Going to talk to you now about valences. And this is something you have been waiting to hear about. I know that because people always have trouble with valences.

What do we mean by a valence, and why did we choose the word?

Well, a valance is something that is above curtains, and a valence is something you try to get out of a preclear. Valence means "facet of." But very properly for our uses, the definition is quite exact: It's an identity consisting of a number of fixed characteristics, reactions and mannerisms. That is a valence.

Now, it's an odd thing that a thetan would assume an identity, isn't it? This is very peculiar, as a matter of fact. He mocks this thing up and then he gets into it. He postulates a number of characteristics and then he lives by them.

Now, you will discover that in games it is absolutely necessary unless you're playing the game of saint to have an individuality in order to be part of a game. There must be something there so the other fellow knows a game is in progress.

And the phenomenon of individuation becomes obvious and extremely interesting to the auditor when we realize that an individual is trying to collect more individualities on an obsessive, compulsive games basis.

You understand that all of the things that are no-game conditions are the truth or a lower harmonic on the actual fact of a thetan. And all the games conditions are lies. You audit out the games condition. Not because it did the thetan any good or any harm, but in order to get him over into a higher tone it is necessary to get him to knock out the obsessions, compulsions, the automatic motions of old games. And that is what you're auditing out of the person.

So it's very, very important then that you realize that the essential parts that we really audit in games are interest; and its companion, attention; identity (as very, very necessary part of it); opponents, which is the opposing identity but still an individuality, you see; problems and havingness. And those are the essential points. Those are the ne plus ultra points.

So that this thing called individuality is actually terribly important to the auditor. Not only the opposing individuality, but the fellow's own individuality. Why is the opposing individuality important? It's because nine-tenths of the individualities he's mocked up with were once opposing. Do you follow this?

The game finished — something a game should never do — and he interiorized into the game, and he picked up the other fellow's personality that was playing the game with him because the other fellow isn't there anymore and he wants the game to continue, see? He obsessively continues the game by holding on to the opponent. And, oh, is this important to an auditor, because it explains why the preclear fights himself'?

Here's the preclear, and you could consider that here is a mocked-up thetan of the preclear's. See, the preclear, as a thetan, mocks up a thetan which is himself — you get the idea — he mocks up something there (not a thetan but a bogy or a spook or something), and he says this is himself. And over here is another self and this is a demon circuit of some sort or another and over here is another self, and if you start talking to these various circuits, you get an awful argument going inside the preclear.

You can ignore what the preclear is saying and start talking to a circuit with an E-Meter — that's the easiest way to do it. And you can get on these long conversations about the most odd and peculiar things.

In other words, a thetan can mock up something which then is endowed with life. It has a continuance. It is a whole individuality which has a continuance.

Now, these demon circuits do not have demons in them. These personalities do not have spooks in them. There is just a thetan there and he's got all of these things rigged up and as long as he's in contact with them, their livingness continues. You see that?

In other words, he can endow with life anything and everything. Well, actually, he had to endow opponents with life in order to fight them. And then as he began to fight them, he decided not to endow them with life anymore, but there they were and he had endowed them with life and he was still looking at them, so they got kind of half-alive in his bank. And then one day he carelessly looks over in that direction in his bank, you might say, and he says, "I wonder what that is." And he activates it, and it's an opponent.

Only it's not an opponent, it's just the picture he made of an opponent. But the funny part of it is he made such a wonderful picture of the opponent that all of the opponent's characteristics will be present, all the mannerisms. And he looks over at this again and he reendows it with life and having reendowed it with life, it lives. This is very much the magician that looks at the stick and the stick turns into a serpent, very, very much that sort of thing. It was just a stick. It was a mock-up that he was packing around in the bank and he paid no attention to it at all, but one day without even muttering the magic words, since he himself is so capable of endowing with life that he can hardly stop himself, he looked over at this stick, and the stick stood up on its tail and said, "Young man, you have done wrong."

And he says, "Look at that!" He says, "You know, I'm haunted!" If he were to say, "I am haunting me," he would always be right. Do you follow me? He would always be right if when he looked in his bank and activated something which then jumped at him, bit him, gave him a somatic, did something to him, he said, "I am haunting me."

Now, every thetan that ever mocked anything up — you can't say every thetan that ever lived, because none of them ever died. Every thetan that mocked something up had a tendency to keep it around just in case he ran out of a game. He loses the idea of mocking something else up.

You go in some electrical engineer's — they're the worst sinners on this — into his back garage or in his basement and look around. And what you find down there that he has kept that he might have some use for is fascinating. What an electrical engineer would be doing with half of a broken lock which was never any good in the first place we wouldn't know. But he'll have one there. And he'll have bits of wires that current wouldn't even pass through.

Well, thetans, when they haul out of a body, take along a few old tin cans and chains just so they won't get lonesome. And these things all had some kind of a function at one time or another and a thetan can reactivate them.

Well, this is true of personalities he has confronted. These personalities that he has confronted throughout his career are in picture form. He started doing this knowingly. He said, "This is a good idea." So he put it on automatic and he made pictures forever after. Forever after he made pictures. And these pictures were totally endowed because they were an exact picture of everything in the person that he was looking at.

It's very, very hard for an auditor really to conceive that by going into Mother's valence he picks up all Mother's habits. Now, what do you do when he goes into Mother's valence? What exactly is meant by going into Mother's valence? It means reactivating or making alive a picture package of Mother which then has all of the characteristics of Mother.

Now, a thetan obeys the god of the universe in which he exists. Follow that? Valences — you can also say they are universes because every thetan makes a universe, so he's made a picture of a composite universe.

Whose postulates does he obey when he's in that valence? He obeys Mother's postulates and they aren't his, so he is then not self-determined! And not being self-determined, he can't change his mind. Observe this closely. The basic therapy would simply be "Well — uh — so-and-so and so-and-so."

"Well, change your mind about that."

And he does, and that's that.

But this fellow has to change Mother's mind. But she's dead. How can he do it? Not possible. So we blow him out of the universe. How do we do that? Numerous processes will do this. But you get the idea.

Now, the funny part of it is that every habit Mother had, every psychosomatic ill Mother had, every belief Mother had and so forth is liable to have some existence in the preclear who is in Mother's universe.

This is also true of Father. It is also true of Grandpa and Grandma and sisters and brothers and aunts, but it'd be particularly true of any universe that was pretty close to the preclear's size, such as a drunken uncle.

And the little kid will — he was weak and everybody kind of pushed him around too, so the kid will pick up the drunken uncle or the weaker universe as his particular opponent. So he will tell you he's in Mother's universe or Father's universe and so forth, but he's displaying a lot of strange characteristics that didn't belong to Mother and they didn't belong to Father. Well, he's partially in all of these, but when we really start to dig him out we find out he's in the universe of a drunken uncle. Why? It was his size. See, a drunken adult who was of no fixed habits or future actually looked to the child more like a child than the grown-ups did. So he's still fighting Father, he's still fighting Mother and every aberration that's of any importance to you as an auditor is unknown to the preclear. That is the primary rule of auditing.

Preclear knows about it, to hell with it. If he knows about it, it blows. It's what he doesn't know about it that's making him hold on to it. Follow this?

So he says, "Well, I just know I'm in Mother's universe." Uh-uh. If he's still wrong, that's wrong.

You see why that would be? He's usually in an unknown valence. So he is being haunted in a house that he never knew he lived in, which is very peculiar, and it's up to the auditor to find the address.

Now, there are various kinds of universes. And this is very important to realize that there are these various types of universes, one after the other, are quite different and are taken apart differently by the preclear.

There's the basic personality, that's the thetan. Now, he's got himself mocked up as being some kind of a guy and that's his basic personality. It wasn't he was — he didn't spew forth from the brow of Jove fully armed with this personality, but he certainly favors it.

And as you begin to unpeel the layers like you peel an onion, you eventually find your preclear sitting there with something he now considers his own personality. That's an oddity, a peculiarity that is discoverable, however. It doesn't matter how many universes you get off, you will come eventually to a stop where he says, "Whoa. This is I."

Now, the second valence we have is actually the body personality. You notice we're not calling those two valences because — that's because you don't get anybody out of them. You get the thetan out of the body, but there is such a thing as a body plus thetan personality. And that is just the thetan (basic personality), plus the body's personality and the body is from a genetic line and it has certain characteristics, beliefs, inhibitions and so forth already given it by lord knows how many thetans that owned it in the past. Unfortunately, when a thetan dives in to pick up a body at birth, the Assumption, he gets a secondhand article.

But he always assumes it's a new article, I suppose, because it's so much fun to get that — in that much trouble. So he'll even reactivate valences which are way back on the track and were planted there by thetans who have long since gone their way. The thetans are not still there. Please get that straight. The thetans are not still there, but the machinery they left behind is.

Now, the thetan picks up this newborn baby, looks over and says, "I wonder what that is." And all of a sudden turns on something that goes whir, whir, whir, whir.

And it says, "You're a dog, really."

And he says, "You know, that's fun. That's fun." Next thing you know, he says, "Woof! I wonder why I'm barking all the time. Woof! Woof! I'm sorry."

And it's from that point — that can cause enough trouble. We cure that trouble by exteriorizing him, by the way. He's always in that trouble till we exteriorize him.

There are several more kinds of universes, however, and these are important because he doesn't get out most of the time until we solve these. Because he can't exteriorize from Mother's head. It's very, very hard to do.

The preclear is sitting in the chair in front of you and you say, "Be three feet back of" what? See, he hasn't got a head. He's in Mother's head, but he's right there in the chair in front of you and he can't go three feet outside of Mother's head; it just doesn't make sense.

So, we have to look at this valence picture just like another phenomenon that causes an auditor a tremendous amount of trouble. Fascinating. But very, very enormous in its trouble is this matter of "you audit the preclear who is auditing something else." And all the preclear is, is some kind of a relay circuit and he never gets over anything. You audit him, he audits something.

Well, when are we ever going to audit the preclear? When we get his valences straightened out, we'll find a preclear. We can straighten them out directly and bombastically by Start, Change and Stop. We can do quite a bit in that direction. But you'll very often find that you'll have to really address the valence problem. And this is one of the major problems of auditing.

What means this thing a profile? What is this thing when they give you a test profile? And after a fellow has been audited for ninety-nine hours and he still has the same profile, what's that all about?

In the first place it wasn't his profile, it's Mother's that he puts down. We audit him for ninety-nine hours without blowing him out of Mother's universe and he puts down Mother's profile again. Isn't that cute?

That picture of a personality on a capacity analysis is a valence. And until you change it, you don't change his capacity analysis, either. You may change it by very basic, general techniques, but you will certainly change it by addressing universes.

Well, let's take these four kinds of universes, one right after the other, which are the commonest — I don't say that there aren't more — but which pretty well cover any kind of a universe or valence that you will encounter. You can use those two words universe or valence interchangeably.

First, there is the assumed valence. An actor does this. Actor walks on stage and is in character, or he's in character in the wings and walks on stage. All right. He sits around all day, he's in character. He mustn't get out of character while on set in Hollywood, for instance. He goes on being whoever he's being between takes because it's just too much machinery to shift him in and out of it. After he's been in character for thirty or forty days, he sometimes doesn't step out of it. Why? The thetan's direction is always in the direction of a game. An actor's direction is always in the direction of a picture or a scene or a play, you see?

So you audit, basically, all valences in the direction of more valences, not less. To try to get him out, you get him into more.

Well, if an actor hasn't enough roles coming up, he's liable to pick up one of his old, assumed valences and then you'll find him in a rest home or spinning or something of the sort. You see?

Why? Only when he assumed the valence of a psychotic in a play — you'll find that every actor that plays a psychotic personality has afterwards been troubled with neurosis. How would you cure it? You'd find the role he had played and have him dream up more roles to match it and he'd blow out of that one. It's quite interesting, fascinating.

Now, for instance, I know a preclear one time that was in a play and it was the only play he was ever in. The role was quite successful, the run was quite long, but it was the only role he could ever get — he played a petty gangster. And this young man always there afterwards was a petty gangster. And I just received a letter the other day from another quarter of the world and he was up there being again a petty gangster. Of course he wasn't really being criminal, not quite. But he assumed this character.

Now, he had assumed a valence and he hadn't walked out of it. Why didn't he walk out of it? Because he didn't assume some more. That's all you've got to get him to do to get him out of these assumed valences. They're very easy, just get him to assume some more valences. Mock up some roles for himself to play.

Now, people, completely aside from the theater, do this all the time anyway. They mock up a personality that fits the bill. For instance, when I go down to see a bank president I always go in as a successful young businessman, you know, with good manners and mannerisms. Always. Why? Because it's an accustomed role. The fellow is used to seeing this valence walk in, so it doesn't startle him. And you sneak up on him. You say, "Well, lend me a few thousand dollars." And he does, and that's all there is to it. It doesn't upset him, don't you see?

So, people are always assuming valence to stay in agreement with the rest of the human race. You get what those are? Well, you could call those social valences, but it's not a very important role unless somebody has been to school where they have put one on him with a straitjacket.

Now, the auditor to cure that one finds he has the easiest job you ever heard of. This is the easiest job. Just invent some more individualities, and they come straight out of these assumed valences.

The next one is not quite so good and the next three are horrible: exchange valence, attention valence and synthetic valence. And those are the ones that the auditor puts on the boxing gloves with.

How did one get into these? Mutual moments or descriptions in moments of pain and unconsciousness give him these valences. And that's why we have trouble with them, because they depend on pain and unconsciousness.

Now, what would you do? I'm afraid it now becomes a problem of engrams. You walk down the street, you see a crippled man, later on you find yourself limping. You say to yourself, "I have gone into that man's valence." Oh no, you haven't. You have gone into the lock of a valence you have contained in a moment of pain and unconsciousness on the far backtrack. You got it? All you're hitting is a late lock on an actual engram.

People don't pick up these valences that easily. Not even an assumed valence sticks unless he has shared a moment of pain or unconsciousness with it. All aberration stems from moments of pain and unconsciousness. Never forget that, because that's the truth.

You think that — you think this fellow was in a bar and he sneezed and — while somebody says, "You dog," and this made him a dog.

No, I'm afraid that's — he was in a bar and he got beat up by a cop. And the cop went on pounding his head in, gave him a fractured skull and somebody kicked him in and somebody says he's a drunk. Now, you're going to have trouble curing that alcoholic. You follow me? He knows he belongs in bars.

Well, an exchange valence is a direct exchange. You face Joe, and you and Joe share a moment of pain and unconsciousness in common, and then you're Joe. Got that? That's direct, isn't it?

Now, an attention valence is assumed to get the attention of a third party. We go into Father's valence to get Mother's attention, because Father gets Mother's attention. You got that? But it's still based on pain and unconsciousness, but it's another computation.

Next one is the synthetic valence. Mama says, "Father is a dog, Father is a bum." Father is just another guy, you see. But Mother, "Yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak" all the time, is telling Junior what a horrible person Father is. And all of a sudden Junior sees Father's valence as a horrible person. And you can't find it on the case because there's no such person on the case except Mother's yak-yak. Moments of pain and unconsciousness shared with Mother gave Mother the power of dreaming up a synthetic valence for Father. You got it? So, in this case, we'd strip Mother as a valence.

To get Mother's attention, he assumes Father's valence. Once more, we would strip Mother. Assumes Mother's valence to get Father's attention. You get the idea? Strip Father. You follow this?

Now, on direct exchanges, find the engram. All of these are based on that first and foremost thing.

Now, it becomes very, very important to us in auditing — very, very important — that a two-valent engram will produce an unauditable preclear. In what wise? Very simple. Two-valent — there are two people present. There could be more, but they're not aberrative. And we have these two valences available and the preclear is stuck in this engram and we sit down to audit this preclear and we find the preclear is unauditable, resists, gets mad, is disdainful, is upset. The preclear has taken the safe valence. He's taken the painless valence.

Now, what about — what about a dental operation, huh? He's sitting in the middle of a dental operation and there he is in the chair being the effect, and there is the dentist standing there being cause. That's a no-game condition from the preclear's viewpoint. So how's he make a game out of it? He becomes the dentist. Ah, you'd — see how that mechanism worked?

Therefore, if you forced him to be the patient, his somatics would turn on. When you start to audit somebody and his somatics turn on, you know at once that he's in no other situation than one of these two-valent engrams. There are two personalities present. He can assume one or the other and you've forced him to assume the painful one.

So, what about — what about a medical operation? He's in the middle of a medical operation and he's being the doctor. And you come along and you sit down and he says, "Dzzzt. There's the doctor! That means I'm the patient. I hurt. Oh, you're no good. You don't know Scientology. Scientology isn't any good. Get out of here. What the hell are you doing? I can't really be audited. Nobody wants anything to do with you." You get the reaction?

See, he's perfectly willing, and then the second he realizes that he's being thrown into a patient role he comes right out of it into the doctor's role, and you play a sort of a game of ping-pong. And if you don't know what it's all about, you're going to have trouble with that preclear from there on out. You try to throw him into session, and he's going into an operation. Got it?

All right. This would also work out and peculiarly in whole track, full track psychiatry. Psychiatry isn't a new phenomena. They're — still dramatize it today, but it's actually very, very old. It was once much more painful it is now — they just cut their brains out now; they used to cut them out slowly.

Psychiatrist today is a pantywaist. He's got it rigged up that he does this so as to "help" the patient, which he knows himself is a lie, but he at least goes that far. But on the backtrack they didn't do that. They did it to knock the patient off and obliterate him utterly, and they said so. And they used electric shock and supercold vacuum mechanisms and all kinds of things in order to do that.

All right. Supposing we've got somebody sitting in one of these engrams on the backtrack. He's never been psychiatrized in this life, and he comes along and he sits down in your auditing chair and he really never has realized that he was totally in this engram. And you say, "All right. Now we're going to do a little process which …"

And he says, "Now wait a minute. I'm the psychiatrist here. And this fellow is the patient." So he tries to brainwash you, the auditor. You got this?

He's unauditable. And the people who will not come to be audited are rather uniformly in this situation. You got that? Being audited, it would be the painful experience of being thrown into the patient's valence, and the patient hurts.

By the way, you might say that all serious engrams contain pain, unconsciousness and exteriorization. All the really serious ones contain also a compulsive exteriorization.

So these whole track things where the chief of the medical board or the psychiatric board or something came in and grabbed the young navigator and said, "All right. You failed." And they decide to get rid of him. And they threw him on the electric shock machine and blew him out of his head and told him to go to some other planet. That's an exteriorization. And that's what you'll find because the preclear is still trying to hold on to the mass of that body he's lost — bodies in pawn, all kinds of other odd phenomena. Whole track — don't talk to the public about it, don't ignore it as an auditor.

Now, where you find the preclear unauditable, it's because you're shoving him into a painful role. And the painful role is that of patient. There's a direct cure for this, by the way, and that direct cure is "Tell me a lie about patients. Tell me a lie about a patient. Right now. Another lie about a patient, right now."

And run that a few times and then run something like, "All right. Tell me a lie about a psychiatrist" or "Tell me a lie about a doctor" or "a dentist" or anything else that you have him spotted as.

Now, oddly enough, there's the old Fac One mechanisms. There are also snake people way on the backtrack. Yes, the snakes were very wise. They gave you very good advice while they cut you slowly to ribbons. Peoples of one kind or another — there are about eighteen of these races. And there are the cat people and so on. You'll see them walking around. They're — actually have big cat eyes and so on.

It becomes very, very interesting, but actually an auditor can pick these up and ask the — it's the same formula, but a Fac One monitor: "Tell me a lie about priests. Tell me a lie about scientists," or something like that. "Now, tell me a lie about people who are being bettered. Tell me a lie about penitents," something like this.

Any type of process swings the preclear then — it deintensifies the engram sufficiently that he can be audited on it.