Want to talk to you now about a technique which is highly experimental — merely want to discuss it with you.

Anytime you can render something more simple, of course, you have advanced Scientology and Dianetics considerably — anytime that you can make something more simple.

Well, you should understand that there is a frailty in any communication line which depends entirely upon words. Any technique which depends entirely upon words is where?

Male voice: Symbols.

Symbols. Which is where?

Male voice: It's on the Mystery .. .

Mystery to Know Scale. And that is below Effort. Right? So we have ourselves a little problem, in view of the fact that two-way communication is being carried on rather uniformly in amongst men, and so on, on a two-way communication line.

Now, I want to talk to you about words, and drive this home a little bit. Why do you suppose there are as many words as there are? Now, a race is as complicated as it has language. A word is an identification. A symbol has mass, meaning and mobility, doesn't it? Mm-hm, that's the definition of a symbol. What is a symbol? A symbol is something that has mass, meaning and mobility.

There is also something else about a symbol. It depends upon an orientation point. It has a dependency upon an orientation point. For instance, the words grouped together in a book depend upon the author of that book, don't they? They were put there by somebody else. So every time you have a symbol you have something by somebody else, don't you? It's real cute — by somebody else.

Now, actually, you can stretch the whole idea of symbol to mean form. Any form, you could say, is a symbol. Now, actually, that is not a good semantic definition of the word symbol. A form is a form, it is the shape of a mass. And a symbol is something which stands for an actuality. But the symbol itself, as people go down Tone Scale, becomes an actuality. It's not any longer something which stands for, it is the thing. The symbol is the thing. And wherever we look in the field of symbols, we find there is no symbol without mass, meaning and mobility.

And we find an orientation point does not necessarily have mass, meaning or mobility. The more thoroughly a thing is an orientation point, the less mass it has, the less meaning, the less mobility. Follow me?

This whole subject of mass, meaning and mobility you saw the other day in a Group Processing session, and I gave some people a technique. We take the definition of a symbol and we simply blow this up to the process of Conceiving a Static. Now, naturally, a static is something that has no mass, no meaning and no mobility. Right? Can have any of these things, but it doesn't necessarily have any of these things.

All right. We'd ask the person to look around and find some things that had no mass, and some things that had no meaning, and some things that had no mobility. And we would simply keep them at this.

Look around for some no-mass, no-meaning, no-mobility, no-mass, no-meaning, no-mobility, no-mass, no-meaning, no-mobility, and we would finally plow them out, even of having studied general semantics!

And we might even plow them out — only this is more doubtful — of having studied psychology. No mass, no meaning, no mobility. Quite a curious process, but nevertheless a process which has considerable significance to it, doesn't it? Hm?

Well now, processes without words would be quite valuable. A process which does not utilize words would be quite valuable, mostly because you're as far from static as there are words.

Let's take the Chinese language, for instance, and discover the Chinese language does not even repeat its symbols. It doesn't even repeat its symbols. It is the most complicated language you ever saw in your life in written form or in spoken form. The Chinese are a very complicated people. And they're a long ways from a static — awfully long ways. They are in superstition, other-determinism, other-cause — they're having a rough time.

They're good people, you understand. There's nothing wrong with this. But they have this terrifically complicated language. They have something like three hundred thousand separate characters, is their written language. Boy, it'd take a real scholar to know three hundred thousand written characters.

Now, their written characters are stable for all of China. And their spoken characters are stable for the village. Here you have an interesting picture.

But let's take the English language, and let's say the English language has 250 thousand words in it. That's 250 thousand complexities, 250 thou-sand things which have departed from a static. Wheel That's about how many words there are in the English language, roughly — were a few years ago. I suppose it's declined now.

The average college student has a vocabulary of four hundred words. That's the speaking vocabulary which he uses. This does not include his recognition vocabulary. In other words, he sees a word, he doesn't know the word, really, but he has some recognition of what it means, rightly or wrongly. It's about four hundred. That's the language which he uses around to describe various things.

Nevertheless, this probably does not include articles. I mean, it doesn't include the names of objects. Otherwise his recognition would go out of sight. You know, I mean, there would be lots more words. But this is just the working words of the language — about four hundred.

The Igoroti, whose language I memorized one night and was speaking it the next morning, has a vocabulary of three hundred words, including objects. Now, they're on an inversion of an inversion of an inversion. Their language, from great complexity, has drawn back into a great simplicity. And their language is full of synonyms, tremendous synonyms. One word will mean dozens and dozens of things. This is a result of not-communication, you see.

Or this could also be a very high level manifestation, you see. They could have a sort of a vocabulary which had a high-level line which depended on their ability to understand each other without words. See, there could be a high-level manifestation on this.

Well, words themselves are each one a complexity. This is nothing to be afraid of. Actually, you should be able to handle a three hundred thousand word vocabulary. You should be able to handle that. You should be able to handle a vocabulary of eight or nine billion words, as far as that's concerned. There is no ceiling on this.

Because a static can be as complicated as it wants to be, as long as it isn't being complicated obsessively. It becomes obsessive on the Mystery to Know Scale only at those times when it considers that there is otherness about all this.

Now, it knows eight billion words or eight billion forms or something like this, all of which are absorbed by the individual as the truth, nothing but the truth, and so on, and he has accepted them on an obsessive basis, deadly serious; they're an other-determined array of facts, and he has not taken any of these to himself, you see. He's a stranger; he's an alien to all these tremendous facts and data, and as such, he has never pulled them in and used them. He doesn't own them, really. They're just something he runs off because other people do it, and he's not even doing that on a self-determined basis. He just knows these things, you see.

No determinism, really, entering in here at all. And at that time you would find this fellow being very, very crude in his ability to reason. Only it might sound very smart to somebody. If you want to see the same type of reasoning, open up some professor's article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

"Whereas Professor Jinkpot says that so-and-so, this was contested by Professor Wumphbulla, and whereas in which we do not believe that this is the case, however, in certain isolated instances it has been demonstrated that …" Notice this terrific caution, caution, caution, caution. There's no certainty. This boy doesn't have any certainty. He's in the same condition. He tells you some condition is very uncertain and hasn't been proven. And yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, and he goes off on this conservative line.

You all of a sudden find that he's spending all of his time telling you whether or not this thing has or has not been proven. He is not discussing the subject.

See, he's not discussing the cliff dwellings or something that he saw at all. He's discussing what so-and-so wrote about them and whether or not so-and-so did this or that about them, and he's way, way, way off on these cliff dwellings. It doesn't occur to him that he could probably walk up there and make more discoveries than he's ever read about, just in looking it over and getting an estimate of the situation.

People make books out of books, but practically no writers ever write about life. They write about the life other writers have written about. And there are practically no professors anyplace who have ever taught anything on the subject of life, except from textbooks by people who compile the text-books by reading people who compile the textbooks, by reading people who compile the textbooks… .

By the way, our American stellar light in literature, Washington Irving, was not bogged down in this particular circle. Washington Irving was a very, very brilliant writer. It was Charles Brockden Brown who introduced American literature to Europe back before Washington Irving. And Europe woke up to the fact that somebody over in America could write. That was in the end of the eighteenth century, and we had Washington Irving, however, as the first essayist, and so forth, that Europe ever paid any attention to. And this fellow is well worth paying attention to even today. He writes a much better style than any modern writer. It's much clearer and facile.

But he could look. And he established many a tradition, not simply in America, but in Europe. Because he wrote what he saw. And he wrote what he thought. And he didn't much care who else did.

And we find no less a figure than Dickens taking over the rather covert, cunning style, and so forth, of Washington Irving. He definitely influenced the field of European letters; very definitely.

But this man wrote about what he saw. He went down to Spain and he went up to Granada, and he looked around in Granada and he thought, "Oh, boy, there were some people around here who sure did an awful lot of building." And he listened to some of the old gypsies and things like that around here, and compiled some of the legends about it, right straight out of the country. Those are the accepted legends of Spain today. They were writ-ten by an American, Washington Irving.

What got me off on this subject more than anything else is he wrote this long essay about people making books out of books, from people who had made books out of books. And it's a very, very curious little book of essays. It's very sarcastic, but it's a direct observation of existence.

What was the essential difference, then, between such a man, such a writer as Washington Irving … Was it his talent? His great talent? Was it his … The kind of breakfast cereal — as TV might have you believe today — that he ate when he was young? Was it the fact that he was new and untried in the brand-new country, and therefore got his concepts of being new?

We could probably write a thousand books of speculation on this subject. But nothing would beat, would it, talking with Washington Irving or, second best, simply reading what Washington Irving said. Hm? That you could do with great ease — not reading a commentary on Washington Irving, but simply reading Washington Irving, and being very alert to the fact that this fellow was really looking.

All right. The reason we're stressing this so hard — an auditor all too often is taking a fifth- or sixth-stage or rate look at a case. All too often. And any time he does, he's going to fail.

Now, thee and me, we're in agreement simply because it was auditors using very many processes and turning up some good results and some bad results, who, in turning up excellent results on such things as Opening Procedure of 8-C consistently, auditor to auditor and auditor, finally got this up into the bracket where this was a hell of a technique. Well, it's still a hell of a technique — you know, a terrific technique. This is a widespread agreement on the thing. Well, so we do know certain technical techniques, and so forth, which work on these various cases.

But what I mean by fifth- and sixth-rate looking is, Mama tells you all about this thirty-year-old son you're going to process, see, and alerts you to certain conditions which exist there. What's the matter with you, that you're not able to see them? You should be able to see whether or not he's in communication or out of communication. You should be able to see where this case goes. Don't be surprised occasionally to find somebody way higher toned than Mama.

But the textbook case — the textbook case of psychology — is the worst sin in the world. See, I mean, because it's so far off any beaten track of truth, it has added so many complexities, it's added so many systems, that nobody in that field ever looks at a human being — to such a degree that today they don't practice on them.

The public out here has a word they use: "I'll use psychology on them." They think, "I'll use some mind operation on them." The field of psychology doesn't teach the operation of the mind anymore. It hasn't anything much to do with it. I don't know quite what they teach, but they've gone way off to the side somewhere, and they're dabbling around with something or other, and experiments. It's incredible. They don't study this material to apply it, or anything of the sort. This has a different goal than Dianetics and Scientology.

All right. But you take this fifth, sixth, eighth look at the preclear, and you're just that much bad off, you see, as far as the preclear is concerned.

If you were to take a diagnosis written by Dr. Swillbilly — you were to take this long diagnosis — and then you were to process off of this diagnosis, you see, and never once process your preclear, you can't very well expect him to get well. He doesn't get well. That is the end of that, you see. He just doesn't get well.

Curious thing. You take this long diagnosis over here. Well, the only thing you could do is you'd get as close to static as possible, you see. And the closest you could get, as far as the preclear is to static, would be look at him and observe him in action and then process him with as little significance as possible. And you would be processing up close to static, wouldn't you? Hm? You'd at least be in the lookingness band. See, you'd be way upscale.

But if you sat there and had a long confabulation with this preclear, and you took his words, you see, as highly meaningful, and so on . . . You could do this, you see. I mean, we do know the meaningfulness of words in Dianetics, you know. But if we took all that and figured out from all that something else, you see, and so on, we're actually processing a complexity, aren't we? So therefore we're validating a complexity, aren't we?

The more words you go into and the more complications you go into, the more you are validating a departure from static. And the more you're developing and validating a departure from static, the less likelihood you will have in exteriorizing this preclear.

Let's never overlook the fact that we're trying to bang him out of his head. Well then, there's some happy medium where you can still communicate with him. There's some happy point there where you can still communicate with this fellow, and yet you aren't giving validation to a tremendous amount of complexities.

Now, a case I mentioned to you — typical of this case is the fact that he has a number of chronic somatics. They are all different; they are all complicated. And various auditors lately have refused to process them (of course), and this has made him very upset.

Well, let's process some of these chronic somatics and what would we discover? We'd find out this individual was getting interesting by having chronic somatics, wouldn't we? We would be processing, though, a level of complexity that we're not justified in processing. We should never process a level of complexity when we can reach a level of simplicity.

Now, supposing we just shot it all out through the roof and we didn't even go into a two-way communication? As we've long known, two-way communication begins in mimicry. Supposing we didn't have a symbol two-way communication. Supposing we started below the level of symbols. You certainly could reach a rough-off case, but at the same time you would be, to a very marked degree, validating a static, wouldn't you? Hm? You would have taken him off the symbol band — somewhere, anywhere.

Now, if you could do this with fair rapidity and add some other factors of communication to it, then this would be a tremendously fascinating process, wouldn't it? Well, a process came through the other day which is actually a mimicry process, and a two-way communication process, which probably could have great workability on somebody who was a bit potty, you know?

And really, as a technique, it probably would not be rock-bottom. We have one that goes below this, which is simply "Do whatever the preclear did." Matter of fact, I was running a preclear the other day and I did this, just overtly. I couldn't get into communication, so every time the preclear would cross his legs, I'd cross my legs; and every time the preclear would scratch his head, I'd scratch my head. And the first thing you know, the — this pre-clear, by the way, is not really bad off — for the first time I ever heard it, this preclear laughed; really laughed. You know, real laughter. Terrific relief on this, just because I was doing this. And speeded it up, and got more and more interested in it, and so on, and was quite alert as a result.

That's a lower technique than the one I'm going to give you right now. But this technique I'm going to give you right now is for a lower-level case than could be reached immediately by words — or for a much higher-level case. It's quite an interesting technique; it's an experimental technique, and I'm going to ask you boys to experiment with it. Okay? I'm going to ask you to process this on each other, and let's find out what happens. I'll tell you how to do this technique.

This paper here, in front of me here, says, "Note: throughout the processes below, the auditor doesn't say a word. He doesn't answer possible questions, he doesn't explain in words what he wants. Under all circumstances he makes like the tar baby and 'don't say nothin'.' Use any gestures necessary." I'll read that again. "Throughout the processes below, the auditor doesn't say a word. He doesn't answer possible questions, he doesn't explain in words what he wants. Under all circumstances he makes like the tar baby and 'don't say nothin'.' Uses any gestures necessary." He uses any gestures necessary to communicate.

Now, here's a very solid communication. You know that a young man walking around with birth in restimulation, by the way, is simply holding it up as an accusation to Mother which he dare not put into words. Any facsimile which is taking physical form is an accusation, or something of the sort, or a demonstration. It's an attempted communication, in mass. So this is very sound.

"Step 1-A. Auditor stands in front of preclear, holding out a small object to him until the preclear takes it from his hand. As soon as the preclear takes the object, A holds out hand, palm up, then pc places object in his palm. A immediately then offers it to the pc again." Now, what happens here? The auditor stands in front of the preclear. That's the auditor standing, preclear standing, vis-a-vis. Now, he has a small object. We don't care what this small object is. As this technique runs on, we discover that it better be more or less an indestructible object. And we take this object, and we pass it back and forth.

Now, the auditor is the first one that holds the object, and he extends it to the preclear. And he keeps extending it to the preclear — without touching the preclear, of course — until the preclear takes the object.

Now, the auditor holds out hand, palm up, asking for the object again, you see. He's asking for this object, and he keeps on doing this until he gets the object back. As soon as he gets it back, he turns around and hands it to the preclear again.

As soon as the preclear takes it, the auditor gets the object back again. Right? So here we go. Back and forth, back and forth. Now, this is continued till the pc is exchanging the object back and forth with the auditor without a comm lag. You see what is the comm lag there? All comm lag is notunderstandingness. So this is a very visible one.

"Now, the object should be offered to the pc from a variety of positions, once he has gotten the idea: from down near the floor, off to either side, over the pc's head. And likewise, the palm should be held in a variety of positions for the return of the object. Both hands may be used. And get the pc doing it really fast." And you run it until you're doing it really fast, see.

Now, they're vis-a-vis, and he hands the preclear the object. The preclear finally takes the object. Then the auditor asks for it back till we've got it back and forth. The auditor takes the object and hands it to the preclear down here, you see, and the preclear takes it, and the auditor asks for it back over here, till they've got a variety of positions worked out, and that is Step 1-A.

"Step 1-B. When Step 1-A is going swiftly and easily, the auditor introduces a switch. After the preclear has just accepted the article, the auditor, instead of extending his palm for its return, places his hands behind his back briefly, then conveys by gestures that the preclear is to offer the object to him.

"When the preclear does so, the auditor takes the object from his hands, but does not return it until the preclear holds out his own hand, palm up, to receive it. This exchange is continued until the preclear is offering and accepting the object from as wide a variety of positions as the auditor used, and all other comm lags are flat." In other words, at first there the preclear was not holding out his hand for the object, you see. And you've worked him up into a point of where the preclear would hold out his hand for the object, and so on. You've brought him up to a better duplication, in other words.

Now we got into Step 2. Step 2: "The auditor, having just accepted the object, makes a gesture that this part is over, then deliberately puts the object down where the preclear can see it, stands back, and indicates the pre-clear is to pick it up."

"When the preclear picks it up, the auditor gestures that he is to put it down again anywhere he likes in the room. The instant the preclear does so, the auditor snatches up the object and puts it someplace else. The preclear then picks it up and puts it down someplace else. You keep this up until the auditor and the pc are racing around the room, seizing the object as soon as the other's fingers have let go of it. And the object isn't necessarily placed in a different spot each time. It may be picked up and put down again in the same place, but it must be handled each time. All sorts of tacit rules and understandings will probably develop while this is being run." Now, of course, that's the second step. It's a very simple step. First step is we just compel the preclear to accept back and forth, and we've got this thing going. And finally we get it going back and forth in a variety of positions.

The second part of that is to make the preclear hold his hand out. See, make him do what the auditor was doing in the first place. And then the auditor, on this second one, who just accepted the object, makes a gesture that this part is over, see — it's all over now — then deliberately puts the object down where the preclear can see it. See, he puts it down here, then he stands back, and indicates the preclear should pick it up.

The second the preclear picks it up, the auditor points to him to put it down again. The second he puts it down, the auditor goes over and picks it up, and puts it someplace else. And then the preclear is expected to pick it up and put it down again, and pick it up, and put it down.

Every time the auditor picks it up, he puts it down again. Every time the preclear picks it up, he puts it down again and takes his hand off of it.

And so we have this rolling. What this process appears to do: "Rehabilitates sense of play, validates nonverbal ARC, short-circuits the verbal circuit and lets the pc position matter and energy in space and time. Gets the pc up to speed and murders 'there must be a reason for doingness,' and processes A and pc 50-50. Besides, it's fun." Now, let's take somebody like this auditor I was telling you about a little while ago that's done all this auditing but can't give you a direct question, hm? Now, we could ask him something that is a noncircuit response, couldn't we? And we could flatten that communication lag until we had him talking. Isn't that right? And this would be successful.

I wonder if, in this case, it might not be faster to run such a process as the one I've just read to you. Be faster, undoubtedly. Both of them, to a large degree, go toward the same goal, don't they? They both go more or less toward the same goal, hm?

Okay. Now, there is much to be said in favor of words. Words are a rather fabulous magic phenomena. The truth of the matter is, you couldn't possibly hear a word and understand it unless you could understand.

And it is not the word which delivers the understanding. This is not what happens. What happens is something much less mysterious: you under-stand, I understand, so we understand. That's what happens.

A thetan coming up Tone Scale quite markedly, discovers himself in one of the more fascinating states. He can think something nonverbally. And he thinks in terms of an action, thinks in terms of a condition, something like that. And it'll communicate, and somebody in his immediate vicinity will get the same idea.

But remember something: When we think of this nonverbal communication, let's look at the fact that the Chinese have 300 thousand characters. And they're a very complicated race. And let's look at the fact that we have 250 thousand words in English. And let's look at the fact that young people, engaged innocently in what they humorously call "education," only use about four hundred words. Yet these young people have verve.

We'll see them fifteen or twenty years later all bogged down, you know, and they will have lots of words then. Let's not overlook the fact that new meaning is put into life by words. They add meaning to life.

And this is what bogs somebody when you say, "Think of it nonverbally." Think of it nonverbally. No! If you try to think of an abstract thought, which is something taught carefully in the form of words, you're going to think of it in words. Because that's what it is. It is a new, abstract thought. And it be-came a new, abstract thought, not because it was true and then a word was invented to recognize it, but because a word was invented to make it true. Now, let's see this real carefully.

Now, of course, the highest mechanical action there is, is forgetting and remembering, before it goes into abstracts. And from there on up it's all words. There isn't any further complication, further than words and forms add in.

Now, mechanics themselves are a sort of a solidified complexity. Now, a thetan can dream up such a thing as copper wire running through condensers. He can dream this up. He could make it come true, mock it up, do something like that. But remember that the solidity of this, its purpose and meaning, its composition, and so forth, are complexities which are additive complexities. They're very additive, and — that is to say, you start with a simplicity and you get more and more complex.

All right. Therefore, a piece of MEST is an awful lot more complicated than a word, isn't it? So which are top dog, abstracts or mechanics? The answer to that is neither one. Neither one. They're both invented forms, in-vented combinations and invented actions. They are not true simply because they are there. They did not necessarily exist before they were invented. And when you learn that about life, you've learned a great deal. The complexity was not present until it was invented.

Now, I have noticed in handling machinery that a fellow who is very, very good at handling machinery, a fellow who is excellent at it, seldom thinks in other terms than the handling of the machinery; and that a fellow who is carefully told how to handle the machinery comes a cropper with the machinery sooner or later.

People do not read books of directions. They prefer to look at the ma-chine and find out where this gadget leads and what that does, and they really don't figure they're doing much until they do this. Of course, the words can approximate the machinery. So therefore, if you studied the words and went and looked back at the machine and then found out what the machine would do, why, this is a perfectly workable combination.

But how about the fellow who is taught totally verbally on how to run a ship and he's never run one? Well, if he possessed that terrific quality of being able to pervade something and learn what it was all about, he could disregard his verbal instruction and simply run the ship. If he were very, very smart and he were still in the bracket of being able to do that, he could read about how to do it, and do it. See, there is no limitation here. See, he could do either one.

So directions become useful, and so does observation of the machinery itself become useful, if the fellow has the native capacity and capability of understanding either one.

But how about the guy who can't understand either one? He couldn't understand the machinery and he can't read the directions? Well, you got your standard mechanic, 1954.

All right. How about this fellow that we hand a musical instrument to and let him fool with it, and we don't show him anything about it, and let him fool with it, and the first thing you know he's playing with it in some fashion or another — how about this guy?

And how about the other guy? How about the other guy who gets an enormous amount of verbal instruction about this musical instrument, and then after he has this tremendous amount of verbal instruction about it, then he's permitted to fool with the instrument, and works it back and forth between verbal instruction, and so forth?

That's very lasser because you''re in the field of the aesthetics. If this person has a high aesthetic command of sound, natively and naturally, he will make this mechanical gadget intervene between him and his ability to make this sound. See, he'll let the gadget intervene and still make music. But it's a via, isn't it?

And as far as the verbal instruction is concerned, if an individual natively could . . . You know, I mean, "natively" he's high … close to static. That's the only thing I am saying. He's a relatively uncomplicated individual. He's a savage from the jungle who has been exteriorized since birth and has never been taught anything, and he's in good shape, and so on. And he takes a look at this, and he gets — out of the paucity of language which he has been able to handle there, why, he's given an absolute minimum of description about this thing. You know, he's given the fact that pooja ump wumpf, means "it makes music." You know? And he'll pick it up, and the first thing you know, he will be able to hack some sort of a tune out of it.

Well, his music isn't going to be very complicated, but it'll probably be very loud and artistic.

Now, I made a test with music, and I found something quite curious there in the field of aesthetics. Very curious. I found that a direct, steady rhythm was too close to a communication line to be tolerated by a psychotic. And it takes super-superadvanced, complicated, terrifically involved music to attract the attention of a psycho.

And in sanitariums you can go right on down the Tone Scale of music from circus music on down through Sibelius on down through Wagner, and so forth, and get into Mozart and Brahms, and Prokofiev, and — you know, way subzero, Prokofiev — and you find where a roomful of psychotics will alert. And when that music is terrifically complicated, when it fades out, when it becomes relatively meaningless, when its predictability is practically nonexistent, you will find the worst psychos love it. They will just listen to it by the hour. Oh, dear. Now, they can add all sorts of peculiarities and meanings, and so forth and so on, that they want to into this, but it's just too complicated.

This experiment was a done experiment. I think some musicians got the idea that there was something in music as a therapy, and they started to play Brahma and Beethoven, and junk in general to these psychos. And they found out they reacted on this highly complex basis. But there's another funny thing. They didn't play them any circus music, so I did. I read the experiment and decided we'd better try just a little bit further. So I played them some circus music.

I might as well have shot them! You know, I might as well have stood them up and drilled them with a buffalo rifle. It was just murder. They couldn't stand it. Terrifically predictable, loud, peppy, repetitive, rather simple. Of course, old Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey added, occasionally, some — put it into brass — some classical music, Wagner; and so forth. A lot of their music is out of that particular bracket.

But, when the music got a little more complicated and into this bracket of, you know, where Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey were playing some selection out of Wagner, you know, so on, these guys would ease down, you know. It was a vast relief. But then we would get it up again to where we had even-punch line — bang, bang, bang, bang — and it became very predictable, they became very upset. They just about went nuts. They were already nuts.

And I found out that something they really couldn't take was these things like children's songs. They found that was a little bit hard to take. And yet we are taught that the psychotic is immature, he's stuck in child-hood, he's never grown up, and that grown-up things are complicated and childish things … They can't take something that is simple and pretty. They could take something that was simple and stupid and lugubrious and unpredictable. See, but any time you could get these music themes all woven up into a tight ball, why, you were right on the ball with these boys.

Now, I've noticed in processing occasionally that an individual's taste in music — I've just noticed it occasionally; it probably usually does — his taste in music shifts in processing. It shifts upscale. And there are more broken classical records in the wake of Dianetics and Scientology.

Now, all of our teaching is actually in reverse to a static. The more we are taught, we feel, why, the more we'll learn, you know, and then the better off we will be. This doesn't happen to be the case.

If we are taught in the direction of learning how to control objects and situations in our vicinity, yeah, we'll get better off. There's no doubt about that.

One guy in particular that was very, very nervous about racing cars — I pushed him into my racing car one day. We were sitting down at the track, and he was giving me a long song and dance about racing drivers always got killed, and so forth. And so I said, "Drive it around the track." And he looked at me and he turned kind of pale, and I said, "Drive it around the track. What's the matter with you?" And he got under the wheel of the thing, very shakily, and of course it was a standard gearshift — you know, a standard British gearshift; he was a Britisher. And he shifted it into low as he did in a usual car and let the gas in a little bit. And, of course, this thing — built out of aluminum and tubular steel, and all souped up and supercharged and all the rest of it — immediately left that spot on which it was standing.

And he went around the track and he got her stopped at the pit. He was shaking so that his palms were dancing up and down off the steering wheel, see — actually dancing. He wasn't putting it on at all. His knees were going, and so forth. He couldn't control himself. He'd lost control of himself. Obviously he couldn't control a racing car, so naturally he'd lost control of his body. You see how the sequence of logic would go there.

All right. So he tried to get out of the car, and I said, "You're not finished yet. Take it around again. Only this time let's take it around in second gear." Well, so he went bucking and jumping around the track in second gear and came back to the pit. He wasn't shaking as badly. "Now," I says, "take her around in third gear" — four gears on those cars. And he did. And he came back and he thought maybe he might be able to take it around again. I finally got him to take it around the track at about fifty. And for a very, very tight-turning track, to somebody who's used to driving on a highway, or something like that, that's quite fast.

He came back, and he was no longer shaking. A very funny thing. I noticed the guy after that, and a certain speech impediment he had was gone. This individual had been around objects for years … See, he'd been around racing cars for years. They were just something that nobody in his right mind would ever drive. He oiled them up and, you know, he sold gasoline to them, and so forth. He was a contract salesman, was what he was — for the track.

And he changed to a very marked degree. Why? Not because he had entered a further field of complexity, you see. That isn't what changed him. It was the fact that he had been up against a complexity he couldn't control and had become able to control that complexity. You see? And so no longer was he being confronted continually by something which was out of control, as far as he was concerned.

Evidently, every time he watched a race, he watched a bunch of vehicles which were totally out of control. But more particularly, he knew he couldn't control them. When he learned better, by actual experience, he regained his confidence.

Now, a racing car is a pretty complicated affair. Actually, when you look over at its dash, you'll see that it runs on a tachometer, you will notice that its oil-pressure gauge is very prominent and you will notice that you can put air into its gas tank with a pump. And it does not look like the average car, nor does it handle like the average car, nor is it supposed to be as comfortable as the average car. You know, there's a big difference here — so that the guy could actually go on driving automobiles, well knowing there was a special kind of automobile that he couldn't touch. And it made him nervous about his driving of an automobile. "There's a breed of this article which I am in constant contact with which is uncontrollable by me." And being out at the track very often, of course, he knew they were uncontrollable, and so he himself had kind of sloughed off and become controllable.

Now, you in life constantly are up against the idea of learning something more complex. See, you feel that you should learn something much more complex than what you are doing. If this is not a familiar, useful item, it's simply a contest of wits, and to hell with it — you know, it isn't very important. If it's something you mean to do and something like that, that you'll be up against and so forth, it doesn't matter how complex it is. Learn how to do it. Learn how to control it and put it under control.

But in the general run of life — in the general run of life — going off and studying very complex things and leaving behind you simple things you do not know how to handle, presents you with an impossible future. Supposing you knew every note of Brahms all the way through, and couldn't play or read the music of Stephen Foster.

Well, you see that a guy who was into that kind of a situation would be an interesting character, wouldn't he? I can also tell you he wouldn't be able to play Brahms worth a nickel. Naturally, because Brahms is full of simple melodies which are complicated and wound up with other simple melodies.

All right. Supposing that impossible situation, you see, had happened. The fellow never could play "Home, Sweet Home" or "Old Dog Tray," you know, on a trumpet, and yet he could play this terrifically complicated, symphony-orchestra parts of Wagner or something.

I should think it would just be the noise which swallowed up the number of errors which he'd make, or the general confusion of the music, which would make it possible for him to get away with such a thing as this. But you see this as an impossible situation.

Well, it's no less impossible for you to go on through life studying physics and chemistry, and not knowing anything about yourself. If you cannot re-member and forget things at will, I can assure you that you have no business fooling around with a bunch of complicated factors.

Now, can you remember and forget where you put your hat at will? — you see, just bing, no difficulty.

Well, how about going on down the track, then, and getting very interested in the lost jewels of Lothair, which secret is buried in the inscriptions written in Tukamonga, which you have to study thirdhand as translated from Sanskrit. And you're going to wind up in the soup. Not only are you not going to find the lost jewels, you're going to lose your sanity in the bargain. You missed a step on the track there. Isn't that right? Wouldn't that be the case?

Well now, an individual, in common two-way communication with the physical universe and his fellows, who cannot arouse amusement, sadness and so forth at will in his fellows, certainly hasn't much business going on to much more complicated material, has he? For instance, if just in common two-way communication he didn't make people feel rather happy or sad or some other way, you know, commonly — if he didn't change people's attitudes rather at will — what business do you suppose he'd have writing stories? See, that's complicated. That's Brahms. You know, you've got to be able to run their emotions all over a Tone Scale.

And that is why there are no writers alive today who are writing. That is an awfully wide statement. You can point out to me immediately that there are many writers. There are many people putting words down on pieces of paper, and there are many people printing those words. But when was the last time you picked up a story and felt the top of your head lifting, and you felt the tears start from your eyes, and so forth, at the plight of the situation, and felt the longing and nostalgia of the lonely places, and the heart-throbs and agony of the heroine and hero — how long has it been since you read a story like that, huh?

You think it's just because you're getting old? No, it isn't because you're getting old. It's because guys can't write. Simple. The world of writers go on a parasitic basis on people who could write. We look back on down the track and we find out that individuals who looked at their immediate environment and could do things about it, in their immediate environment, and who also wrote, have furnished enough material and plots to last the next hundred years of hacks very beautifully. When I say hacks, that's a very unkind word. Many of these boys are quite able . . . hacks.

I was looking over this field the other day, and I said, "It's just too bad. It's just tough. They just about drained it dry, back down the track — just about. Somebody's going to have to find a lost city and dig up some books. Or into the environment will have to walk somebody who can observe the environment and write about it." One of these things, you know?

I mean, either somebody is going to have to observe the environmentand write about it … Well now, that isn't enough. Oh, I don't know, there'sseveral characters that do this. They observe the environment and they writeabout it. But that isn't enough. You have to, at the same time, have theability to change the emotional tone and responses of the people around you.You take some fellow that's got glasses four inches thick, and he's hob‑bling on down the street, and he's not looking at any human being, he nevermakes anybody laugh or cry. A little kid comes along, and it never occurs to him to make this kid happier or sadder, or it never occurs to him to actually go into communication with this kid just because the kid is there. And this guy is going to go home, and he is going to write himself a book. Ha! And that's modern literature: Books that are written by people who couldn't make a kid laugh or cry or be more alert or converse.

Now then, the whole business of life is the contest of an individual living around people and being in communication with these people, and in the physical universe and being in communication with these universes.

You could ask of any preclear, "Where did he miss the simple step?" Any preclear that's failing has missed a simple step someplace. He's way over here in complexity, like being on a desert island surrounded by the most complex, unchartable reefs in the world. He'll never get rescued, he feels.

Well, how did he get over there? He missed a bridge. He missed a simplicity. And the first simplicity he missed was a two-way communication with his fellows and with existence. That's the first simplicity he missed. The next simplicity he missed was unable to forget and remember at will. He missed being able to do that. See, he got into a jam where something obsessively got remembered, you know, and he couldn't suppress it, and he couldn't do any-thing about it, he couldn't handle it.

It became so horrible that he started knocking out his memory — you know, obsessive memory. Or he started obsessively forgetting everything and he couldn't get it back. Or he was surrounded with people who had their minds made up in that direction when doggone well, in order for him to go on living, they had to be made up in this other direction. His parents, for in-stance: They say, "Stop, Johnny. Sit down. Be quiet. Be still. You poor fellow, you're sick. To hell with you, you're well." And he gets caught in this one and he can't determine anything about their course of existence, you see? That in itself demonstrates to him that he can't handle this "forget and remember." So we've got two-way Straightwire. See? And we've got the direct communication with his own past: being able to forget and remember at will.

Now, the next one up along the line: When he slipped badly on those — actually, he's slipping on other things in a more complicated fashion — he is also slipping on being able to look at exact and precise spots in his immediate environment. And that's 8-C, isn't it?

Well, if he's unable to do that, believe me, he can't duplicate. He couldn't take two pieces of the environment, one after the other, back and forth, as a process of living or anything else. He goes from home to the office, and he goes from the office to the home, and he goes from the home to the office, and he goes from the office to the home, and all of a sudden his marriage is on the rocks. All of a sudden he's blowing his stack about it. He can't handle life. It's driving him nuts. He can't handle his work. He's nervously upset. Everything is happening to him. And it's all going to pot, but he can't seem to get a moment to sit there. And he just doesn't have enough time to do anything thoroughly, and boom! See?

What's the difference here? He's just doing this complicated step, and it's just more complications than he could possibly take. He can't make that shift.

So, we go on up the line and we find him out in … When a person is unable to duplicate, spot spots in the immediate environment on the walls and so forth, cannot forget and remember at will, and can't go into two-way communication with his fellows, we would say he is a lost soul or a professor — one or the other.

But you could look at your life or any preclear's life, and you could see the period staring you right in the face where you failed on one of these steps and therefore went over into a more complicated step. Life got much more complicated. You deserted a simplicity to go into a complexity. Well, for God sakes, don't do it in auditing. Just because you skipped these simplicities in life, let's not go over into complexities in auditing. Don't skip the simplicities.

The auditor who did the auditing the other day on this lady, of course, had somebody there who was not in a two-way communication, and didn't even have a grip on the fact that this person was not in two-way communication. He was trying to do this many processes on the preclear, you see, in-stead of this simple simplicity: "We want somebody here who can talk and communicate with people in the environment at will, and walk in the sun in general." And that's all we want in a preclear. He missed that. Well, don't you ever miss it. You can spot right along when a person did this, how he did it, how he went over into much more complex things.

MEST, by the way, could get back very easily into static — greatest of ease, get back into static — simply by finding the bridge by which it walked into being MEST, couldn't it? Well, that bridge is a series of simplicities and a gradient scale. It's there in that wall, this moment, because everybody has for-gotten the point of origin of the electrons, the protons, when and where they were created. If you can spot the when and where of creation, of anything, everything will either disappear or stay as long as you say it's going to stay, and no longer.

I want you to try this process out, just on a two-way communication basis, and you'll find out that many people are communicating with masses. They've even gone below communicating with words. They're communicating with masses.

Okay.