Yes?
Male voice: We've been running a null object for some time, start at, say, oh, four o'clock. Needle is — the tone is now up.
Right.
Male voice: It's gone up to two o'clock. The meter has been doing all sorts of things. Now you get this tone up; you ask him the question of apples — "Is there — mock up an apple in front of your body." The needle was slowly, slowly rising. It stops. Then he says, "Yes." The needle moves when he says yes. You see? But every time you tell him to mock it up, the needle will slow down and suddenly it'll — falls. Because it's slowly rising but when you ask him to mock it up it'll stop when he speaks.
Yeah. The needle, oddly enough, starts to obey the command, "Hold it still." As the preclear begins to hold things still you must not scant his ability to hold everything in the cockeyed universe still. And he does. And the oddity of this scale — keep it from going away, hold it still, make it more solid — is, one pursues from the next. They are a gradient scale. If a person cannot make things solid, you can make him hold things still and things become solid. See, if he can't hold things still, you have him keep them from going away, and he will eventually be able to hold things still.
And where I noticed this peculiarity — that when a person starts to get pretty good and they mock something up to keep it from going away, what happens is, simply, you get a freeze, and that it actually translates itself straight through to the needle.
Male voice: Is that a null point? Or do you look for something else?
No, no, that's a null point.
Male voice: That is a null point?
Oh yes. You see, your needle is rising. Your null — "null" means only "surge," or "to the left."
Male voice: Drop.
Falling — you don't want falling.
You cannot interrupt rising.
Male voice: Oh, I now see that. Would you say that again?
You cannot interrupt rising: A fellow's tone just gets higher and higher and higher and higher and higher, and you get a gradual ascension in tone. But what you don't want are these sudden losses which directly represents unwilling and unknowing association.
Male voice: I've been working on — I've been working on "porkpies" since yesterday.
Yeah.
Male voice: But in the keeping of them from going away, I've got through to holding them still. I've discussed this with her with that — that in keeping them from going away and held still — and in fact they were getting more solid. And we did note this phenomenon. The needle would not stop. It was perfectly still from the time she said, "Mock up a porkpie" to the time she said "Did you?" "Okay." It didn't stop, it was rising. Whenever I was doing it, it stopped.
That's not a needle phenomenon. That's a tone phenomenon.
Male voice: Well, we've been looking for the null in all this, you see?
Mm-hm. Well, the null is simply: Do you get a reaction on the object? Which means reaction — does mean reaction. It means a drop. Got that? We have not lost the reactive mind, you know? See, the reactive mind is still there. It means this object just took a chunk off the reactive mind. You got the idea? This object just took a chunk off the reactive mind. Well, every time it hits the reactive mind, it drops. Evidently it moves or reactivates a body of resistance, which makes the needle behave in that fashion.
Yes?
Male voice: Would you say something about the relative advantages and disadvantages of the auditor naming the objects and looking for a null object, or asking a preclear what can he mock up . . . ?
It's a fifty-fifty proposition. There's nothing wrong with the auditor suggesting objects. But the auditor should start suggesting objects when he is getting a reaction on those the preclear suggests.
That's kind of the general rule on it.
Well, the preclear says, "Porkpies." And you don't get any reaction; you're all set, see?
He says, "Porkpies." You get a reaction.
You say, "Can you think of something else?"
And he says, "Cats." And you get a reaction.
"Can you think of something else?"
And by that time he's on some associated chain. So you've got to bust him off of it. And the only thing that's not associated with his thinkingness is the auditor. So it's up to the auditor, now.
Male voice: Thank you.
Yes.
Yes?
Male voice: Well, the way that we've been doing this is that the auditor has been suggesting all the objects. The preclear has no say in this whatsoever. Is that correct? And . . .
It is not harmful. It is not harmful. And as a matter of fact, you possibly will even get further by doing so. But it could be a class rule but it is not an arbitrary — Scientology rule. You get the idea? You could suggest objects if you want to — wholly and totally. You can ask somebody, "Can you mock up a handkerchief?" And he mocks up a handkerchief, and you get nothing on it.
There is a slight liability to somebody who is a bit queasy with his tools. You know, I mean, he isn't used to his tools yet. There's a slight liability on having the preclear start naming objects. You should realize this. Right at the beginning he starts naming objects and he names them. And then he gets on an association chain, and it becomes an identification chain. The next damn thing you know, you got a stuck needle.
Male voice: Yeah.
Now what are you going to do? See? You've had it.
Male voice: What happens when you get a stuck needle?
Hm?
Male voice: Do you keep on running the process?
Well, if you're running the process — if you're running a process, and he gets a stuck needle, you're all right. You just carry on. But if you get a stuck needle, if you up and stick the needle with your own questions and so forth, you're in a bad spot. You just wiggle out of that one gracefully.
You know, you could start stacking up a bank on a stuck point and you've got to think fast Captain Flagg! You've got to think fast, for sure. You've got to reach back there and find out what-the-hell question you asked in the first place that stuck that needle. That's probably the only thing, now, you can run. But you're in trouble. Yes, it's just like you start running Locational on somebody, and it turns on a somatic. Boy, you've had it. You have no choice but to go on and flatten Locational. Fifty hours later you're still saying, "Look — notice that object." I tell you that there's no arguing with that fact. It's one of these horrible facts. Locational isn't very therapeutic, but it bit. You're not even going to change his profile very much, you know?
Therefore, if you have any queasiness about two things — Locational or 8-C — you leave them both alone. Because if you turn on a somatic running 8-C, you turn on a somatic running Locational, you've had it. You have no choice but to flatten it. You don't get anyplace with the case, and months or a year or two later, some auditor picks it up, he sees there's been no advance. Well, it's because Locational was not flat and the case has been hung up ever since.
There are several things that can hang up a case: One, Locational biting; two, 8-C biting and abandoned — both of those, you see, biting and abandoned — 8-C biting and abandoned, and a PT problem not cared for.
I ran one case back three months to an unflattened present time problem. The guy had been audited hour after hour after hour after hour on top of a present time problem that had him absolutely frantic. He couldn't keep his attention on the session, you know? And auditing became a distractive thing to him. So every time you give him an auditing question, he gets distracted. I had to sort out auditing. There's a rule which you follow, but you can labor this rule too far. And that is to say, if you find your case not — your pc's case not advancing satisfactorily, explore auditing. Not to erase it all or something of this sort, but just explore it. Straightwire him on it; free him up on the subject.
Yes?
Male voice: Specifically, what would you do if you get a stuck needle on looking for a null object?
Well, you'd certainly have to find out what object it was that suddenly stuck it — two or three things you could do. You actually can merely pick up the thing that stuck the object and run it. You can have him mock it up and mock it up and mock it up.
You're in trouble. I'm afraid there is no good solution. We'll pick one up one of these days but we don't have one at this time. And I would be leading you astray if I tried to be wise and learned just for the process of being so. That's something that happens, and it's disastrous.
If you hit a stuck needle in the process of running some object, you just carry on.
But if, under interrogation, you hit a stuck needle at once when you're just starting out on the thing and so forth, well, I don't know, you try to unfree [free] it. There are various things you can do: two-way comm. Two-way comm, trying to get some rationality on the subject of the object. You can free it up with some intellectual process, or you can move him off of that point in processing, like, "Come up to present time," or something. I can't give you a pat answer because I don't know one.
Yes?
Male voice: In this society, at this time, how long should you let a person be loused up before you clear him?
Now, how do you mean by that?
Male voice: Well, how much subjective reality should you allow him to have — collect as he goes along through the years, so that after he's cleared he'll be able to get along with his fellows as understanding requires.
That's an interesting question. That's a social question more than a Scientological question. But it works this way: You could probably take some kid, four or five, if I understand your question right, and clear him up most gorgeously and then find him pretty well out of contact with his environment. You could do this. However, I think he would handle it by simply tangling himself up and coming back at it again.
Male voice: And with it, he'd have a better ability to untangle it?
Oh yes. Yes. This does not produce the same phenomenon, evidently, as old Problems. You could run Problems of Comparable Magnitude until somebody realized he was creating his own problems in order to solve them, and then send him out into the society in this state, and he would be so unhappy at not having an agreement level that he would promptly pull in the roof on his head. Well, you don't find him doing this with Clear fortunately. He has gotten up to a point of ability along the line where he can dub in almost any kind of a social response.
As far as lack of experience is concerned, there isn't anybody around at this time who doesn't have a tremendous backlog of it untapped — just huge. And it's a very opportune time to do so.
I don't know that you would have to educate the present generations at all. I don't know that you would have to at all. I think if people weren't so damned anxious about it, if they'd just leave the kids alone, why, probably they'd wind up at the age of ten or twelve, or something like that, with their education again. You see, it's an invalidation to teach somebody who knows arithmetic, arithmetic. Now, we don't tell them they know arithmetic, we tell them we're teaching them something brand-new.
Now, actually, Scientology — we're teaching you Scientology and you know Scientology. But at no time do we let you think anything else, see? It's not an invalidation. It's quite the reverse.
But you teach a kid arithmetic and reading and writing and so forth, and you try to reteach them, and they start resenting your teaching them. It makes them resent the subject and they get worse at it. And there's no — everybody says, "Education today must be much worse than it used to be because the kids aren't learning near so well." Well, I'll clue you — it's probably much better today than it's ever been; only just teaching them again and again and again has gotten them sour.
I know I wound up at the beginning of this lifetime pretty sour on the subject. I could read, write when I was about three and a half. And they sent me to school, and I thought the people in school were crazy. I was supposed to sit there all day long and read "cat" off big cards. I couldn't get the point. I thought they were taking undue advantage of my size. Hm. They didn't send me to school easily; it was not without a fight.
I hope that, in some foggy way, answers the question.
Male voice: Yes. Thank you.
You bet.
Yes?
Male voice: How do you clear a kid?
Oh, it's pretty hard to do. It's pretty hard to do. They're pretty goofy. Kids are pretty goofy. One, their tremendous hope — that is to say, their tremendous future — they have a future of growing up, you know? They've got another chance. This is tremendously therapeutic, you see, overwhelmingly so, so they can look forward brightly to growing up and getting bigger which is a promise of more mass and all this sort of thing. And this counterbalances the fact that they have just been through a rather alarming experience to say the least — they've just died. And you get these two things in counterposition and you get a rather odd frame of mind to say the least. So that you find somebody with a very, very tiny attention span, see, very short attention span. You find somebody who is pretty dispersy, you know? Dispersals come along rather easily. You find somebody who's easily distracted and yet somebody who can bounce back when they've been unhappy. And it makes a sort of a complex picture.
Now, in trying to get hold of them and do anything with them on a go-for-broke clearing project has not been tried, but just out of experience I would say it would be a rather grim thing.
They do so well, by the way, on the little Locational Processes, and that sort of thing, that there's not much use straining at it. For instance, my kids, you'd think, would be processed to death. I found out that very often a child whose parents are Scientologists is not permitted to do what he can do; they're leading him too hard, see — too much strain on it. They're saying, well, he's got to snap and pop, you know? He's got to be a lot brighter. He's got to be way up along the line somewhere. And the kid sort of gets apathetic because he doesn't — he doesn't get a — you know, they don't ever say, "Well, we like you just as you are," and they never get "just as you are" run on them. You get the idea?
Audience: Mm-hm.
Well, so I've taken it awfully easy on my kids on processing — awfully easy. I run an entirely different system. I've noticed some various behavior patterns in my life and usually use those. And that is to say, I always treat my children with courtesy, particularly in front of one another. And rather chomp somebody who's taking care of them for being discourteous to them. And if I notice them being discourteous to each other, then I immediately assume that their maid is being discourteous to them. So I drop on the back of her neck with spike boots, see? And I say, En-da-da-da-da! And as a result, these kids are better and better friends with one another. Well, this is very fortuitous because, actually, their — most association is with one another. And they are very polite. They're very polite to one another. They're very polite to people quite ordinarily. If you've ever met them, they're very interesting from this standpoint. Well, that is merely because one is polite to them, see? You're just counting on the reaction.
Now, this is pretty good — merely establishing patterns that they're happy with, see? See, now, that's processing in itself. That's processing through livingness and setting some sort of a pattern where they can get along with each other.
Now, they are in an interesting state of mind with regard to processing. They will immediately show up if they have hurt themselves. Now, all kids come around and say, "Mama, I've cut my finger," or something of this sort, and, "Kiss it and make it well." Well, this manifestation is a lot different with these three kids. They'll come in to myself at once, you see, and get an assist. And they're perfectly happy with it, and the assists are working on them, by the way, faster and faster. So that sometimes it's only a five- or six-command assist, don't you see? And they're perfectly happy then; they know that the score is there.
We very carefully open up and close sessions and bridge commands, by the way — much more carefully than I do with one of you guys. All right.
Now, raising children with the idea that something can be done about it, you see? Now, somewhere up along the line they ought to kind of start to get Clear. They see the things in the usual family environment that cause trouble, you see? They see these things being handled, so they get the idea that these things can be handled, don't you see? You're getting another viewpoint entirely. Now, that viewpoint, all by itself makes another breed of cat than a Clear. It makes another breed of cat than anything else. It has an effective attitude toward existence.
Now, I think, just as I've recounted it, simply because I know these kids better than other people's kids — but I know other Scientologist's kids pretty well, too. They always usually ask for me if they come about someplace. They want to see Ron. And they want to come in and give me a smile or something of the sort. And I have a good look at them as they go along, you know? And I see them over long periods of time. I see them sporadically, you know? And most of them are doing just fine. But I think they have a different viewpoint than children have ever had before. I think, by the time they get to be about twelve — ten or twelve or something like this, you could just whomp into them and clear them up, probably, in a few hours. And that would be the end of that — providing you hadn't made them allergic to processing by forcing processing on them, you see? And providing you had run good 8-C on them.
Fascinating, the handling of kids, because you're handling a tremendous amount of experience. And about the best thing you can possibly do is set up a model for them — a model of positiveness, a model of politeness. And you set up a good model for them, why, you've got it made.
You give them a bad model and you haven't got it made. Processing would have a hell of a time climbing over the top of that, where the person who was processing the child was also setting a very bad example for the child every time he turned around, you know? That would be a rough one.
Scientologist with a child has a hell of a responsibility, by the way. It's so easy to use Scientology on the child — completely overwhelm him. Kid wouldn't know whether he was going or coming. See, you actually could just positively and directly control him and monitor him — have no kid at the end of it.
A lot of Scientologists bend too far the other way, you know? They say, "Well, the child is self-determined." Well, I'd like to call to their attention, as long as I'm making a remark on it, they're not using Scientology; they're using child psychology which is: "Never control. Never control." That's child psychology — common denominator. "Let the child grow of his own responses; let him abreact out of his . . ." And make all the adults miserable.
Well, my idea is adults have rights, too. And the way I keep a kid leading, by the way, is to explain to them that these are adult rights, and someday he will inherit them.
Male voice: I get it.
And that keeps him leading, you know? That gives him something to go forward to. Of course, I don't know that there are such things as adult rights in this American society at this time, or even the British society at this time. I don't know that.
But we're going to have some interesting kids. Boy, there are certainly an awful lot of kids around here. Boy, we got lots of kids. There are a lot of little kids.
And it's very funny for me to have kids more or less in the same range of all of the younger Scientologists, you know? It makes a whole crew.
I don't know what happened to all of the ten-, eleven- and twelve-year-old kids that are around. They're still around. I still hear from them occasionally. But there were — there was an age group there, and they're moving on into their teens now. We'll be hearing from them one of these days. Of course, the trouble with them is I know two of them that have become more or less full-time professional auditors — about thirteen or fourteen. Yeah. Yeah. One of them is better than her old man. It's quite remarkable.
You know the HASI — the Academy, rather, can be talked into a course for kids so easy it would make your head swim. Registrar will tell you that it's some small fee for children below eight — or that there's a fee for children below eighteen. But the truth of the matter is, is all you have to do is breathe in the direction of my office, and I'll put the kid through an HCA Course. Yeah. Sign him up on a note payable when he's twenty or something. They make good auditors. And we've never had a kid flop yet in that course — of any age. We've run kids through that course. I don't know what the youngest one is. I'll have to ask the various Directors of Processing — Training — back through the line to find out how young the youngest one was. But I've seen kids in that course of eight and nine. They're pretty good. They're pretty good. They sit there and knock out the communication line. You'd think they wouldn't be able to take it, but that isn't really the trouble.
The only one we ever had any trouble with, his old man was on the back of his neck all the time about study, study, study and school, school, school. And his pop got him so totally sold on the idea that he was still going to school. But this kid is still going to come back here. He's going to come back here this summer and finish his training. He knows that he didn't make the grade. He wants to come back now. He finally got it pried apart — pretty wild.
Now, I'd process a kid when he was twelve — ten, twelve, something like this — when he really had a good stability on it and knew where he was going — and clear him. But I wouldn't try to, up to that time. I'd process him through livingness and assists.
I wouldn't give him patch-up assists. That's the only other thing we found was dead wrong. You don't process them every time you turn around. You know, you got to give them an assist. You open the session. You make sure that you can and give them an assist at that time, you close the session down. You don't just suddenly walk in and start processing with — monkeying, you know? Gets them upset after a while: you leave them sit — stuck in things; and they get so they're — urhh — they don't like this. You wouldn't like it.
Well, that's a lot of questions. I suppose we've got time for one more question, I think, concerning your auditing today. Is this about your auditing today?
Female voice: Well, I'm still not sure how much Connectedness you ordinarily run.
Oh, you can see that Connectedness is association of thought with matter, and is taking over the automaticity of thought with matter. And it's a slow route and it's not very therapeutic but it simply orients the person pretty well. As I say, it's not very therapeutic — it's not very therapeutic in relation to Step 6. It's very therapeutic. You know, Connectedness is Control Trio, Locational. All of these things come under Connectedness. Connectedness is simply the basic version of all of these things.
Any question here? Yes?
Male voice: People can always envision a better condition and never arrive. And these processes are so damn subtle, would the preclear know he was Clear?
No, he will tell you after a while that something fantastic has happened to him. You don't get Clear without. . .
Male voice: He'll still consider being better off again?
Oh yes. He'll start going for broke on Operating Thetan but he will do this in a very strong line. We have an interesting example of it. I've got a Clear in my office, and she's giving us a bad time. She's no longer thinking about her own case in any way, shape or form. And she's even got a psychosomatic or two that are just dying out because it wasn't done fully, you see? She's just coasting through to the end of it.
And, boy, she's certainly raising the devil with other people, though. She'll look at them and say, "Well, all right, you have a headache. Well, why don't you tell yourself not to have a headache? Huh?" Wild. Pretty wild. I mean, she's quite militant on the subject. "If everybody in this operation would simply postulate to do better in the way of the communication line and so forth, it would all happen!" Big certainty. There's no doubt about it — leaves absolutely nothing — no latitude for anything.
Male voice: The hell of it is, it's true.
Yeah, it's true! True.
Yes?
Male voice: Ron, this really doesn't have to do with problems right now, but I have a question I'm very interested in. What are your end goals in Scientology?
What are the end goals in Scientology?
Male voice: Yeah, your particular mock-up.
Hm! You're right at the end of the . . .
Male voice: We've got a fifteen-minute break.
No. You couldn't cover that in fifteen minutes.
Female voice: That's when we get to know when.
Well, it's time this universe had a self-determined being. I think that's probably the total goal.
Male voice: Good show.
You can get very funny about this. You wouldn't dare be this critical or this hilarious on the subject, but if you get the idea of this society being totally inhabited by dogs — this is just a funny thing to do, see — the only population of the United States is dogs. You get the idea? Can you get the idea of that?
Audience: Yes.
The only being around. That's a thetan plus body too, you know? All right — all these dogs. Now, level at these dogs all the criticism you level against government, social betterment and anything else.
Female voice: Oh no.
Do it as a mental exercise sometimes; it becomes very, very funny. Here's this collie dog who's president. Now, just level at him all of the things you've been thinking about Ike, see? It becomes very funny. It's a very funny mental exercise. You can throw yourself into a half a dozen line charges on the thing if you really get to going on it.
It has been too much to expect that a habitable universe could exist without an enlightened, self-determined being. And man has, on this same cycle I was telling you about — the bear hunter
But you would have — there is this thing: It is possible to have a society in which beings can be happy and at peace, and still have a good time, see? That is a possibility. And people recognize this possibility and then rail at the fact that it doesn't exist. And I'm afraid that has been the wrong approach.
The correct approach along this line is to make it possible for it to happen. And that, I think, pretty well sums up my goals. Okay?
Thank you. Well, after that, we'll close it off. Thank you very much.
Audience: Thank you.
Mm-hm.
Thank you.