Hiya!

Well, how are you doing today?

Audience: Fine. Good.

Did you recover?

Audience: Yes.

Did I recover?

Audience: Yes.

That's the wrong auditing question.

Oh, dear. Well, here we are in the third day of this congress. Looks like congresses are getting longer lately. Looks like congresses are getting slightly longer lately. They did get down as far as two days. Over in England they got down as far as one day. Of course, the next step from that is no congresses.

Female voice: Oh no, no.

But then, you see, I got processed, you know, and…

Male voice: Good.

.. then they got up to two days, you see, again, and now they're up to three days, so you'd better - if I keep on getting processed, you see, why, it'll probably get up to four- or five-month congresses, so you better…

Well, you all look just fine today. I'm glad you're feeling well. You're doing all right.

Audience: Yes. Yeah.

It's very funny, you know. You look at a preclear sometime and he's wondering, and you say, „You're doing all right.“ And it makes him feel better, you know?

But don't go so far as to say, „You're doing all right now because you're Clear.“ Because Clear has all of a sudden taken on two different meanings. It has separated itself. We used to have something called a Release, and that was somebody who wasn't nuts anymore - wasn't human. But we actually don't have a - this grade of „a - present-lifetime- clear-of-overts-withholds.“ There is no such immediate statement. And yet that's more or less the intention of Clear. And you could say „clear of current overts.“ „Clear of current overts“ is about the best statement that could be made on the line.

I don't know exactly what we're going to do about this, except, perhaps, to elect somebody to a Diogenes club. The idea of a Diogenes club, of course, is not a new one. I remember there was a Diogenes club back in Athens. And all the biggest crooks of the place belonged to it. Well, that's neither here nor there.

Well, you know I'm awfully sorry I didn't bring my notes today, because today I need them. I need them. There's so doggone much to tell you about, so very little time to tell you in, that I'm just going to try to bear on through without much regard to titles of lectures, that sort of thing, and let you in on what gen I can or that has been accumulated. But, I don't know, we might cover a thousandth of it.

When you put out a culture in a civilization, you've got to follow it up; you've got to take responsibility for it. And as long as you have a totally irresponsible government, you're going to have a world in trouble. When the most powerful government on Earth is irresponsible to the point of not taking the responsibility for the people and so forth that it sends abroad, and in addition to that, doesn't take responsibility for the culture it exports, the trouble it steps up, the wars it wins, nothing of the sort, and just says, „Well, that's all up to them,“ you're going to have trouble in the world. That's for sure. That's why I want you to get interested in the third dynamic.

Now, I'm not saying we could do better. I'm merely saying we could do something. Now, this isn't - this isn't advocation of the overthrow of the US Government by force. I want to make that plain on the record. There has to be a government there before it could be overthrown. About the only thing that the US Government gets upset about is being overthrown by force, and does get upset about that. And I don't blame them a bit. I remember vividly when I charged up Bunker Hill - just - what's this all about? I was going to withhold that.

No, my overt act against the American government comes about with killing your favorite general, fellow by the name of Prescott, in the Battle of Breeds Hill, 1775. I wasn't even a combatant.

The rebels made the mistake of killing a friend of mine who was part of the British troops. Well, that's a long story, but it was an overt act. Every once in a while when I think of those stories in Time magazine I say, „Well, Ronnie, you deserved it.“ All explained - all explained.

Oh, dear. I'm afraid I shocked you a little bit. I'm afraid I shocked you a little bit. You know, there were other people in the world besides Americans and British at that time. Yeah, there were. There were other people in the world. There were people from Saxony involved. And I was simply an observer from the Elector of Saxony's government to tell him whether or not he should send Hessians over. And I said, „Yes.“ Of course, that wasn't an overt act until an old schoolteacher, the life just before this one, points a finger at me and tells me what bad people the Hessians were and how horrible it all was, and it upset me. And I wasn't - I wasn't actually cognizant of the fact that I had pulled an overt act right up to that time. Because it was my opinion that the Hessian regiments that were captured and gobbled up by first Benedict Arnold and then George Washington were the only ironworkers and artisans the country ever had imported into it. And it was to them that they owe most of the present industry, you know? But I - nobody was there to give me the gen on this sort of thing.

No, I didn't have anything to do with either side, basically, but I did get mad and I've paid for it since, so I hope you'll forgive me. I wonder how many wars you have to win for a country in order to pay off an overt act. I'm working on my third or fourth now.

The only fault you could find today with modern governments is that they are not taking responsibility. They're just not taking adequate responsibility. They think by paying off the aged, by supporting the unemployed and by going in for other corn-and-games Roman mechanisms that they are taking responsibility for governing.

None of these governments need overthrowing. None of these governments actually need very heavy berating. But all of these governments need an increase of responsibility for international welfare. The able citizen is the one who should be supported by a government. That is a lesson they'd better learn. Because a government cannot govern unless it governs the people. And basically, the people of a nation are the people who are doing things, not the people who have quit.

Socialism, and that sort of thing, apparently, is a matter of getting more government - it's a method of getting more government.

Now the American government in 1775 was trying to spread a message, and therefore deserved better at anybody's hands, and which was why, basically, anybody standing on the outskirts, such as myself, supported them absolutely lukewa- supported very lukewarmly a any effort to overthrow America. And do you realize the people of Earth support, very lukewarmly, doing anything about a country which is seeking freedom. You just stand around, and they say, „Well, do this and that and the other thing for us,“ and so you do it very lukewarmly.

You say, „Well, fine. You want fifty-thousand Hessian troops? Good. We'll send you - we'll send you several hundred.“

You do these things internally. Internally, the British government at that time was absolutely sabotaged. It was sabotaged by its - the sentiments of its own officers and people. They said, „Well, there's something to these people. There's something to this movement on Earth.“ They couldn't really get mad, you know? And so they just didn't whip out their tactical directions and work them down to the last hump. They said, „Well, these people should get along one way or the other.“

America had a message. And you go up today to the Capitol, and you'll find that message written all over the statuary. You'll find it written all over the paintings. And that was that the common man had worth and that the people of the world had a right to free determinism, that man had a higher destiny than that of a slave and it was time he broke his chains. And you find that all over the Capitol.

Now what's this government doing letting some two-bit bunch of czarist miscarriages come along and tell it - tell it that it has a message of freedom!

These Johnny-come-latelys have no message of freedom! They have a message of slavery. They say all men are alike and they're all slaves. The machine must roll. That's just a new method of obtaining production! That's all. Communism is as wrong as capitalism. And then they're both wrong. Somebody who sits back parasitic upon the labors of others and does absolutely nothing and furnishes no service of any kind whatsoever - clipping coupons, you know - or sitting back being the big commissar with the big red star and the hero medal, you know, are likewise parasitic upon the labors and sweat of other men.

Both of these systems are wrong, and somebody ought to just let them go out on the corner someplace and fight it out the way the troops of World War I were always insisting that their generals be given clubs and go into an arena and just hit each other over the head until they decided who'd won. This was the most prevalent sentiment between 1914 and 1918. War has become unpopular.

But here's this great - here's this great message - this great message that was spread around the world at the late part of the eighteenth century that the common man was worth something and he ought to stake off his chains and determine his own destiny. That was a great thing.

Who were the stupid knuckleheads that let that message go by the boards, hm? What self-seeking, self-interested politicians are sitting down here getting what spread, forgetting that this country is the pioneer of man's future freedom?

Now, this country has got to take responsibility for it. That's all. They spread the message. There's no sense in sitting back now and trying to go into some socialist mess or in leaning the other way and going into some capitalistic mad-dogism, either way. Or some fascistic thing whereby Czar Pixie or somebody raises his noble scepter and all the space opera boys jump up with their blast guns or something like that. This is - it's no good.

No, somebody on Earth has got to keep the torch lighted, and the country that's been nominated by the peoples of the world is America. Now, I'm here to help make sure it delivers the goods.

Now, we've got a total - way out in front. All we've got to do is make some people take some responsibility for some of the things that this country stands for, and this world will be free. And that doesn't mean that every government on Earth ought to be overthrown in favor of the American government. It simply means that if democracy is going to go forward, it had better be going forward decently under the guidance of a responsible nation, and not just dropped into the soup and every criminal that comes along given fantastic credence because he's beating the drum for socialism or communism or spooferism or nihilism or some other nonsense.

The great message of the world of the last two hundred years emanated from this country. And it's still emanating from this country. And this country ought to back it up, not by overthrowing the governments of Earth, not by conquest, but simply by a matter of setting an example of responsibility for its citizens and for its affairs abroad to such a degree that it demonstrates that democracy works, and works far, far better than any other type of political activity. Democracy is not the best political philosophy in the world; and nearly everyone will agree that a benevolent monarchy is.

You can - it's very funny, you know. You can get a socialist and a communist and nihilist and an anarchist and a capitalist and a royalist and anybody else you want to get together - a fascist - you can get them all in a room together. I've actually done this horrible trick, and gotten them all to agree on a political philosophy. And the political philosophy they agreed upon, utterly and completely, was a benevolent monarchy. But they said you can't have a benevolent monarchy unless you have a benevolent monarch, and then you cannot guarantee the continuance of that government as a benevolent monarchy. So therefore that is bad.

But actually it's the best form of government. But short of that, the best form of government is where everybody has a say in it. Now, that will perpetuate itself, and that continues on better. It's not the best form of government, but it's the best workable, practical form.

And all these fellows agreed, and then you should have seen their faces when they realized they had all agreed politically. Very, very funny.

Now, I don't mean to tell you anything startling or strange about this. We have no real vested interest politically. We have a vested interest in man; all of us are interested in this. And politics occasionally keep us from recognizing or realizing our fullest responsibilities in this particular direction.

One of these fine days we will have to turn around and clean up politics, because politics can only go astray where criminals are in political control. And if you have the answer to criminality, you have the answer to all politics.

Democracy is probably the best political theory, workably, that has been introduced over the last twenty-five hundred years. And the only reason it doesn't work is because you can elect some startlingly beautiful man whose hair is silver and whose voice is beautiful and the ladies dive overboard for him and you find out you've elected one of the lousiest crooks that anybody - everything ever had anything to do with. That's happened in American history.

Well, it could only happen, and America could only be subverted if people in key positions had too much to hide - who could be blackmailed, who themselves could be turned into rabid revolutionaries against the better good of their people by simply not being able to speak clearly and openly to their people and tell them what they should. No, as long as you have criminals in governments, you're going to have trouble. You're going to have lots of trouble.

I'll give you an idea of that. Some people accuse me of being hepped or sold occasionally on the idea that this organization has - Scientology organizations have been bird-dogged by some political group. Now, they've misunderstood what this is all about.

There are certain political groups which accumulate to themselves criminals. And wherever you get criminals sitting in your midst that can't talk, can't be processed, can't duplicate communication, they scramble all the communication lines.

You see, because they themselves are withholding to such a degree, they don't dare duplicate. So something that comes in to them, they then misduplicate as they hand it down the line. Because they themselves have something they mustn't say, they pervert everything that goes past them. And you have one of those people in an organization, you've got trouble. You got trouble.

It was very interesting to be able to talk to a very high official in the British post office system very recently and give him that succinct datum.

Now, up to that time, I had talked to him occasionally about writing a manual for the use of his personnel handling communication systems in the British postal system. And he didn't think I had anything to say. He thought he knew all about it, you see?

Funny part of it is, nearly everything I was trying to tell him about, he in some dim way had noticed himself. And it all appeared that he knew all this, you see, but he didn't realize he couldn't articulate it. And this very funny thing happened, you see? I was sitting there and I tell him all about this one datum: that you just cannot have a criminal on your communication lines, because he'll flip the data because of misduplication. And I just gave it to him right straight from the shoulder and used Scientology technology and everything else - which he's not educated in even vaguely, you know? I just let him have it.

And he sat there, you know? He sat there, „Oh,“ he says, „you - you do know something about this, don't you?“ And he said, „We have a fellow in Scotland who is in charge of a certain department in Scotland and,“ he said, „it's always going wrong! Anybody who gives him a complaint or a message of any character, he changes before he hands it to anybody else! And I've noticed this! I know what's wrong with the man! I - I - how much are those E-Meters you sell?“

So therefore, we have to realize that a government that's being totally knuckleheaded is a collection of individuals who are trying their best but aren't able to reach very well. A government is composed of individuals who themselves are blocked in various ways because their own communication lines are chopped up.

Now, we could say at once that the moment a government's communication lines were cleaned up one way or the other, that that government would undoubtedly begin to perform at a much higher level of responsibility than it had been before. Got the idea? Well, all you'd have to do is to make sure that every person in government - boy, shades of 1950. This sound familiar to some of you people?

Female voice: Mm-hm.

All you had to do was make sure that the people in government were cleared (at least in the limited sense of current lifetime) to ensure that that government would take fullest responsibility on all of its communication lines. Got the idea? So that if any group went about, in a somewhat soft-voiced fashion, to guarantee the political integrity or personal integrity of the people in government, they would probably be cooperated with 100 percent.

That sounds very daring. It actually isn't daring at all. It's just nobody knew how to do it. It isn't that the idea is unacceptable it's that nobody had the gen to make the idea workable.

They try to do this with their various elections. They say this man is good and that man is bad, and they tell stories on each other - the candidates do - and they try to expose each other and they try by this method only to have politicians in there who have fairly clean records, because they know that if they have a dirty record, that they're liable to be overthrown. But then, this politician, getting office, then is unable to guarantee the cleanliness, for instance, of his police department, his accounts department or other things; he doesn't know how to go about this.

So as long as you have elected personnel to some degree you have already dropped out the more crooked or reprehensible personnel, to some degree there's already a preventer working on the line.

But what if somebody came along and cleared the rest of the lines up? Now, what would happen? What would happen to that government? Be pretty interesting, wouldn't it? Hm?

Well, we can do that today. Now, this is just one of the things I had to cover; it's not the whole of this immediate lecture at all. But I just had to tell you about the purity league gag! This is too good to keep. I - you're very hard to withhold things from.

Now, I'm out - not outlining this as something we're going to do instantly and immediately. I'm simply outlining this as something which is a good idea. That is to say, a funny idea, an idea that would be a little sport.

It would work like this: An auditor in his spare time would find out in his immediate city, something like that, who were the more important political figures. Or he would get hold of a salesman. That's why I wanted you to get some salesmen into the PE, not because we wanted to teach all the salesmen in the world - but because it made a good communication line - but actually because I wanted you to have some people in your midst who were used to selling and handling people. See, personnel problem was what that came up from more than anything else.

All right. Now supposing - supposing this auditor got ahold of one of these salesmen and he gave them a list of these men, and he gave him some stationery, you know, and an address. And across the top of it, it said the Citizens' Purity League. I just love the title. It's just too corny for words, see?

And he gets the salesman to go around and call on all these prominent civic lenders, you see, and lend their name to an advisory board of the Citizens' Purity League. And then you add all those to the stationery, see? It isn't costing anything so far, you see? What an overt act you know?

And the literature of this Citizens' Purity League - I love that title. It - just - nothing is that corny! And it says that honest people are entitled to an honest government. And that's all it stands for, you see? And it says that a people are entitled to a government or to being governed by honest men. And everybody will go for this! Good roads, good weather, naturally! Naturally, a people are entitled to an honest government, you see? But that's its whole message.

And the Citizens' Purity League, now with all these advisory committee names, you see, which list every civic leader in the whole community, writes a letter - and this is the department you have to tackle first - to the chief of police on this stationery, saying you want to make a Security Check (give him your literature) on his personnel - not on him, on his personnel. You want to check over the heads of his departments and things like that, so that you can guarantee this sort of thing.

Well now, one of two things happens: Fascism takes place overnight or he cooperates. See, it gets to be an open-and-shut proposition. It's either this one or this one and there's not much in between. But of course he says - he looks at all these prominent names, and you go in and you talk to him.

And he says, „Well,“ he says, „um-hmm-hmm. It's very unusual-very unusual request you're making here. Very unusual request. What do you intend to do?“

„Oh, just talk to these men and check them over from the standpoint of record, you know, so as to give them a clean bill of health for this.“

And he's thinking all the time usually, you know, about, „I wonder how much percentage these guys are holding out on me,“ you know? „I wonder if there's a crook in the lot here that's denying me my percentage.“

Well, if he refuses, he knows what you're going to do. You're going to write every single member of your advisory committee; you're going to say the chief of police refuses completely to cooperate with any Security Check on his departmental personnel. Of course, you know what that means - there'll be a new chief of police in there at once. Because that's one thing civic leaders are able to do: change chiefs of police.

So the chances are he'll say, „Well, go ahead. Go ahead.“

So, you take - of course, the first one you want is the vice squad. And you just takes your little E-Meter and you just check over the vice squad for overts and withhold, and what you're looking for is unreported crimes by the person. Well, of course, as soon as the word gets around, practically everybody in the police department that couldn't stand a Security Check blows. Pshew! That mechanism will work right now, see?

So you simply call a meeting of your advisory committee or write them all a letter - never hold meetings of them - just write them all a letter in a bulletin and say, „Well, we've gotten rid of so many people because they had unsavory reputations and they're being replaced by more reliable men.“ And this committee says, „Fine. The Citizens' Purity League is working beautifully and we are getting a purer government and three cheers,“ see?

So that's fine. And it gets up to a point now where you turn around to the chief of police - it must be the police department, because that's the department that would be used to stop you. That must be the first entrance point. Always the police. They're the point of corruption. They're the point that a revolution takes place in. Remember that, always, you see? So if you clean them up first, you can keep from precipitating something very bad.

Now, these people, of course, arc all very interested now that the police department has been checked up and - checked out and everything is very happy in the town of whatever it is.

And you turn around to the chief and you say, „Well now, we want to check you out.“

And he goes through this, „Well, I can tell him - oh, no, wait a minute now. Oh, no, not that one!“ You know, he goes through this, „My life is an open - um - my life is - uh - my life bears inspection. I'm not on any criminal file - well, not in this area.“

But here's the point: You're not trying to fire these people. What you're trying to do is get preclears. Interesting gag, isn't it?

You check over the head of the homicide division and you find the head of the homicide division has been taking a little bit of a cut on the side - here, there, something of this sort. You find this, you don't instantly say, „Well, this is going to be reported, and you're going to be shot from guns.“ You're going to say, „Get your nose clean, son. It's going to cost you money.“

And then the word gets around that you actually charge people for straightening them up and that „this is a method of revenue and a gag and a racket.“ Your answer to that is instantaneously - instantaneously you say, „What? The people must be paid to straighten up the dishonesty of men who should have been honest in the first place. Make those men pay!“

And everybody will say, „That“ - in the advisory committee - „that's absolutely right. Absolutely right. Why should the people pay?“

This is just a gag. This is an interesting gag. But some such operation could open the door to responsible governments over the whole face of Earth and move away the specter of overthrow, by violence and criminality, the peoples of Earth and further degradation of their liberties as has been going on for the last few centuries. Would work. Think it over.

Of course, you get the accounts department and you get the other department and you finally work up to this person or that person, so forth. You could check - an auditor just could be kept busy day and night, just doing something like this and having a ball.

Now, if you started in on a program of this character and it was successful, you'd have to depend upon the PE franchises, you'd have to depend on these foundations to furnish enough people to be trained as auditors to meet the demand for auditors. So we've even got that side of it covered if something like this really happened rapidly.

Now, it's not very much to ask people to simply be honest, whatever their principles are - simply to be honest in their execution. And simply to demand that honest people deserve honest men in government roles. That's not very much to demand.

But you'd change the whole face of Earth. You would. And you'd make good something they were trying to do in 1775, which was strike off the chains of the world.

Now, I think it's time somebody took an interest in that program again. I don't think it ought to be left down here in the Capitol rotunda, forgotten, while a bunch of fellows go storming around the world from some other nation, telling them they're the men that are setting men free. When did Russia ever set any men free? From what prison camp? They've still got their prisoners of war from the last war. And these fellows are allowed to go around the world and talk with their big mouths and say that they're the pioneers of freedom? Oh, no. What Corn. It's not true.

So if this Country measured up to its total responsibilities, it would first have a totally honest government, at every level, and then would have a total responsibility for everything it started in the idea which it fostered out along the line so long ago. Do you agree with me?

Audience: Yes.

We are not helpless. There is something we can do about it. We can tell you the wrong thing to do always. That's nothing. Nothing is the greatest overt act you can commit. If you don't believe it, run into it sometime in your case. The times you did nothing: Those were the overt acts.

Well, we needn't be guilty of it in this particular lifetime, because you've got just as big a share in this as I have, as anybody has.

And with your knowingness goes a certain increased responsibility. That's a terrible thing, isn't it? You say, „Well, I want to know more about this.“ The second you know more about it, you're more responsible for it. Do you realize that?

And when you're in my boots and know all about it, and have since the beginning, you've really got a lot of responsibility to carry around.

But it's remarkably easy to carry. What's tough to carry is irresponsibility. That is very tough to carry around. If you don't believe it, look at your somatics.

Every somatic you have stems and rests, securely founded, on irresponsibility where responsibility should have been. I don't wish to threaten you. I'm simply telling you a technical fact. If you want to get somebody over a sore leg, you just find out what part of that leg he could be responsible for - using any form of the Responsibility command - and he'll have a well leg. Simple as that. Only it'll stay well, and that's what's important.

Now, in the field of the broader activities of Scientology, we are more and more accumulating to ourselves responsibilities in various directions, and we've gotten almost up to the point where if a natio- international explosion like war took place and so forth, why, it would have been, to some slight degree, our fault.

Now, this isn't bigheadedness as far as we're concerned. It's just that we didn't work quite as fast as we should, we didn't talk as fast as we should, we weren't quite as bright and smart and didn't forward our communication lines quite as rapidly as we should. You get the idea? We're up into a level where we would share responsibility with anything of this character.

You can ask yourself right now why things are in such bad shape in certain zones of the world, and you can - you could trace it down - if you were concerned with the bad shape of that particular zone - you could trace it down to the point where you committed an overt act against that zone and took it out of your perimeter of control. As simple as that.

You have a thing called zones of control. And actually, I've given you this lecture backwards. I should have talked to you about zones of control first and responsibilities of government second, but I just love this idea of a purity league. I mean it's just… Please, if you do something like this, call it the „Purity League,“ will you? Please? Nobody will believe the title, see?

Now, zones of control is something you should know something about, because it will clear up for you a great deal of difficulty in your future. A zone of control, where control is positive, contains the minimal overt acts by the individual. It's very simple, you see: high control, low overt acts. Got that?

So if you think your greatest overt acts are against the body you're sitting in, let me call to your attention that you can still control it, which tells you that your overt acts against your own body or your body line must be minimal compared to your overt acts against other areas that you don't control. You got that?

So, before, we've had the idea that if a thetan was trapped someplace, it must be the thing that he had the greatest overt acts against, you know?

This fellow just can't get out of being a personnel manager for corporations. No matter how he tries, he can't cease to be a personnel manager for corporations. He just can't cease to be this thing. You know? He says, „Well,“ he says, „well, I just must have committed so many overt acts, I'm trying to rectify them by being a personnel manager,“ or something of this sort.

No. No, that isn't it. He's staying with his highest zone of control where he has the least overt acts.

Now, a fellow who has no zones of control left has left no area in which he has very few overt acts. All areas he's in contact with have maximal overt acts. Got that?

Now, the bum down on skid row is a demonstration of a person whose overt acts against all zones and areas are so great as to deny him control of all zones and areas including his own body and himself. You see that?

Now, he's running responsibility on all fronts - reverse-wise. He knows he should be responsible in various zones and areas, and he'll tell you this! This is - this is his reform speech. This is what he gives the Salvation Army and people who try to do things for him, you see? He just runs it off like mad. And yet he doesn't take control in those areas. Alcoholics Anonymous are - those people have my respect, believe me, because how can anybody live with that many losses? That they stay in and continue to control, to a marked degree, a zone of almost total irresponsibility of that character is an attestation of great stick-to-ivity and great character. And my hat's off to them. That must be a tough beef.

And to try to talk to somebody who is slipping on his zone of control of the body into believing he has a wider zone of control, such as the third dynamic - it's as though he's being told about elephants with five trunks. He just knows they don't exist.

Knowledge and control and responsibility all go hand in glove. These things are all together.

In order to know about something, you must have some control over it - some slight control - to know about it. In order to have control over something, you must have some responsibility for it. In order to be responsible for it, you must know something about it. And we sort of have a brand-new triangle, composed of knowledge, control and responsibility as three corners.

Now we're up into the postulate zone. We're not talking very much about mechanics, flows, masses - you know, that sort of thing. We're talking about almost pure think. These are the considerations people have and, oddly enough, these considerations are rather easy to change.

Now, the only thing that can hurt anybody is the area where his control has relapsed. This we see very obviously, that an automobile will hurt you if you lose control of it. This is one of those obvious facts, and you could dust it off that way.

Actually, the fact is a little deeper than this. How did you lose control of the automobile? That's what's been unknown. Well, you lost control of the automobile - and this is the brand-new datum - by overt acts and withholds on the subject of automobiles. Just as easy … You commit enough overt acts against automobiles and they can hurt you, up - right up to the time when you cease to know anything about automobiles.

Do you know that there are people walking around in the streets right now - cars pass them all the time - they don't know anything about automobiles, they don't see automobiles, they don't know new models, they don't know anything about them at all. Do you know that?

They know they have no control of any kind whatsoever over them. They've ceased to perceive them. Their not-isness comes about through lessening the overt.

Automobile is a pretty wonderful gimmick. Well, they've just lessened it right on out of sight. So their responsibility factor has dropped by their realizing that they are a menace to automobiles. This sounds very funny, but they have proven to themselves conclusively that they're a menace to automobiles; therefore, they ought to be punished by automobiles and automobiles can hurt them.

But up to the time this mechanism takes place, it is utterly impossible to be injured by an automobile.

I have a subjective reality on some of this, and so do you. You know some zone of life - right this minute - you know some zone of life that apparently has the power to injure you. Let's just think about it for a minute. Do you do you know of such a zone?

Well, all right. The exact mechanic is that you committed overt acts against the terminals representing that zone that you now don't know about; you've buried them. All you see is the menace. But the overt acts are there. On a reciprocal, that area can now do something harmful to you. And horribly enough, it becomes more harmful the less responsibility you take for it. You really want to get caved in, just back off totally from an area.

You want to know why the world could be destroyed? Because nobody's taking any responsibility for it. You know why they don't take any responsibility for it? They've got too many overt acts against it - it and other worlds. So the world could be destroyed.

You want to prevent the world from being destroyed? Take responsibility for it. The odd part of it is, if you just sat down and took responsibility for it and ran out your overts - just you, see, just one person - ran out your overts against it - the very least that would happen is when everything else blew up, you would be sitting there untouched.

Now, there's the handling of the H-bomb. You know the country that's liable to get it in the neck from the H-bomb? Yeah. Who's the only country on Earth with an overt act with an A-bomb, huh?

Well, somebody better take a little zone of responsibility here. That was an awfully irresponsible thing to do; the war was practically won. And they tell you all about how many thousands of lives it saved amongst the troops, and explain, explain, justify, justify and justify. My God, the enemy was practically flat on the back.

They didn't even need to drop the bomb. They told the people down in Los Alamogordo they were going to have the Japanese come in and observe it, let them see one bomb explode, then ask for their surrender. And they didn't do that. They very dramatically went over and dropped the bomb! See? Overt act. It's a total nonsensical thing they did.

Well, this zone of responsibility and zone of influence is also, reversely, the zone of injury. When you've dropped responsibility - when you've dropped responsibility for a certain zone, it can hurt you.

Now, let's say you've been going along as a father for a long time and you haven't taken all the responsibility in certain areas as a father that you should have, you'll get bit! Don't send to find for some other cause. If it bit you very hard, you did it. Well, if you did it, you can undid it. How do you like that? You can! You can undo it. Anything you've done, you can undo one way or the other - somewhere on the track, given enough time. Even without processing, you could undo it.

A lot of you are going forward in life right now, just hoping you will get an opportunity to undo, oh, Lord knows what, killing blondes or something. Hoping you get enough opportunity to unkill battleships or something. Of course, some of you are out of luck entirely because maybe your overt acts are against heavy hussars - heavy cavalry, heavy horse cavalry - and you're trying to undo overt acts against heavy horse cavalry in an age that doesn't have any. So you have to become an historical writer.

Zone of influence is terrifically important. You want to know why we have not influenced further than we have? You want to know how we could influence further than we do? Well, the answer is there, with that triangle of knowledge, control and responsibility. All we have to do to straighten it out is get off our overts against any area we wish to control, and we'll control it again. It's very simple - so idiotically simple that only a very honest man with a very honest view could grasp the situation, which is probably our saving grace, you see?

It's the awfulest trigger mechanism you ever saw. It's as though we've got it totally set up so that if we turn bad, we can't influence anything very much. It's our sideways proof of why man is basically good.

And when a man finds out he's harmful to various zones of influence, he withdraws from them. If he finds that he can commit overt acts against areas that he really doesn't want to commit, he'll withdraw. He has to withdraw from those zones, that's all.

He's protecting them against himself - from himself, you see? He's protecting others and the other dynamics from his own influence.

Well, now the second that he gets off his overts, he can reestablish his control and reassert his responsibility for those areas which he has previously deserted.

Now, right here on a great big silver platter, you've got Earth; you've got Earth with a red ribbon around it. But it tells you very vividly that if you haven't got your overts against Earth off, and if you have not returned into beingness your goodwill toward Earth, you won't control it. And the silver platter is just as bright, but you won't even be able to touch a single corner of it. You wouldn't be able to put a finger on the rim unless you had done just that.

Now, to tell somebody who is hitting the bottom about the upper dynamics and his control zones on the upper dynamics of course is not cruelty; you're just simply talking over his head! You're just talking about something that doesn't exist!

Now, tell me how many overts most psychologists have against thetans. That interesting? Now, their overts are sufficiently great that the basic unit of beingness of the universe has disappeared to view. They don't even know it exists anymore. People who are compulsively going along this line, studying man, condemning him as an animal, all that sort of thing, why, nothing else is real. Now, Lord Dunsany - one of the greater writers of, not necessarily our time, but one of the greater writers of our immediate age - he's an awfully clever writer. I mean I love that man's work.

The story he tells about the swallows: They go north and south and they come back, and they roost during a part of the year near a barnyard. And they tell the hens in the barnyard about the glories and beauties they've seen: the Mediterranean, Africa, the north, Scandinavia, you know, all the beautiful things they've seen. And the hens listen to them.

One day, why, a hen got out of the barnyard and stumbled down the road and got across the road and fell into a ditch, terrible flurry, managed to get back up on the road and flee in panic and get inside the barnyard again. The next time the swallows came they were talking about South Africa and all the other beauties of Earth and so forth. The hens all stood around contemptuously, said, „We know all about that. You should hear our hen.“

Trying to tell somebody - trying to tell somebody about something that exists over which he no longer has any responsibility, against which he has total overt acts, is just something like the world compared to a flop across the barnyard, you see? It doesn't exist, you know?

So you'll find - you'll find, oddly enough, that at first you will discover yourself talking to a relatively uninformed audience. That is to say, you - I'm talking about you now. Talking in the world around you, you'll just keep talking to people, and they say, „Well, I don't know anything about that. I couldn't care anything about that. You mean that's life, and so forth. Well, I - none of my responsibility. It doesn't have anything to do with me.“ Got the idea? I mean…

You don't have many people listening to you, and this kind of upsets you. Well, you ought to know why it upsets you: It upsets you because you knew instinctively all the time - you must have known this - you were talking to people with a God-awful number of overt acts, who had totally dropped out of responsibility everywhere. And talking to such people was no fun. There's no way you can sell them on anything. The only thing you can do is recover to them some zone of existence. And recovering to them this zone of existence, you now find them sufficiently responsible to know about something.

That's how you communicate. Your best method of communication is simply run a PE Course and get the fellow's overts and withholds off on the early dynamics. And you suddenly find yourself talking to somebody who can control an area.

We have a little Communicator at HCO WW. She's only sixteen. We use her now as a senior Communicator. Used to be trouble all the time in the family, but we got all of her overts off against her family and it's now all going along smoothly - only she really doesn't know who caused all the smoothness to happen in her rather large family. She did. But she knows much about it now; she knows a great deal about it. But she didn't know anything before. All that happened to her is simply the auditor took off overts against one or another family members. That's all. And up came her zone of responsibility, so up came her knowledge.

So if you want to enlarge your communication zone, if you want to enlarge your zone of control, if you want to command more of the substance of this planet, if you want to share more in the game, why, the route is there. Not through so much a gimmick like the Purity League (But I hope somebody will do that, you know? If you don't I will, you know?) but actually by recovering actual zone of influence.

By recovering a zone of influence, you will be able - very, very thoroughly - by recovering this zone of influence to take responsibility for that zone and to guide it right. And anything you're protesting about going wrong, you have the power to make go right, providing you get your overts off against that zone.

Thank you.