SHSBC 67

SEC CHECKING: TYPES OF WITHHOLDS

A lecture given on 5 October 1961

Thank you.
Okay. This is the 5th of October, 1961, Special Briefing Course, Saint
Hill. And I'm going to talk to you today about Security Checking. And boy,
do you need a talk about Security Checking. Because what you don't know
about Security Checking would fill volumes.
Now, of course, I am a very bad authority on Security Checking from a
subjective point of view because you realize that if anybody went into my
crimes, it would just be too grim. No auditor would be able to stand up to
that. We realize that, you see? These crimes are so innumerable because
they cover such a long period of time. That's the main thing.
So I'm not talking to you from the viewpoint of sinlessness. Now, you must
get your point of view oriented there.
If I were talking to you from the point of view of total sinlessness - this
is an optimum state which religiously people get into. They somehow or
another lay the right pennies on the right altar and at that moment they
become totally sinless. Then they can condemn everyone. And this gives them
the right to condemn everyone, you see? And they can't approach this
subject objectively. And unlike various people of the past who have said,
"Repent ye. Repent ye. Ye kingdom of heaven is at ye hand," something of
that sort, people who do have sins, you see, find it much easier to talk
about the subject. They have some reality on the subject. And let me assure
you that from my point of view, if I had it all to do all over again, I
would probably do the same things.
So I don't want to give you the false impression that I give you any
lecture on the subject of Security Checking from the basis that my
security, unlike yours, has been pure for 200 trillion years. That would
make a very great unreality. No, amongst us boys and us girls, what we have
all been up to, only could not bear the light of day because we think it
couldn't bear the light of day.
Now, it's funny that every group that has sought to enforce sinlessness on
one and all, with the stake, vast punishment, condemnation, assignment to
hell - that is the primary mechanism: They give you a ticket straight to
hell.
Doesn't work sometimes, by the way. There was a rash of murders - I've told
you this story before, I'm sure - but there was a rash of murders up in the
Eskimo tribes. And the Royal Northwest Mounted Polices went up there to get
their man and they found out that there had been a missionary in the area.
And the missionary had told all the Eskimos what was right and what was
wrong and had convinced them, of course, that if they murdered anyone, they
would go straight to hell and burn forever. And the idea of being warm
enough for any length of time...
So you see, lecturing from the high platform of sinlessness, you very often
run into the creation of more sin than you get rid of. And what's
interesting is that any group which wishes to blow itself to flinders
simply has to engage upon an activity of making everybody guilty of their
sins. It'll hang together for a little while and everybody will be
miserable while it does, but it'll eventually blow up.
Why? Because it now gives people a complete map on how to accumulate
withholds. The group mores defines what is a withhold. It says you must not
be guilty of such sins and such sins and such sins and therefore and
thereby blows itself to pieces, of course, because it says everybody that
has committed these sins should withhold them, even though they are saying
at the same time: "You must confess them." But they make confession, you
see, rather rigorous.
Now, we have to understand this at the outset of Security Checking. Thou,
the auditor, are not sinless. That's what we have to understand about it.
And thou art not an enforcer of a public mores while thou art being an
auditor. Thou art simply a Security Checker, period. You got it? You're not
the avenging angels of the Mormon Church or something like this, see, while
you're security checking. You're simply a person who is skilled in certain
technology to attain a better frame of mind and actually a much greater
honesty and decency on the part of somebody else.
You have the weapon in your hands with which to attain a greater decency, a
greater state of health, a greater efficiency, a greater ability, higher
ability for ARC - you've got the weapon in your hands with which to do
this. There is the E-Meter and there is the Security Check, and there is
you and your technology.
So you are going to be able to accomplish what groups have been trying to
accomplish for a long time. You are going to be able to make an honest man
or an honest woman. You have the weapon with which to do this. That's very
important for you to realize, because all of these other mechanisms - such
as, "make the person guilty," "show the person the right way," you see,
"and the error of his ways," and frowning upon him and punishing him in
some fashion or other because he's just gotten off a withhold - are
mechanisms of older groups by which they sought to enforce their mores.
Because they had no way to make honest people that was positive and
lasting, then they used these very poor mechanisms of: "Make them good and
guilty, punish them, show them what will happen to them if they do that
again." All of these other things are added in. But what are those?
Those are the security mechanisms of yesteryear. Those are yesterday's
tools. So you don't combine Scientology with other therapies. And that is
all that you would be doing if you were trying to make somebody guilty and
so forth, and doing something else with a Security Check rather than just
getting off withholds.
So let us get down to a simplicity. You, the auditor, may have successfully
waded through innumerable Sec Checks and be in good shape and so forth.
That doesn't necessarily mean that "thou hast been without sin all the days
of thy life." That hasn't anything to do with it, you see? It simply means
that technically you've gotten up on this step. You were lucky. You came
200 trillion years along the track with red hands and black heads, and
finally got out anyhow.
Well, that's beside the point. This point is important because if you, the
auditor, are still worried about your own withholds or if you are trying to
put up the presence of being - because you are a Scientologist and an
auditor, and maybe a Release or something like that - if you're trying to
put up the attitude, you see, that you yourself are sinless, then you will
sometimes Q-and-A and avoid the other fellow's withholds.
In other words, you let the public sell you the idea that because you are a
Scientologist, you should never have any sins. You get the idea? What have
they done in essence? They have managed to bottle you up just like putting
a cork in a bottle. Now you don't ever dare get off any withholds, you
think, maybe, you see?
You can get into all kinds of odd cul-de-sacs, because we are still crossed
up with the older therapy of condemnation and punishment and that was
unworkable.
Let me point out that there are several people in prisons in the world.
There are lots of people still doing penance in religious groups in the
world. And if we add this up and recognize it clearly, we won't put
ourselves in the same category. The old processes haven't worked. So don't
let them work on you in reverse.
Don't ever get into a state where, because you are in a district or an area
where you are holding the fort and keeping the torches burning, you never
dare get off any withholds. You've permitted yourself to be sent on the
road to hell. Do you see that? And your Security Checking would
deteriorate. Inevitably your Security Checking would deteriorate. You would
be afraid to ask people questions. You would start tacit consent. You'd
start mutual avoidance of certain subjects. You get what I'm talking about,
don't you?
The most serious barrier that an auditor has to overcome in Security
Checking is not necessarily his own case, but a courage in asking - to ask
the questions. You know, that's kind of a raw, mean, brassy sort of a thing
to do.
You sit down. Here's this nice young girl. Everybody knows she's a virgin.
Everybody knows this. And you're in very good ARC with her and everything
is going to go along fine. And then you say to her, crassly and meanly,
"Have you ever committed any carnal sins of any character or another? Have
you ever been to bed in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong
man?"
And put it mildly, this is a startling question. But since I've started
security checking, I haven't found any virgins.
Well now, it requires a certain amount of brass, it requires a certain
amount of nerve, to sit there and ask all these fantastic questions, you
know? "Have you ever - rob, murder, burn, slain, gutted, lied?" you see?
And it sounds like you must be sitting there running off a catalog of the
penal codes of French Guiana or something, you know? And here you go! And
well, that's rough enough, if all of your withholds are off, that's rough
enough. You sit down - perfectly unoffensive person - and you all of a
sudden start asking him this sort of thing, you know?
Well, if you've got a whole bunch of withholds that you yourself are very
afraid somebody is going to get next to, you will back straight off of the
whole subject of Security Checking. And that is the only thing I see in the
future of Scientology that could happen, is all auditors become "without
sin" - they have never had any sin and because they are Releases or
Scientologists or something, you see, then they never dare get off their
withholds because the students in the Academy might hear about it. And all
sorts of catastrophic actions might occur. And their reputation is utterly
smashed and ruined, you see? So therefore, the best thing to do, you know,
is just kind of avoid the whole subject. And that's what they'll finish up
doing, too - avoiding the whole subject.
They won't have that additional Èlan necessary to ask this poor, little
innocent girl, "Have you ever raped your baby brother?" you see? You know,
it's just something that they would not bring themselves to be able to do,
providing they themselves were actually withholding withholds. Do you see
the point I'm trying to make with you here?
So you could get a broad and general disintegration if you permitted the
public at large to insist that because a person was a skilled Scientologist
and in good case shapes, he had never done anything wrong. You see how that
could be added up on you?
Now, you'll find some Instructor in an Academy here and there, and he's
thinking to himself "Uuughh! If the students ever heard about this - ." And
you think somebody in the HGC and he's saying, "We-ell, I don't kno-ow. I
don't kno-ow. I don't know. Last year - here's this whole subject of
Security Checking coming up again and if they found out last year that
after I audited that girl, why, that happened - ."
And he sits there and he starts sweating over this thing: "What would the D
of P think? What would other auditors think? What would the organization
think?" so on. And the next thing you know, he's sitting in session and the
question comes up. He has to make the decision whether to security check
this person or go on running the level. Oh, he will go on running the level
every time. He'll avoid Security Checking.
That person who is avoiding Security Checking in his own life will avoid
Security Checking of other people. And you can just mark your - it down
that if you find somebody who is ducking Security Checks in all direction,
you have somebody who will not security check.
You would be amazed how your Security Checking improves to the degree that
you yourself have gotten through the Security Checks. It is absolutely
fabulous. You can almost tell whether an auditor has withholds to the
degree of skill that he security checks. And the worse his Security
Checking is, the more certain you become that he has withholds. That's an
interesting coordination, isn't it? And yet it's a visible one.
So that going up the line and on the long haul in Scientology, you actually
could get to a point where the public insists that those people who are
carrying along - because Scientology is getting more and more important -
more and more important. You could actually get people running an operation
on you. They would start running this old therapy, you see? Because you're
the leading auditor in an area, or something of the sort, you therefore
must never have done anything in your whole life. Doesn't follow. But what
it operates as is an "ought to be." And you could surrender to this "ought
to be" and therefore never permit yourself to be security checked because
somebody might talk.
Do you realize that that action alone would slow down the whole forward
impulse of Scientology by putting in lousy case shape every important
auditor and person in Scientology? It could be done. And that is the
Achilles' heel of Scientology. That is it. That we become so important that
we must therefore - it follows in some peculiar way - be without sin,
without mishap, without ever taking our finger off our number in life, and
without ever forgiving it if somebody has. If we ever got into that state,
we'd be finished. We'd be finished.
But we don't have to get into that state because we've got the tools which
keeps a group together without the whip. See, the whip has become a useless
and antiquated object. Like the electric shock machine, it can be dedicated
to the museums of tomorrow.
Now, someday we're going to take one of these prisons here and set it up
with dummies just as a showpiece of what man used to do. That's the only
use you'll have for it.
You know, I think I ought to at this moment probably make you all members
of a very secret society. Speaking of withholds, there is a very secret
society. It doesn't do much withholding, but it is very secret, mostly
because nobody recognizes it as an actual society. They all think it's a
joke, see?
The society's - is the SPG. And the SPG. And I'm now going to make you all
members of the SPG. It's the Society for the Prevention of Government.
Interesting society. All you have to do to be a member of it is say you
are.
You know, I don't think a single revolutionary charge of any kind
whatsoever could be filed against a member of this organization. Because
everybody prevents government to some degree, you see? It'd just be to what
degree are we preventing government? The only thing governments get upset
about is the overthrow of government by force, which means, of course, the
setting up of another government on top of an existing government. We're -
aren't interested in doing that. We're just interested in preventing
government.
But anyway, the mechanisms by which man has been governed had in it the
idea that man was evil and therefore had to be held in line by evil
practices. And if man was evil, then he had to be held in line with evil.
And they never noticed that the evil in the world stemmed totally from
holding man in line. That was the fascinating part of it.
You have to have been a member of a police force to recognize that the
police create crime. They do it quite unintentionally, but they do create
crime. They get a game called "cops and robbers" going. In this game -
every criminal busily plays this game. If there wasn't that much to it,
why, there they'd be.
Well, for instance, there's some young fellow was walking down the street
one day and he suddenly read his name in the newspapers and reported to the
police. And for the next six or eight days he was sitting under the hot
lights and they were questioning him and throwing him into cells and being
mean to him and so forth. Actually, he hadn't done a thing. He hadn't even
been there. He hadn't even been present. And they turned him loose after a
while. He's very relieved to have been turned loose. What do you think his
ideas are going to be on the subject of police now?
Now, we start building it up from there. A society without ARC is a society
which inevitably will have crime. Man is good, but he is only good to the
degree that he's in ARC with existence. And when you throw him out of ARC
with sections of society or whole governments at one fell swoop, he gives
the appearance of being very bad. Actually, all he's trying to do is
survive and protect himself and keep the thing from going all to hell. He
has his own peculiar notions about how he does this and the primary
mechanism he uses is withhold. That's how he thinks he can hold everything
together - by withholding everything. The primary mechanism.
So the police are dedicated to making everybody withhold till the mores of
the criminal mainly consists of: "You must not talk to the police." Well,
that's quite interesting. "You mustn't talk to the forces of law and
order." Ah, well, that's interesting. Well, that necessarily forces
somebody further out of communication with law and order.
And if you think criminals are without government, you're mistaken. They
have their own government. And a very wild, gruesome government it is, too.
But the society is forced apart to the degree that people are made guilty.
Now, why does a man wind up as a murderer? Well, he has long since resigned
from the human race - long since. If you want to prevent a murder, you
don't hang murderers. You make it unnecessary to resign from the human
race. That's easy.
I'll give you a murder where the law was definitely at fault. Washington,
DC. A taxicab driver - if I remember the story right - had a wife and this
wife kept going off with another man. And he had a hard time of it because
he tried to take the matter to court, he tried to get a divorce, he tried
to quiet it down, he tried to hold the home together - he took every
measure he could possibly take, but of course there was no law that would
back him up. You see, he didn't have any evidence and he didn't have vast
sums of money, you see, to buy detectives to accumulate this and that, you
know? And there was nobody he could go to. And he got more and more and
more seething about this, because he was basically out of communication,
and he finally killed both of them.
Well, what was interesting to me about this particular case is that for two
years this fellow had had some sort of a grievance and there was no agency
in society to remedy any part of that grievance; there was nothing he could
do about it. So he finally did the last desperate jump. Now, of course, he
himself had various withholds, but were these withholds actual or
unintentional? And now we get to a very interesting subject: the
unintentional withhold.
This is where you get your new ARC break process, by the way, in the
rudiments - is the unintentional withhold. So it's quite important, this
unintentional withhold. I mentioned to you yesterday that a person very
often finds himself in a position and then considers he's guilty because
he's in that position. He finds himself outside the group, so therefore he
feels he must have done something to be expelled from the group, which is
quite remarkable.
Well, this unintentional withhold is the same thing. The person is not able
to tell anybody. Now, it might be that there is nobody there to tell it to.
He's not able to tell anybody. It's not that he wouldn't tell anybody if he
could, but he can't tell anybody because there isn't anybody to tell it to
or nobody will listen. And you'll find these all over insane asylums.
You'll find people sitting around with unintentional withholds because
nobody will listen to them.
They say, "Well, these bugs, they just keep crawling all over me," and the
psychiatrist and everybody says, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We know, we
know, we know. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." And the person just knows he
isn't reaching anybody and he just gets more and more fixed and obsessed
with this idea of these bugs crawling over him, because it's an
unintentional withhold. He doesn't intend to withhold it, but he finds
himself in the position of doing so because nobody will listen.
So you must take into account this as a factor. It is a very important
factor or I wouldn't have put it in your rudiments processes. "What weren't
you able to tell an auditor?" Well, that makes a withhold. Well, you
weren't unwilling to tell the auditor, you see? You were trying desperately
to tell the auditor, but the auditor never listened.
And when you run this ARC break process, you are really knocking out
unintentional withholds. And the results that you get from that particular
ARC break process are quite similar to the results of a Security Check. But
in this we're addressing some other subject. The Security Check is
addressed to the more or less intentional withhold. But that ARC break
process is addressed to an unintentional withhold. It is a withhold.
Now, there's many a criminal has walked in and said, "I've just murdered my
wife," and the desk sergeant has swatted a couple of more flies and paid no
attention to him. And he's walked outside and he's gone up to the cop on
the beat and he said, "I just murdered my wife," and so forth. And nobody
paid any attention to him and nobody ever found the wife. And he was
perfectly willing to take the penalties of society, but nobody believed
him. And you get the most peculiar kind of withhold there is. And you
mustn't overlook this as a withhold in Security Checking. The unintentional
withhold.
So that is, you might say, about the lowest rung of withholds. It's
unintentional. He didn't mean to withhold it, but nobody will listen.
All right. Now we get the intentional withhold which is a withhold because
he would be punished if he admitted it. And we get a different type of
withhold although it has the same mechanism, produces the same actions.
And then there is another withhold: He must withhold it because it will
damage his beingness - in other words, his reputation. Those are
reputational withholds. He's got an idea of what people think his beingness
should be and he's upholding his beingness by not admitting to certain
withholds because other people might get another notion of him than the
notion which he is trying to broadcast. So therefore he mustn't have
reputational rumors and gossips and things of this sort of character. So
therefore and thereby it's a reputational withhold. He hasn't really done
anything. It's well, actually, his family came from the lower marshlands of
the Thames or something, down in the mudflats of Southampton or something,
you know? And he just - well, ha-ha, ha-ha - he just wouldn't rather this
be known, you know? His family, by advertisement, always came from upper
Berkshire. It's quite interesting.
Now, familial connections aren't the least of it, you see? People are
always trying to represent themselves as a little bit better. Well, that's
fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but it results in a bunch of
reputational withholds.
Now, between the last two categories there's a borderline category of
things which, if they were out, people would think much less of him - you
know, that kind of thing. He really wouldn't be punished, he isn't worried
about it on account of beingness, he's just thinking, well, people wouldn't
talk to him or something like that if they knew this sort of thing.
Well, if you'll notice, all these things add up to cut communication. And a
group is based basically on communication. So a group falls apart to the
degree that there is no communication and these are the three broad
categories: the unintentional withhold, the withhold for fear of punishment
and the withhold in its various grades that protect beingness. And these
three things, of course, are all shattering to groups. They knock a group
apart in a hurry, but in fact, up to a certain point, appear to cohese a
group.
I don't know if you've ever been on Fifth Avenue or upper Fifth Avenue or
in Hollywood or something like that and listened to what went on in lieu of
reputation. It runs on something on the order of fifteen or twenty lies a
minute when they're talking, you see? It's almost impossible to keep up
with. And there's the most fantastic unreality about those particular
groups. They are very unreal. And you get near those people, you see, and
around in those
groups, and you think, "Ooooooooo, I don't know," you know? It's a - . You
don't quite know what's going on. You're just not quite sure what is - what
is wrong there. But there just is something wrong. Well, what is wrong is
that it's a group with totally cut communication lines.
Well, how can you have a group with a totally cut communication lines?
Well, I guess they're the only people who will listen to each other's lies,
so they stay together. Something on this order.
Now, a Security Check, or any method by which you are overcoming withholds,
is dedicated to the restoration of communication. And it happens that if
communication is totally restored, you see - if man knew what he was doing
when he made people withhold slightly - with communications totally
restored in any past group of which the fellow is no longer part, he will
no longer be hung up in that group.
See, if you just restore his communication - it's just the ability to
communicate; that's all you're restoring - why, you'll get this phenomenon
of him no longer being parked on the track with that group. And that's the
only thing you're basically doing. And those things which exist in present
time, of course, prevent him from becoming a part of any group to which he
is attached and so give him a basic isolation.
And of course the basic group with which you are working is not necessarily
the group called Scientologists. The basic group with which you - which in
itself is a powerful enough group and it has enough group to it by far -
but the group in which you are doing the withhold is a group called a
session: auditor and pc, you see? Now, that is a group.
And when the individual is too individuated and when he develops an
unintentional withhold in that group, or the auditor conducts himself in
such a way as to bring about punishment because of a withhold or a crime,
or the auditor demands specious reactions from the pc, the auditor has shot
the group.
It is a group. It's a group of two. Auditing is a third dynamic activity -
even though sometimes it deteriorates into a second. And now and then
deteriorates into a first. You burn your finger, and there's nobody around
and you stand there and run it out.
Now, there, all three of these things must be pretty well patched up before
you get a good group called a session. You've got to have the unintentional
withholds off; that's for sure. Just try - you know the only thing that can
deteriorate a profile in twenty-five hours is ARC breaks.
Now, if you're interpreting profiles - you find a profile and here it is,
there it is, and the profile has dropped. Now, it is true that profiles
move and they are pictures of valences and they do come on at the bottom
and go to the top - all of that is also true. But the particularity we're
speaking of now is where the person didn't do well and dropped: you can
assume the pc was being operated with an ARC break.
Now, the basis of an ARC break is being made to have an unintentional
withhold from that immediate group. And that, actually, apparently, from
the immediate empirical results which one observes, is more serious than an
actual withhold, intentional. An unintentional withhold in an auditing
session reflects more seriously on the auditing group and on the results of
processing than an intentional withhold. This is very interesting.
And now we move into another category. I'd hardly dignify the person with
the title of "auditor" who pulled this one, but we have an enforced
withhold on the basis of improved state. And you'll find this happens every
once
in a while. Some person who is pretending to audit gets no results
whatsoever and then he shakes his finger in the pc's face and seeks to
convince the pc that the pc has been much bettered by it all and is now
Clear or something. And the pc thinks he had better not say anything to the
contrary of this and you've got that third grade of withhold. You've got
something there which is protecting beingness.
You see, he's now got a withhold. His withhold is he really didn't get any
improvement and yet the auditor has forced him to admit that he got
improvement. But actually what he's withholding is the fact that he didn't
get any improvement, and if he said he didn't get any improvement, this
would hurt his new status.
We just finish auditing the fellow, and you take him out in front of the PE
and you say, "He's Clear." So now the fellow doesn't dare break down and
say he's aberrated as hell and so you get one of these reputational
withholds.
So all three kinds of withholds can occur in an auditing session. The
unintentional, the intentional and the reputational. These three things can
all occur as a result of an auditing session.
You very, very seldom find the third one occurring, because very few
auditors are that bad. But you sometimes find a pc who is trying to
propitiate and who is trying to tell the auditor that he feels much better
now while his head is falling off, because he doesn't want to make the
auditor feel bad. You know the mechanism. So they don't want to make the
auditor feel bad, so they say they feel better and they don't. Well, now
they're sort of protecting their beingness in some fashion or other by a
projection. They're protecting the auditor's beingness by not feeling any
worse.
You'll find all of these mechanisms can be present in an auditing session.
So where you get the idea of Security Checking - and very odd, we very
often develop a word in one field, you see, in one field of endeavor; and
then we, because we have an agreement on that word, we develop a special
term which is thereafter more or less meaningless to one and all. But we
all know what a Security Check is. A Security Check is something you do in
processing to make the pc better.
Well now, how did that happen? Well, basically a Security Check was
developed in order to weed out personnel and keep randomity from occurring
in Central Organizations. And then Area Secretaries and Association
Secretaries began to find that this made people much better, and the Area
Secretary would be busy spending morning, noon and night and all the
weekend trying to catch up with his Security Checking - because sometimes
they took, for one Security Check, twenty hours. So we get down to the
reductio ad absurdum that Smokey told me about the other day: somebody
actually turned in a whole bunch of overts on a written questionnaire
against the Area Secretary in order to get another Security Check. So I
would say that at that point the idea of creating security with a Security
Check was a - not a very useful nor workable activity.
And yet we have this word. And I've two or three times halfheartedly
started to change it over to the idea of processing check, and started to
call it a processing check and so forth. But it still remains a Security
Check.
Now we do have a Security Check, which is Form 7. There is an actual
Security Check now in existence. So what do we call this Security Check?
And I find myself, in writing a bulletin, getting into the interesting
state of - I write: "Now, you should security check - the Area Secs should
security check - ." And then, well, how do I say this? So, the best way to
say it is underscore security. So you have a Security Check and you have a
Security Check. So anyway, we'll let it ride, let it ride. It won't pull
anything down if it stays that way.
So here we have - here we have this thing called a Security Check. Well,
basically, it's trying to establish a group which can engage in assistance.
And no assistance can occur if there is no group there on the auditor to
pc. So you have right in your rudiments there a method of getting around
this. And you are asking the pc for all of his unintentional withholds when
you say, "Is there something that you haven't been able to tell an
auditor?" And you are really running a Security Check right at that point.
Well, of course the basic reply to it is, "What didn't an auditor do?"
which would be the games-condition response that occurred at that moment.
So these two questions go together rather powerfully. One of them is asking
for an unintentional withhold and the other is asking for an auditor in a
games condition. And they go bing, bing, bing, bing. And I think you find
that since I dreamed up these new rudiments and tested them out, that
you're doing much better.
I'll make a remark in passing about those new rudiments. There is an
assessment that has to be done for the present time problem. I never
bothered to remark on it. I thought you'd latch that as you went by.
It says, "What is unknown about that," or some such wording, "problem with
blank?" Now, you can't run a condition as the blank.
The pc says, "Uh well, I'm terribly worried, I'm terribly worried about the
airiness of everything."
Well now, the auditor then can't put the thing together as, "What is
unknown about that problem with the airiness of everything?" You'll find
this is nonfunctional.
What you've got to do is do a little assessment and get him to state the
problem more exactly. And you do the assessment on the meter. And you try
to find the terminal that is airy or the terminal that is everything. And
you shake that down and you do a little bit of a terminal assessment and he
suddenly comes up and he says, "Well, the airiness of the room," or
something of that sort, or "The airiness of my car. It hasn't any hood
anymore."
And you would run it, if you had to, by that time. You see, you only run
those things which you can't get rid of with two-way comm or assessment.
You realize that, don't you? That running is the way you take care of the
things that didn't blow. So you always be prepared to have an ARC break, a
present time problem or anything else blow before you had to run it. You
just start doing an assessment on one of these undifferentiated problems
and you'll find it doesn't react anymore.
And you repeat the question, "Well, do you have a present time problem
now?" and you see you had some enormous surges on the meter and so forth.
And you say, "Well, do you have a present time problem now?" before you
settle down to run the thing and you can't even get a quiver on it, see?
You've blown it by assessment.
All right. Now, the pc who has a present time problem that the auditor will
not take up is being given a withhold. So there is another source of
withholds that cross at the present time problem level. But at the same
time, the pc will very often try to withhold present time problems because
he's afraid the auditor will take them up and waste session time. Because
auditing is very valuable. All pcs consider auditing time very, very, very,
very, very, very valuable. There just isn't enough auditing. That's it.
And this gets so catastrophic that a pc will force auditing where it
shouldn't occur in some direction: He wants the auditing that is necessary
to resolve his case, not the auditing which is just fooling around with
those fool rudiments, you see - and will actually sometimes attempt to
withhold a present time problem for fear that the auditor will take it up.
All right. Now, the action of running a Security Check is a relatively
simple action. It requires a high degree of familiarity with the meter so
that you aren't fumbling with the meter. It requires a very definite,
positive knowledge of the E-Meter. It requires, in addition to that, a
knowledge of whether or not the needle is reacting on the question or on
the parts of the question. You have to know how to compartment a question.
You have to know how to make the E-Meter tell the truth. And that is sort
of high-school E-Metering.
People who didn't know much about E-Meters - . I think there was somebody
in - I think it was almost into Canada (someplace in the United States;
they were just about as far - as close to not being in the United States as
they could be) got the idea that everybody had been PDHed throughout the
United States by everybody else. And this became ridiculous in the extreme.
And they were going all over telling everybody how everybody was PDHing
everybody and they were just having a marvelous time. And they were getting
out magazines about the subject, and so on.
And the most awful quiet ensued. There was a quiet where you could have
heard an engram drop, you know? Because after I explained compartmentation
in an article in Ability magazine, well, you know, we never heard another
word. It is the most profound silence. It is a sort of a negative silence.
It has texture.
Well, that's because of this: That whole nonsense took place because
somebody couldn't really handle an E-Meter; they didn't know how to
compartment questions. So if you ask anybody if he had ever been the victim
of pain-drug-hypnosis, well, of course you were going to get a fall, a
fall, a fall and a fall, because you get falls on just the word victim, you
get falls on just the word pain, you get falls on just the word drug, and
you will occasionally get falls on just the word hypnosis.
And if a person has withholds on somebody else, you will get a fall on that
other person's name - if you got withholds and overts on some particular
line. So there's a source of five falls in one question.
"Have you ever been a victim of pain-drug-hypnosis from President
Eisenhower?" Five falls. You see, it's falling on the words of the
question. It isn't falling on the question. And the way you do that is you
take the question apart. You knock out - just say the word: "Victim." And
you get a fall. You say, "What was that?"
"Well, victim."
Well, what - what not?
"Well," you say, "what about victim?"
"Well, I always hate to be a victim."
"Well, what the heck. Have you ever made any victims? Have you ever accused
anybody of being a victim?"
"Oh yes, my wife. She's being a victim all the time, all the time, all the
time. Always a victim. Yes, yes, yes, yes, always a victim. And she says
so, what's more."
"Oh, is that so? 'Victim.'" No reaction. Ah, we got that word cooled. "All
right. Pain." Clang! goes the needle, you see? And you say, "Well, what
about pain?"
"Oh, I've always been afraid of pain."
"Well, what about the word pain?"
"Well, oh, the word pain. Oh-ho-ho. Oh, you mean the word pain."
"Yeah. Well, how about the word pain?" No reaction.
"Okay. Drug. Have you ever taken drugs? You ever give anybody drugs? Are
you afraid of drugs? Anything wrong with drugs? Have you ever given anybody
any drugs illegally?" Clang! "When did that happen?"
"Oh, well. My mother was very sick and I forged a prescription."
"Oh, is that so? Oh, how interesting. All right. Now, when was that?"
"Oh, such and such a time."
"All right. Thank you very much. Drug." No reaction. See?
"President Eisenhower." Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang. "What about
President Eisenhower?"
"Oh, nothing. I was part of a ban-the-bomb march, and we said we'd dance on
his grave. Yeah. That's what that was. Yeah."
"Is that all there is to that?"
"Well, yes. I've been violently opposed to that particular activity."
"Oh, yeah. All right. How many - how often have you done that?"
"Oh, lots of times. Lots of times."
"All right. How about President Eisenhower? Okay." No fall.
"Now, have you ever been the victim of pain-drug-hypnosis from President
Eisenhower?" Now, if the person has, you will now get a fall on the
question. And if you want to be absolutely sure, go back all through all
the words again and compartment them.
Now, there is more to it than this on compartmentation. I noticed the other
day one of the boys didn't have it quite straight. And that is, you
compartment the phrases in addition to the words. You take the words and
get the charge off them. And then you take the phrases and read the phrases
out and see if each phrase is clean.
And then when you read the whole question, let me assure you that if there
is a fall, it is true. There is no withhold or charge on it unless it is
true. And there won't be a single needle quiver. And that is the proper way
of compartmenting a Security Check question. And you'll find you very often
have to compartment them quite painfully. Otherwise, you'll make some
fantastic error.
Now, the first and foremost method of preventing yourself from making an
error is to forget all about two needle phenomena. One of the needle
phenomena you should forget about is the latent read. Just ignore all
latent reads. Have nothing to do with a latent read. If the read occurred
more than half a second after you finished the question read, ignore it.
Just ignore it. Just drop it. Because it'll be on somebody else or is on
another Security Check question. It isn't on the same question or it didn't
happen to them.
Now, that's how come you sometimes wind up getting off other people's
withholds. Other people's withholds will give you a latent read. So you are
buying latent reads. You ask somebody, "Well, did you ever drown a cat?"
"Well, my Aunt Mamie drowned a cat once."
This would be the response. Now, that would be a latent read. You would get
that as a latent read. And every time you pick up a latent read on a
Security Check question, you can expect that you haven't got a withhold,
you've got a red herring. And you can go chasing all over the bank looking
for this red herring. And you waste more time on latent reads than any
other single action in auditing.
That read, if the person has a withhold on it, let me assure you the
question does not wear out. If the person is still holding onto a withhold
on that question and it's not on one of the words of the question, it's not
on one of the phrases of the question - nothing of that sort - but is on
the question: the more you ask it and the more he withholds, the more
instant the read. It gets so that he just realizes you're going to ask the
question again, you get the read. There isn't a tenth of a second lag.
You read the question - pang - it's acting. You read the question - bang! -
it's acting. Read the question - bang! - it's acting.
You see, the reactive mind is an instantaneous mind. All time is now. And
if it's a really reactive mind, of course, the closer it is to reactivity,
the more rapid and instant the read will be. And it's as simple as that. It
is very simple. And if it is not reactive, the read will be latent. It will
wait before it falls. It'll wait for half a second. It'll wait for a
second.
And an auditor who sits there and asks the question: "Have you ever drowned
a cat?" watching the E-Meter, and then gets a reaction, and then says,
"What was that?" is going to find Aunt Mamie drowning a cat. And it was
something the pc didn't do and it was something the pc never has withheld.
You can just count on that.
One of the tricks of reading, one of the bad tricks of reading on latent
reads - is to look at the meter, then look at the question, then read the
question, then look at the pc, then look at the meter. You'll catch more
latent reads that way and boy, will you miss more instant reads. You will
just miss them left and right. Why? Because your eye isn't on the E-Meter
at the moment you ended the question. And your eye must be on the meter
needle the instant that you end that question. Otherwise, you're going to
miss the twitch. So what you do is - the sequence is always: question, look
at the meter and speak the question and then look at the pc. Paper, meter,
pc.
Paper: You see that the question is about rape. You don't care whether the
question is exact or not. That is to say, "Have you ever raped anybody?"
you can ask that in a thousand different ways. "Have you ever contemplated
rape?" "Have you ever had ideas of rape?" "Do you - have you ever
remembered anything odd about rape?" "Has something odd to you - " like
this. And you're going to get down to some kind of a withhold if there is
one. So you look at the question and then you look at the meter and you say
the question and then you can look at the pc all you care to. And you won't
get into this nonsense about latent reads.
The way I see auditors doing this is they look at the paper and they read
the question and then they look over at the E-Meter and then they wait and
they wait and they wait and they wait and they wait and they wait and they
wait. And the question is, what the hell are they waiting for? Because it
would have occurred in a tenth of a second. If you're going to follow it
through, it would have occurred in a tenth of a second. And that's the way
you security check. Man, you can really tear down the line if you do that.
Yeah. You can really rip up a Security Check. Whammity, whammity, whammity,
wham. Pc doesn't even have to speak. You look at the paper: "Have you ever
raped anybody?" Nothing. That's all.
Now, if you want to go at this a little more academically, you never look
at the meter at all until the pc says "no." The Security Check can be
totally without the meter right up to the point where he says ''no," at
which time you repeat the question looking at the meter. And that makes for
very good sessioning. When you find you're doing this easily, oh man, it
just goes on and on and on.
Why are you looking at the meter if you're not trying to catch him out?
See? You're trying to find out if something is reactive. That's why you're
looking at the meter. Well, if the guy is going to tell you his withholds,
why are you looking at the meter? That's what it amounts to.
You say, "Well, have you ever robbed a bank?"
And the pc says, "Well, if you put it that way, yes. I uugh-uh - yes, I
robbed a bank," and so forth.
And you say, "When was that?" and so on, so on, so on, so on, so on. You
can go a little further. "Who've you been withholding it from?"
"Oh, I've been withholding it from everybody," and so forth. "My fellow
bank robbers. I didn't want them to know that - ," so forth, and then,
etc., yap-yap, and so on. They got it all - they got it squared around.
Good.
And you say, "All right. Now, you ever robbed any other banks?"
"Well yes, I did," and so forth. "And that was pretty bad," and so forth,
and etc.
And you say, "Okay. Well, have you ever robbed a bank?"
Pc says, "Aside from those, no."
You say, "Good. Have you ever robbed a bank? Yes, what's that? What's that
next one?"
"Oh well, that's just that little old bank down in Joliet. That'd hardly
count." Got the idea?
Then you finally ask him again, "All right. Have you ever robbed any other
banks?"
You look back at the meter, you say, "Well, have you ever robbed any other
banks?" Meter's quiet. Go on to the next question.
You never look at the meter until he says no. You'll find out that really
holds them in-session, man. That's very good sessioning when you can do it
this way.
Now, the only bug that occurs when you do this is that you're repeating the
question and apparently calling him a liar slightly. But you'll find out
this isn't very damaging. He's already told you no, and so you confirm it.
Now, leaving a question hot is another very damaging action on an E-Meter.
That's a very damaging thing to a session. Oh, that is something you
mustn't do - leave a question with reaction on it. Don't ever go to the
next question as long as a question is reacting. And don't ever go on to
the next question unless you're absolutely sure that the question you are
on has no further instant actions in it. Remember, we care nothing about
the latent action.
There's no instant action left in a question, you can go on. And if there
is, don't you dare! Because if anything is calculated to throw a pc out of
session from there on out, man, let me tell you, it is leaving a question
hot.
You know, there's been considerable randomity occurred because of this
occasionally. HGC pc, and end of session comes along and - . One girl ran
all over town telling everybody how Scientologists were all frauds and they
were bums and how they were all trying to rape her and shoot her and so
forth. And she actually blew the HGC and wrote letters to everybody that
night before they could finally get hold of her. And finally they trailed
her down and - they heard the rumors going around and they wondered what
all this was about, so they traced them back down and they found this one
girl. And they got her down and the question was something like "Have you
ever committed adultery?" And boy, it was just falling off the pin. It
wasn't an instant read. It was just - it was blowing up before the auditor
could open his mouth, you know? Bang! Bang! And they got these fantastic
withholds off of her, and that was it.
"Oh," she said, "I guess I committed an awful series of overts," and she
hurriedly did a volte-vis and tried to straighten up everything she'd been
doing.
But look at that. Isn't that interesting? It just - one question, and I
think it was an end-of-intensive question. And the auditor just foolishly
said, "Well, it's the end of the intensive, and that's it." Never flattened
the question. I haven't got that particular particularity, but I do know
that the rest of it did happen. They had about ten people running all
around trying to round up what all this was about. It was just an unflat
Security Check question. And you just mustn't leave questions unflat. Sure,
take them up in the next session. You've got to, sometimes, because one
question can go five hours - has done so.
The fellow is the father of eight children. And you ask him the question,
"Have you ever spanked a child?" And he already feels awfully guilty about
this and he's left his family and this is a great point of disturbance with
him and the punishment of children is a very hot subject and so forth. And,
man, you can just go on and on and on and on with this particular subject.
He's just getting off withholds and getting off withholds and getting off
withholds. No one cares how long it takes to clear a question as long as
the auditor is working on the clearance of a question, not getting off
somebody else's withholds through the pc, not trying to find out what the
pc thought or heard or did about somebody else. We're interested in the
pc's withholds. And as long as the auditor is getting actual withholds off
the pc on instant reads, continue with the question.
The only way you can waste auditing time on the thing is to just wait there
for the latent read and then take that latent read. The read occurs two and
a half - three seconds after you've read the question. You read the
question - fall. You say, "What was that?" You knucklehead. You're
immediately going to get something like this: "Well, I just thought it was
getting awfully late." That's true. That's what it fell on. Didn't have
anything to do with the question. Or, "Oh well, yes. That made me think of
a book I read once that I wasn't supposed to read."
Look, this is a question about stealing, see? "Have you ever stolen
anything?" See? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait - clang! "Well, what was
that?" you say on the latent read.
"Oh well, that was a book, I guess. I - I was thinking about this book."
"What about this book?"
"Well, I read this book. Well, it would - it talked about stealing."
"Oh well, what about that?"
Well look, knucklehead, nothing about that, you see? I mean, it - there
just isn't anything. It doesn't have anything to do with it except the pc's
mind was out of gear for the moment. It's like finding the gear wheels
disengaged, you see? And you sit there and wait, and eventually the pc is
going to think about something, isn't he? And if you wait long enough,
you'll always get a reaction, even if it's just on the ARC break of "Why
are you so damn quiet?"
It's factual, and it follows through. Serious withholds or withholds that
should be gotten off the case or have anything to do with a case and all
the things that the person himself hath done, are as a result of an instant
read. And you must follow through on that particular basis.
All right. The next thing that you should pay attention to, besides
clearing every question as it goes on down the line - the next thing you
should pay attention to, is selecting the type of Security Check. This is
very important.
There is no sense in security checking somebody on something he has nothing
to do with. That is rather frightful. Let's say that we have a special
Security Check on the subject of boilermakers, see? So we get this girl who
is a milliner. And we run a Security Check on boilermakers on this
milliner. And we say, "Well, she's got clean hands because she didn't have
a single fall." Well, that's for sure.
Similarly, it is equally an error to take a generalized Security Check when
you know very well your pc has a particularized professional or action
area. If this pc is living by some particular framework of mores - . Well,
let's say you're security checking a person who professionally, this life,
right now, is a bank teller. Well, all right. That might go along all right
and so forth. But you just never seem to get around to writing up some
additional questions to give him as a Security Check. And of course, you'll
miss it every time. You just give him the generalized form of the check,
and it only hits banks on about three questions. Now, you yourself have to
be able to project your imagination and initiative with regard to that
situation.
You'd say, "What would be the withholds of a bank teller? What would they
be?"
And of course, it turns up at once what they would be. We're liable to find
something like this: He has to stand in back of this cage all the time and
he hates people. And the word of the bank is that you must be pleasant to
all the customers as you take in the money. And you must stand there with a
smile on your face, you see, and take in the money and pay out the money.
And you just can't figure out what's wrong with this guy's job, see? He's
unhappy and he isn't doing well and nothing is going on and so we give him
a general Security Check and it goes on and on, but it never takes into
account what the man does in life. You get the idea? Now that is a floob.
That is - comes under the classification of a boob.
We do put one together around what we think a bank teller might possibly
have as withholds and then we find all sorts of very interesting things. He
has held a deposit for twenty minutes so one of his customers, you see,
wouldn't be overdrawn. Interesting thing. Nothing very much, but it was
something to him, because, man, are you supposed to have those deposits
right into the drawer and they're supposed to pass down the endless belt
and go into the machines and so forth, and so on.
And he actually has, on his own initiative, which is just - that's pretty
adventurous - has actually put his fist into the machinery of the bank and
he has held it for twenty minutes. And that is a withhold to him.
And then you find maybe he's standing there with all kinds - every time a
customer comes up he has a game that he plays on something on the order of
an unkind thought. And he just has nothing but long streams of unkind
thoughts. Every time somebody comes up - bzzzzzzz, got this long thing.
And you ask him the right question - you say, bank teller. Well all right,
bank teller - he must have customers. And you say, "Well, have you ever had
an unkind thought about a bank customer?" And you're liable to run into an
avalanche. And it'd just sit on that case till the end of time unless you
yourself security checked against the reality of the pc. That you must
always do. Whatever else you do with Security Checks, also security check
against the reality of the pc. And that takes into account the moral codes
by which he lives.
Now, you security check a Catholic some time or you security check a
Baptist and you'd have two different Security Checks. They'd be different.
You security check an Afrikaner and security check a Zulu. You're going to
have two different Security Checks, man. And they're almost vis-Þ-vis
different Security Checks. Almost everything one thinks is right, the other
thinks is wrong.
Who's to say who's right or who's wrong? That hasn't anything to do with
it, which is why I gave you a little bit about the moral note at the
beginning of it. The rights and wrongnesses of things are what groups have
determined on in order to perpetuate survival. And that's the rightnesses
and wrongnesses of things. It's what is survival to the group, not whether
you are enforcing the mores of a group because you are so sinless. So you
have to actually be able to security check both sides of the fence.
Now, security checking a cop would be quite different than security
checking a criminal, of course. Security checking a soldier would be quite
different than security checking a chambermaid. It would be different.
So if you omit specialized Security Checking and putting together a list of
questions that concern the activities of the person - if you omit this
entirely, you've boobed.
Another thing that you do - that you mustn't do, is read a Security Check
as a repetitive question. "Have you ever raped anybody? Good. Have you ever
raped anybody? Good. Have you ever raped anybody? Good. Have you ever raped
anybody? Good. Have you ever raped anybody? Good. Have you ever raped
anybody? Good. Ever raped anybo - ?" Who are you auditing?
Your job is not to run a repetitive question at all, but to get off
withholds. The auditing consists of getting off withholds.
Well, how do you get off withholds on the subject of rape? Well, some
fellow says, "Well now, I just don't want to answer any questions about
that at all. No, I just don't think you'd better be asking me any question.
Let's go on to the next one. We'll still be friends. But we'd better go on
to the next question."
Well, how are you going to get around that? You can still ask the question,
"What have you got against rape?"
"Oh," he'll say, "well, it isn't what I have against rape, it's what other
people have against rape."
"Well, who has things against rape?"
"Well! My mother and my father and the public and the preacher and the
parson and the state," and so forth.
"Well, when did all these come down on you on the subject of rape?"
"Well, that was when I got in the newspapers on the subject."
"Oh, when was that?"
That is what is known by pulling a withhold from the back door.
Now, the next thing you must remember is that a withhold is generally a
withhold of an overt act against the mores of a group. Now, actually, the
enforcement of the mores of the group to make other people withhold is the
overt act of withholds. Trying to make - you get the idea? You're enforcing
the mores of the group against another person to make them withhold. It's
the overt act of making people withhold, see? So you err whenever you don't
ask the "make guilty" question.
You can take every Security Check you've got and simply add an additional
question below each level on: "Well, have you ever made anybody guilty of
rape?"
You get this girl. She keeps telling you, "I have been raped. It isn't that
I am withholding raping somebody; I have been raped." And the question is
still hot.
And you say, "How in the name of common sense am I ever going to clear this
question? How am I going to clear this question? How could I possibly clear
the question? Because she just says - and of course she's an offended
member - no, she hasn't raped anybody. She's been raped." Well, if you
Q-and-A and just go off and say, "Well, we're not security checking now.
She has a bad engram and we might as well run this engram and find out all
about all of this rape and when she was raped and so forth," are you still
security checking or are you doing something else? You're doing something
else. You are auditing processes, you are running engrams, but you're doing
something else. You're not security checking. So you don't stop security
checking and start doing something else. You go on security checking. In
other words, gets off the withholds. But of course, the overt act of a
withhold is making somebody else withhold. And of course, the moment you
ask the question, "Well, whom have you made guilty of rape?"
"Oh, well" - you get a nice big meter reaction, and "Him, of course, and
him and him and them and them and them and them and them and them and them
and them," and so forth.
"Well, have you made anybody else guilty of rape?"
"Yes. Well, them and them and them."
"All right. Anybody else you made guilty of rape?"
"Uh, well, no."
"Anybody else you made guilty of rape? What was that?"
"Well, it's just - I'm just restimulated by the whole thing."
"Well, have you - have you ever raped anybody?"
"Yes."
In other words, the "make guilties" all lay on top of an actual fact. She
been raped all right, but Shakespeare's statement "Methinks the lady
protest too much" can be Hobson-Jobsoned over: "Methinks the pc protest too
much."
And whenever the pc protests too much, you are looking at the boiling
broth. And you might as well pick the pot up and look under it, because
you're going to find fire.
"You shouldn't be asking me that question. It is insulting." Oh, man. Why
don't they run up a signal halyard and fly fifteen flags from it, you know;
get blinking lights going in your face? Because that is the one question
that is hot. And of course a person who has fantastic motivators which just
keep rocking and rocking and rocking. The person says "Well, I haven't ever
raped anybody; I have been raped. And that is why it is falling."
No, remember your original question was, "Have you ever raped anybody?" and
you got an instant read. And the facts of the case are that the pc has, but
the pc has tried to make other people guilty to such an extent that this
lies on the top of it as the overt from the withhold motivator. Do you see?
So there's what you got.
So you ask the "made guilty" questions any way you want to phrase it. "Have
you ever protested against?" "Have you ever accused?" Do you see? This type
of questioning for each subject matter of a Security Check will be found to
be very, very beneficial in freeing up a whole security question; because,
of course, it is making other people withhold and when you get the overt
off, then the pc gives up his withhold. It's not actually, you see, an
additional question. It is another way of asking the same question.
And then you come back and you always leave a Security Check question that
has fell [fallen] - you always leave it with the same wording that you
asked it in the first place that produced the fall. Never miss that. And
that is
usually, for your ease, the way it is written on the paper.
You've been asking all sorts of things about rape. You said, "Well, have
you ever made anybody guilty of rape? Have you ever - rape?" and so forth
and so on. And "All right. Have you ever had unkind thoughts about rapists?
What have you done? Have you ever wished you were raped?" Doesn't matter,
whatever you were asking, you see? What produced the reaction - the reason
you're asking these questions - is: "Have you ever been raped?" And the
question you're trying to clear is the one that produced the reaction. So
you always repeat that question in the same wording to see if there's any
additional reaction before you leave it. And then you're sure that that
question is clean. No matter how many other variations you ask - and you
should ask variations in order to get the thing cleaned up - you go back to
the same question again before you leave it.
In other words, always go out by the same door you entered. Don't go
ducking out the side door. You've cleared up have they ever made anybody
guilty of rape, see? So you say, "Well, that's it. We'll go on to the next
question."
Oh, you missed and you will leave a question hot if you do that.
All right. I've tried to cover here some of the elements of Security
Checking.
You can tailor up Security Checks any way you want to. You can always add
to a Security Check. You can always add to a Security Check.
You may never subtract from one. The reason why we lay that injunction down
is that somebody who has a withhold on a subject who runs into it on a list
will then not be tempted to avoid it.
And you would be fascinated at some of the Security Check questions being
made up by people who have buttons on the subject. You never quite read as
much of an avoidance as you get when you do that. You take somebody who's
sitting down here in Dartmoor Scrubs and have him write a Security Check up
on the subject of criminals, and you get a three-question check.
But you ask him to write - he has never been a soldier - and you ask him to
write a Security Check question on the subject of soldiers and he writes
you eighteen pages. It's quite interesting.
But people subtract from Security Checks where they have withholds. So you
lay down this injunction; you say: "Always give the standard Security
Check; add anything to it you please. Write up any special check you care
to, as long as you give a standard check, too."
And then that keeps anybody from ever indulging in tacit consent and
avoiding a question because "We know, of course, that this person has never
stolen anything from the organization. Of course we know that, so we just
won't ask that question." And sometimes a person does this in all
innocence. It just seems to him like the question would not produce any
particular result. That's all there is to it. And then somebody asks him
the question and it goes hotter than a pistol.
And he says, "But I never have! I just never have." And you go tracing it
down, and he has. He actually doesn't remember having done so. But the
meter knows.
And the one final injunction on this is, please believe the instant read of
the meter. A person who is telling you a lie, a person who has a withhold,
gets an instant read on the question. And if they're getting a read, a
needle reaction, there is a withhold. And never buy anything else.
I have seen a slug of hours of duration with the needle continuing to react
and the pc saying "No" and almost in tears over it, because the pc cannot
remember, the pc cannot differentiate it, the pc cannot tell what that
withhold is. It just doesn't seem to elude anybody. And for the auditor to
leave it is a serious error, because at the end of those hours, so help me
Pete, it was found, and it did clear.
Now, I've had people with some pretty nasty withholds on the meter. And
I've never failed to have the meter react when the question was charged so
long as it was against the moral code of the person I was checking. That
was the important point. And it's quite interesting to watch it. It will
not wear out. The question will not wear it out. That is what is
fascinating. You can ask it, and ask it, and ask it, and ask it, and ask
it, and ask it, and ask it. And it won't wear out. It'll just produce, if
anything, a little faster reaction. Until the withhold is given up, the
action occurs.
So don't ever think your meter is busted. Make sure that your meter isn't
before you start the session. That's the time to make sure the meter is all
right, not in the middle of the session, thinking, "Well, it's just
reacting. This rock slam must be because some dust has gotten into it." No,
the rock slam is coming from a withhold if you're on a Security Check.
Okay?
Male voice: Right.
All right. Well, I hope this clarifies a few points for you on the subject
of Security Checking 'cause you're going to find this is a very, very
important subject. It's going to be with us for a very, very long time.
It's one of the basic skills of the auditor and is the first thing that an
auditor should know how to do very, very well. He should know how to
security check well. Because you can do anything under the sun, moon and
stars with a Security Check. You can do anything with it. And the better
you are at handling the basics and fundamentals of Security Checks, then
the better you will be at making them work.
Thank you.


