for most people who have had, and then haven't had.

If you experience embarrassment because of an audience, it is because you have been without one for a long time; not because audiences customarily, in the last few lives you've led, leaped over the footlights and tore you to ribbons; not necessarily because you confuse every audience you see with a jury of twelve good men and true, who want to hang you for stealing that horse. It isn't necessarily true that you confuse things at all. It's just that you've been a couple of hundred years without a good audience! And therefore, you try to remedy a couple of hundred years worth of no-audience with an audience. And it scatters them all over the track. Really! They go tzzzzz! from your point of view.

They are evidently much more critical. Their critical level is tremendously exaggerated by any person who is giving a performance in front of an audience. He thinks their critical level is something fantastic. Well, I'll agree with you, it's something fantastic, but it's not that bad.

I've seldom seen audiences file in, to an ordinary entertainment production at least, with Tommy guns held under the overcoat. You know? Seldom. Very few. And yet a lot of people who get up and try to perform or talk in front of an audience certainly seem to be convinced that the very least that is under those overcoats is Tommy guns.

Now, as you reduce havingness, you heighten critical level. As the havingness goes down, critical level goes up. So as havingness goes down on audiences, one's belief in their critical level goes up, as well as one's own critical level of the audience. And to talk to an audience you mustn't have a high critical level of the audience, let me assure you. You have to be in communication with them. And if you have a high critical level of any audience to whom you are speaking, you are not going to communicate with them at all. And as a result, you're going to have difficulties.

If you haven't had audiences for a couple of hundred years — ever since you stepped out of the Swan Theater, or something of this sort… Maybe you were awfully good at Hamlet once; maybe you were one of the most terrific Othellos that ever trod the boards, but you haven't done it for a long time — that is, you haven't had for a long time on the subject of audiences. And one day you go out to do Othello and, boy, do you lay eggs!

Several things can happen. But you think that their critical level of you is much greater than it is. And you think at the same time, that your performance is much worse than it is. And you also suppose that their demands are much greater than they are. Maybe you got this idea out of a Roman arena. That's a discouraging place to have audiences. But wherever you see bad performance you simply have a case of no havingness of audiences and theaters.

You can cure the first-night nerves or the mike fright with subjective processes by which simply someone mocks up audiences and shoves them in, audiences and throws them away, microphones and shove them in, microphones and throw them away. There is nothing to this. It is one of our most elementary processes and it works. Works very satisfactorily.

But people get so bad off in having an audience that they can't have one even when they have one. So what do we do then? We have people waste audiences.

The total reason for the existence of Hollywood and the cinema today is entirely attributable to the fact that nobody can have a show. Look it over. Do you think a bunch of shadows playing on a screen with no substance is an adequate show? Well, that is wasting the production, don't you see? That's a waste of production. I tell you it's a waste of production because people go downhill on going to shows and after a while don't go to shows.

It must demonstrate, then, that it's not an adequate havingness for the amount of motion contained in the presentation. They have gotten to a point of no-show, to a point where they have no show, so that they can have no show, don't you see?

Now, we've reduced the screen… First it went up. Hollywood asserted itself. It got big enough to be seen, with VistaScreen, VistaVision, BroadView. What are some of those? Cinerama, CineScope, "Cinemope." There are a whole bunch of them. They got big, you know. And then they got fifteen different varieties of color. And the actors got to be 115 — that's the stopping point of this is when the actors get to be 115 feet high. What are they trying to do? They're trying to remedy somebody's havingness. They're trying to put up enough mass there to keep the people coming. They are trying to say, "Look, they may be only one molecule or one photon thick, but they're awfully tall!"

And the audiences have turned aside — not being able to have a show — to a point where they look on a little seventeen-inch screen or a twenty-one-inch screen which isn't even in color these days. And they don't even look at it, they simply go to sleep. The fellow says, "I slept a good show the other night on TV. Did you snore it?"

Now, it must be — if people are wasting shows to this degree — conversely, somebody must be wasting audiences, too. And certainly this is the truth. The Hollywood actor wastes audiences and wastes them and wastes them. You never saw a poorer audience than cameramen. I've talked to them and they didn't notice what was happening during the scene at all. But they knew how many feet they ran. They knew what the light reading of the scene was. But they couldn't tell you who the actors were unless they read it on their card.

The assistant director is a very bad audience. No mass! He's the furtive little fellow that runs around when the heavier director tells him to, you see. And the director, he's only looking for bad acting or bad positioning, so he's no audience. He doesn't see any of the good stuff. Man, are those people wasting audiences, and they go mad in the process of doing so. They do! They just go mad in the process of acting before nobody.

If you were around a movie colony any length of time, I can assure you that your services would be pulled in that direction. Because they have lots of preclears for you that nobody had better find out about.

Now, here we have, then, the disappearance of show. We're seeing it happen. We're trying to have people sit in front of the camera… I mean, pardon me, the TV set — I mean, the Fac One thing… We're trying to have them sit there for twenty-eight hours of the day in order to remedy the fact that there aren't three minutes worth of show. There is no mass in there. They can't have any mass; there's no mass involved.

The very thing to do, if you wanted to kill all entertainment in the country, would be to take all mass out of entertainment. You'd kill it. So therefore, the very thing to do on your part — the very thing to do to take all confrontingness out of you — is to have nothing ever to confront.

Well, one of the ways you move up into this on a gradient scale is simply go to a lot of live theater for a while, or go to a lot of lectures, so forth. It's amazing. There are still things going on. Playing to somewhat empty halls, but these things are still going on in the society. Get yourself a few tickets and slide in and listen to what people are talking about. You'd be utterly fascinated. They're seldom very good. People go to see them; they listen to them. And just note carefully whether or not anybody in the theater audience picks up any tin cans or rotten eggs or anything. Just note carefully, by the end of the production, how many people have leaped over the footlights with a knife in their hands.

Now, you will note — you will note, in such a wise — that there is still a lot of presentation going on. There are still people talking to people; there are still people listening to people. Of course, I know it's getting in to the minority, and a small percentage of the world indulges in such a thing. But the funny part of it is, that it is that way, not because the excellence of production has dropped, but because people have run out of havingness on production.

Remember, this country for a long time was a backwoods country. One drove up and down the streets of Philadelphia hoping that his wagon would not sink to the hub during the next block. The streets of Washington have only been paved for a short period of time. Itinerant players tried to remedy the havingness of the country, but it wasn't very easy to do. We went for a long, long period with no show to amount to anything. We were a lot, a tremendous lot, of wilderness.

It's an amazing thing that you don't find the older countries of Europe fallen away to no-show to the degree that countries that are newly emerged are without show. You can understand, of course, that the Casino de Paris in Paris would of course be fairly jammed, particularly during tourist season, in view of the stage productions which they have. It isn't the costumes that people go to see; it's the lack of them.

And, by the way, the Casino de Paris is noted for its tremendously beautiful costumes — the most overdressed place you ever saw in your life. The amount of show given at the Casino to an audience which numbers thousands and thousands of people — it's big, that's a big place — is rather fantastic. A lot of poor people go to the cinema, but anybody with any money still goes to shows. In other words, there is still theater and people haven't completely flattened out on this entirely as a country at large. But we're still climbing the hump.

I'm not telling you that people just normally dwindling-spiral and run out of show. I tell you they get used to not having any show — as we've had for the last couple hundred years over on this side — and they kind of try to work up to it. They try to get in to at least see the TV set once in a while, you know. They work up to it on a gradient scale somehow or another. There is hope! But it's all on a subject of havingness, no matter which way these aspects play. Do you see that?

Now, you think that nobody would come and listen to you talk. Bah! It's not true. It's not true at all. As a matter of fact, you and your experiences, with your individual viewpoint and with your knowledge and command of the subject of the mind, would probably have no difficulty whatsoever talking to any audience that could be mustered of whatever kind in America. Unless, of course, you were running a bzzzzzz! every time you saw an audience! And then they would realize that you couldn't confront them, and they don't want, then, to confront you. Got it?

So, handling groups is being willing to have, so that one can confront. Groups of people are people. They are essentially audiences. They are something to have. And you, to them, are something to have. And so with that communication possible and made possible because of a mutual ability to have, we have such a thing as stage presence. We have such a thing as audience interest, don't you see?

I would love to tell you that it's your aesthetics, just the way you hold the pinkie, the beautiful gesture with which you undulate, the way you describe things. I would love to tell you, as they do in theater workshops, that it's your command of English, your proper accent, the way you pronounce "formidable."

But it doesn't happen to be true. Those are all significances which hang on to the fact of actual havingness. The reason it is difficult to study acting is because one does it without an audience. It's very interesting.

The ways and means of remedying your havingness on groups, in its crudest, rudest and most elementary form, is simply to get a bunch of people and talk to them. Grab yourself sort of by the back of the neck this way and say, "Good evening," and note carefully that they are still there. That's rude and crude. But there are other ways of going about this — much smoother, more positive ways of going about this.

And one of those ways is this whole subject of confrontingness coupled with the subject of havingness. Havingness is the easiest to talk about or deliver, as far as a process is concerned: Mock up audiences. Mock up audiences in motion. Mock up audiences and have the preclear push them in. Mock them up and throw them away. Mock them up and let them remain. Mock them up and push them in. Mock them up and throw them away. Mock them up and let them remain. Just straight Creative Processing.

All right, you say, somebody has an entirely black field; he can't possibly do mock-ups. All right, that's fine. Have him mock up audiences in total blackness and push them in. You see that? You know, this idea of having a… when you shut your eyes, never being able to see a mock-up but seeing only blackness and so forth — that belongs, you know, as a problem, back to about '52 or '53. It doesn't belong to now. It really doesn't. Just "Mock up a black mass and push it in, a black mass and throw it away" gives us quite adequately a clearing of this. Fellow goes anaten and lots of other things happen. But you can do it with good auditing.

It simply is addressed by addressing it. Also in confrontingness, you can have somebody mock himself up confronting blackness, and all sorts of interesting things happen. He finds himself standing on the bridge of spaceships, going through space with little asteroids pattering merrily through the windscreen.

But the subject of havingness is essentially the subject of willingness to confront or willingness to be something that you're willing to have confront.

In essence, then, people must become possessible to you if you're going to handle and talk to groups. It must be possible for you to possess people.

Now, let me assure you that the race at large runs on the idea of no invasion of privacy. Got that clearly? This is a well- established fact — individuation. People feel they must individuate. The whole idea of individuation, or falling away from the race at large, is the story of disenfranchisement from the game. As one is kicked out of the game he believes that he had better individuate just a little further, he had better be just a little bit different. A fellow who can play a game doesn't have to be different.

Listen to some of our modern, very popular comics, and listen to them say the same thing over and over again. It's quite fascinating. It'd be a great loss, for instance, with any of these boys if they lost a couple of their pat tricks. You've seen these many, many times, yet you laugh at them. It's the familiarity of them, it is the ARC, the repetition contained in them which makes them acceptable.

So do you have to be new and different and come on the stage with fifteen lions — fifteen? No, you don't even have to have anything to say. It's the most fabulous thing you ever heard of.

One time, many years ago, I was doing some high-school theatricals, and we had a whole scene for which there was no fill, and we all of a sudden had a blank spot on the program, you see. The characters that were supposed to go through that particular skit just hadn't appeared. They'd evidently backed out at the last moment. I went on the stage and sat down and ate a piece of pie and a sandwich.

Of course, I admit there was novelty in this since there was no piece of pie and no sandwich. But I didn't say a word for twelve minutes. And that's an awful long time to be on a stage doing nothing and saying nothing, except eat this piece of pie. I did not even eat it spectacularly! I just ate it — and the audience sat there and watched me eat this piece of pie and then eat this sandwich, and rolled in the aisles.

There was only one original bit in it. When I was through with the pie plate I did throw it — non-extant — offscene and have somebody back there drop a couple of dishpans. But otherwise, I didn't look at the audience, talk to them or apparently communicate with them. There is evidently a tremendous willingness, then, on the part of an audience to communicate. This is what that proved to me. I just kind of knew that I'd get away with it. I was cocky in those days.

But there are many instances of this kind. You really don't have to have much to say or to be terribly original. The one thing which you must not be, however, is nervous. Above all things, you must belong there as much as they belong there. At least that much. When you start to exceed this, you start to command the audience. You see that? You belong there more, a little bit more, than they belong there. This is delivered by your certainty and your appearance. You are simply there and you look like you're there. And you look like you're there because you know you should be there. Don't you see? It's very esoteric.

Now, Scientology at this time is doing very well across the world. If it were doing just a little bit better, there would be things not happening which are happening at this moment on the major scene of nations. Of that, I assure you. We do have the ear of more people than you would suspect. There are more people listening. Today, Scientology is accepted in a state of rather frigid wariness by the professions which it is supplanting. They are no longer scoffing at it. They get down to the point of saying "Oh, Hubbard died yesterday," or "The whole subject is uh… uh… Where did you hear about it?" We have conducted a personal survey of such people; we know.

Also, it's quite amazing how many people you run into who have vaguely heard of it. Now, if you run into one in a hundred on the face of earth, this is quite amazing, quite amazing. Because we're not doing the standard American Medical Association advertising campaign. We're not doing any of these things.

In other words, we're doing, in a small way, all right. But one of these days, one of these days, somebody about your shape and size as an individual is going to have to stand up and talk, because they won't let you sit there. You got the idea?

A military organization, which at this moment is engaged in a very large and bloody war, has just interrupted its comm lines to me, as far as I am concerned. But before this unfortunate incident occurred, I was engaged in writing their manual on mental health.

You don't think we get around? It's quite fascinating. Wherever you look, we are more capable of penetrating and we are doing a better job of penetrating than before.

You see, we have the know-how. We do have the know-how. Even if you, in your experience and so forth, were only able to bring calmness or sobriety to one alcoholic in the case of three or four hours of processing — if that was all you could do, you see, by running a little bit of 8-C, just make him feel better — you're still doing more than anyone else has ever done in the field of the mind.

But the other day, over at the HGC, we raised somebody's IQ, I think, forty-four points. Forty-four points! It's not possible. We did it. We do it rather usually.

And what is more promising: with indoctrination into good auditing procedure, and with a better understanding of techniques, and better codifications to deliver an understanding to auditors, and with their better use of them with better procedure, we are getting better and better and better results. And somewhere along the line, we'll have to quit or we will become far, far too popular.

You can't sit and know all we know forever. You see, you just can't do it. It isn't true that people will try to shoot you down. Only the weaker-minded will, and they're always bad shots.

No, one of these days — one of these days, let's face it — you're going to have to face it.

I was scared a few weeks ago. I had a piece of paper put in front of me that moved me back about an inch in the chair. You know, thud! You know — quickly recovering my aplomb and saying, "Oh, yes, yes. Carry on," and all that sort of thing, and — rrrrrrrrr!

A discussion was taking place of what we would use for training quarters in a certain country for 250 thousand men. And the size hadn't come home to me at all until a choice of bases was under discussion. And they had a spare infantry-training school which had been closed down since the war. And it turned out that it wasn't big enough for the task we were going to have to accomplish in about three years. A whole infantry-training school isn't big enough to handle a quarter of a million men, who would only be run through the school, you see, at a few at a time.

But, let's take 250 thousand men and divide it by thirty-six. Can you do that? A third of a quarter of a million. How many men is it? How many people is that? How long you going to train them so as to resist brainwashing, be able to handle enemy propaganda, be able to withstand the rigors of modern war? How long? Well, I wouldn't attempt it in under three or four months. How many people is that over a period?

Well, the training school would have had to have been enlarged because it wasn't big enough to hold the number of people which would have had to have been trained at one time. And I had no more chance of laying my hands on enough Instructors to run that school than a man in the moon, even though I'd reached out for every auditor in the world today. And that's only a quarter of a million men. You don't train thousands of people at a time without personal contact.

If anybody has a long memory, do you remember Los Angeles? Now, how many people was that? How many people was that? And the tremendous amount of randomity, of course, might have been occurring from lack of know-how in terms of organization, but it was an awful lot of randomity. There was a lot of motion there which wasn't under good control at all. We still learned something.

But are we going to do a first-class, Los Angeles sort of a job on a project of training 250 thousand men? No, then it takes everybody everywhere to pitch in on that job. Fantastic as it may seem, it would take everybody everywhere. And of course, a lot of people can't come. They've got their sectors nailed down. So we just have to multiply everybody by four, you see, that is there. And we say, "You're four people today. This is your class, that five hundred people over there that are milling in a small circle."

Now, we're not embarking on that tomorrow. We're not embarking on such projects immediately in all directions. But the time to learn to confront groups is now. The time to train groups is now, because the very best you could do is simply stand up and train men to train groups, which men know nothing about your subject at all.

It makes a sad look when you look it over. The thoroughness of the training would be very un-thorough indeed, under present circumstances. The handling of groups, though — the handling of groups definitely includes the handling of a large group of students under lecture. Don't think that you wouldn't have to handle them just like you would an audience of any kind. They won't learn a thing unless you do.

All right. Now, completely aside from some large project which is now put up on the shelf because the army involved is shooting, you have a sphere of activity yourself in which you can talk. Your ability to talk is one thing. Your ability to confront a group is another. And under that heading is your ability to handle and control them. And here's the funny thing: If you can handle and control them, the amount of effort you have to put into the talk is very slight indeed. Strain comes on instruction only when you can't handle and control the people to whom you're talking.

Now, the odd part of it is, an audience is perfectly willing to be handled and controlled. Very willing; tremendous willingness. All you have to do is run good 8-C on them, and they think this is gorgeous. You just talk to them with good 8-C. Talk to them complicatedly enough, too. But you talk with good 8-C. You don't say, "Now we'll take up the problem of all of these airplanes. Now, how many of you boys have studied your lessons about submarines? Well now, that's very, very good. By the way, at 2:15 we all stand to for baggage inspection." This isn't running good 8-C on a group and they don't like it.

So, handling, controlling a group has a great deal to do with the ARC you can maintain with a group. And every Scientologist should, on his own initiative, put himself into a better havingness in terms of audience. Don't start crossing the first stage-fright period with your first real audience. You get the idea? Cross it first — either on the gradient scale of simply going out and talking to the Boy Scouts Troop 10 or remedying it in an auditing session. Any way you care to go about it, you actually should practice up a little bit on being able to handle and control a group of people. It would do you worlds of good. Make you feel good; make you feel real good.

Now, actually, in handling groups and so forth, I, of course, myself, am a little shy. I like to be amongst friends. I do. I like to be amongst friends. I do not like to talk to hostile groups. I really do not.

And I'm mean, too, when I do. You never saw such a change in a man in your life as when I have to talk to a hostile group. I immediately go off onto an entirely different line of stagecraft. It's tough! It's tough! They're there challengingly. They are willing to listen, but they already have been told how bad it is. They're sure you're not going to say anything interesting. But they're going to suffer through it somehow so that they can get on with the dessert or something. I get mean about that time, and I do bad things. I seldom give bad reports on myself, but that is actually an instance when I do.

I hypnotized, one time, the staff of St. Elizabeth's. Told them they'd heard a good speech and left the stage. They all came around afterwards saying, "What a good speech that was you gave!" That was a mean thing to do. That was certainly backing out of it, wasn't it? But it was in the early career of Dianetics and I felt very much like backing out of it. I was preceded by someone who told all of them how bad it was over "Ron-ward."

They might afterwards have suspected my knowledge of the mind, but certainly not my knowledge of hypnotism. It's very easy to hypnotize groups.

Another time, I talked to a group of people that couldn't have cared less about hearing anyone. But it was on their schedule that there was twenty minutes going to be devoted to a speaker, and at the last moment they hadn't been able to find any, so they got me. This is the sort of a position, you see, which is optimum — optimum. Well, I found out that in view of the fact that they couldn't care less, I might as well make them care more, and I became a bad boy at once and started insulting them. It's all I could do. I at least got their attention.

I was rather amazed afterwards — I was rather amazed afterwards… Actually I was rather insulting. I talked about their particular activities and not about mine at all. Never said a word about my activities, but said tremendously about theirs. And they hadn't been very nice to me when I had come in, you see, and I taught them better. I went down the list of their faults, one after the other, castigated them rather roundly, sarcastically and impudently. And afterwards, two of them came around and congratulated me for having given the only sincere speech they had ever heard there.

I suppose that one has a havingness on hostile groups as far as that's concerned. But the truth be told, I've never had any group be hostile long. Their hostility rather has a tendency to blow up to the degree that you find them on the Tone Scale. And you talk to them on their position of the Tone Scale and they will very quickly realize that you are real.

Now, this isn't necessarily a trick. One simply falls into it. He inspects the situation and he talks. So actually there is no such thing as a bad audience — unless, of course, it is a group that wants to hang you. But of course, they are not technically an audience. The type of entertainment they want doesn't include you alive. So even then there's a saving grace. But there is no really bad audience.

A man should be able to control almost any kind of an audience. Very few petitioners ever believe that the United States government could be an audience. But there was a chap one time who wrote… Did you ever read the story of The Man Without a Country? All about Philip Nolan? Well, the author of that, one time, wrote a petition for the Customs House — if I remember rightly — on raising pay or doing something of the sort. And he wrote it so well and it was so beautifully expressed, and it was so seldom anything like that had ever been sent to the government at large, that they raised everybody's pay. Even the government could be an audience. Now, that's a fantastic thing. In other words, there is no limit whatsoever to the direction you can appeal or to the level you can appeal.

People used to criticize George Wichelow over in London — rather broke his morale down — for going out in Hyde Park and lecturing alongside of the communists and lecturing elsewhere. But the funny part of it was, he has his regular group. He's over in Jersey now, and he's not lecturing in Hyde Park anymore — people miss him. There are an awful lot of people drifted by there. As a matter of fact, we were mentioned in two or three leading newspapers, along with other groups that were seen lecturing in Hyde Park.

But the point is that even this level of audience and that type of talking was effective. It doesn't matter what kind of an audience you get together. It doesn't matter particularly how big they are or how small they are. It really doesn't matter how interesting you are or uninteresting you are. The point of the matter is, all you have to do is say something to them. And just do this, and you find out you get along splendidly. But you find out that by not doing it you are apt to someday find yourself confronting an audience, not having had any havingness on audiences for a long time, with the result: stage fright, tongue- tiedness, and so on. I'm not backing up a horrible fate for you, but I am telling you for true that you should talk.

Now, the whole world is trying to tell you as an individual that you should never talk. There are two crimes in this universe. One is thereness and the other is communicatingness. Both are attempted to be punished. People attempt to punish both of these things. Thereness and communicatingness. The only two things that you can do wrong are to communicate and to be there. All crimes fall into that category. The law uniformly makes you prove that you weren't there. If you can prove you weren't there, why, they immediately exonerate you. That's thereness.

Now, we take the whole subject of communicatingness. I don't care whether you did it by words or by bullets or with a knife or something, the only thing anybody ever objects to is communicatinguess apparently. This is the way the world runs, apparently.

Two crimes: thereness and communicatingness. There are only two ways for a man to get well: thereness and communicatingness.

Now, you, by succumbing to the law against being there and the law against communicating, are aiding and abetting your own demise. You are being a partner to the crime of your own extinction. So, if you can be discouraged in doing either of these two things, you can be made ill. That's for sure. Only those things to which you cannot or dare not communicate can affect you. Fantastic, but true.

Now, if you yourself feel that you cannot communicate to groups and cannot hold them, you will become the victim of groups. And because life is a third-dynamic activity — not a first-dynamic activity — part of living consists of confronting groups. And when you cut and ran, or let the shakes deter you from shaking, you of course are being a partner to your own demise.

So then, it actually doesn't come down to a basis of you should do this for dear old Scientology, see. It actually comes down to a basis you should do it because in the past I am sure that you have done an audience or two in. I'm sure you have. Otherwise you wouldn't be shy of them today, if you are. Now, of course, many of you are not at all audience shy, and that is very fine. That's very fine. You should practice, however, once in a while.

One of the most interesting activities in which a person can engage is the instruction of his fellow man, in making his life a bit better and in making the world a better place in which to live. In fact, I would go so far as to say I don't know of any other activity. But that's just my stupidity. I have had some past acquaintances who tell me that destroying the whole world from pole to pole is an interesting activity, too. They have told me this.

Well, the total win for destroying the world from pole to pole will consist of not needing a fire in the future with which to fry eggs on earth. You won't need a fire to fry eggs on earth after the boys have got it all neatly dusted off, but you won't have any eggs, either! So these blessings are not always blessings.

It does seem to me that making the world a better place in which to live, maintaining people's interest in existence, keeping the game going, helping your fellow man — these things seem to be very worthwhile activities, and I know as long as I engage in them and keep my attention off of my more wicked impulses, I feel fine.

So that's really the only therapy I have indulged in recently. And whereas I'm not in awfully good condition, you know — I never am — I nevertheless feel more satisfied than many of the preclears I've had recently.

Thank you.

Thank you.