MISSED WITHHOLDS
A lecture given on 22 May 1962

Thank you.
Lecture two, Saint Hill Special Briefing Course. May the—what did you say it was?
Audience: Twenty-second.
Twenty-second. I get so mixed up on this planet's time. I don't know this planet's time at all. AD 12, English weather.
This is a lecture on the subject of missed withholds.
Now, there's a long and involved bulletin on the subject which I haven't got in my hand, but some of you may have. And this has to do with several bulletins, amongst them HCO Bulletin of May the 24th, also HCO Bulletin of May the 21st, and HCO Bulletin of May the 22nd—last two are relatively unimportant.
Now, you are going round and round about this proposition of TRs and how you ask for this and that and exactly how you do this. And this bulletin of May the 24th talks about Q and A and there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about Q and A because there wasn't a real hot communication on what Q and A was. See, there has been a lot of talk about Q and A, but a real hot thing . . .
Now it sounds like, when you read this bulletin, that I knew what Q and A was all the time. you see? And I'm talking to you as—it doesn't sound this way, but you could take it that—I was talking to you as, "You dullard, why didn't you know this?"
Well, the truth of the matter is, there is at least a third of this data— probably the most important third—was unknown. And I just recently discovered this thing. And the term Q and A fits in gorgeously if you interpret it as: questioning the pc's answer. So it really ought to be Q an A, no "d" on the "and." Question an answer.
Well, if you apply that principle "question an answer" throughout here, you get all three types. You get double questioning Well, that's the pc says something and he gives you a reply to your question and then you question his answer. See? Well, of course, that is no acknowledgment and that is just a setup for an ARC break.
And Q and A also would be changing because the pc changes. In other words, you run a process on the pc and then the pc answers up this process— nicely and neatly—by changing, you see? And right in the middle of the change, because he's changed, you change. 
In other words, you give the pc what he's giving you, you see? But you again are questioning the fact that he's changing His response to the process is being questioned.
And then the next thing is, following the pc's instructions comes under this. Now, you've got a total reversal of the whole thing, and because the pc— obviously knows far more about his case than we do, or something of the sort, don't you see—why, therefore, it's always best, you see, to do what he says.
In other words, that Q and A hardly is the questioning of the pc. That is a Q and A of me. See? That's questioning my answers to his case. That's kind of stringing a longbow—an amusing way to put it. We've got the answers. If you know them and you can apply them, why, you'll get there. And if you keep finding holes in the line, why, we'll find some more that we didn't even know existed, but basically, an auditor must stay in control of the auditing session. There is no doubt about this.
Well, the way an auditor stays in control of the auditing session is to stay at cause over the session and put the pc at cause over his case. And if we don't stay at cause over the session, the pc cannot stay at cause over his case. He goes to effect. Because you see, we're raising the pc's causativeness by making the pc confront. And if we don't make the pc confront, the pc will just obey his bank and his bank says "don't confront."
Now, a full cycle of action must exist with an auditing command—a full cycle of action. And you can't have a muddy cycle of action.
Well, this puts a tremendous responsibility on the auditor to ask the right auditing question. You say, "What should I be running on you today?" You have asked a wrong question. You can't ask wrong auditing questions. You can say, "Have you had a motivator lately?" And that is a wrong auditing question.
So there are two conditions which can exist here: is a wrong auditing question and a failure to let a cycle complete itself. You can do these two things, both of them quite deadly.
Wrong auditing question: "Have I missed a withhold on you?" Now, we didn't know this was wrong a short time ago, but it is quite wrong because the pc can answer it with a motivator response. You've managed to dig that up for me. Pcs were never ambitious enough to do that for me. They just took the easy route and did what I want, but most have found by experience that it was easier to do that.
But answering with a motivator has happened in many cases. So you mustn't ask a middle rudiments or a rudiment-type question which permits the pc to give a motivator response, because the pc is then throwing the end rudiments out.
Now, you mustn't throw your end rudiments out. This is the wrong auditing question. This is also part of the wrong auditing question. You mustn't permit the pc to throw his end rudiments out. You've got to keep his end rudiments in.
And if you look over the end rudiments, you will see there are several that can go out and if any of those end rudiments go out, the pc will go out of session. So if you ask an auditing question which permits the pc to let his end rudiments go out, you've cut your throat. Now, let's get the middle rudiments in by throwing the end rudiments out, and then we've got a nice dog's breakfast.
Let's say, "In this session have I missed a withhold on you?"
"Yes. My pc—I've been sitting here thinking how mean my pc has been to me in the last few sessions."
Oh man, you've had it because, unless—you're in for a Q and A. . . Now if you keep the end rudiment from going out—this is the problem you've posed yourself—to keep the end rudiment from going out, you've got to Q-and-A. You can't permit the cycle to be finished. He just got through damaging his own pc.
Now these two things have to be held in balance, don't you see? This is a real crazy one. By asking a wrong auditing question you will inevitably throw yourself into a Q and A, because you've got to question the pc's answer.
You say, "Has anybody been mean to you lately?"
And the pc says, "Oh, yes. Yes, yes. Herbie's been mean to me and Reg has been mean to me. All my fellow students have been mean to me." I'm not talking about any particular student.
All right. You've just thrown the end rudiments wildly out. Now, suppose you correct this. Supposing you ask some equivocal thing like, "Have I missed a withhold on you?"
"Yes. I was sitting here realizing that Mike has a deep, sadistic tendency."
Ooh, you've had it here. Now what have you done, you see? You asked a question which was equivocal. The pc gives you an answer which throws the end rudiments out. Now the only way you can correct this is with a Q and A. You can't buy this answer. This is the auditor's dilemma that I am giving you here. you can't buy this answer because you've thrown the end rudiment out.
You would question the answer in any event, even if you said promptly, "In this session have you damaged anyone?"
The pc would still realize that his answer had been questioned. That's—see, the auditor's dilemma. You ask a wrong question, you will Q-and-A every time.
So you've got to ask the type of question—I'm not giving you now words— I'll give you the principle back of such wording. You must ask a type of question which makes a Q and A very unlikely. I will not use the word "impossible."
Now, you can judge whether or not the wording of a middle rudiment or a Prepcheck question or anything else—you could judge whether or not a question you're asking the pc is right just on that formula alone. Is it one which will lead to a possibility of having to question the pc's answer? And if it is, then it is to greater or lesser degree a wrong question, because he's going to give you a response which you then must question.
You're going to have to question his answer, and then he's going to feel like he's not acknowledged, and then he's going to feel like he can't talk to you, and then he's going to go out of session. And there goes all of your beginning ruds and all the end ruds.
Now, that's where you should direct your consideration of what you are doing with the pc. you must not Q-and-A. To prevent Q and A, you must ask the right auditing question. What is a right auditing question? One that will produce an answer you do not have to challenge.
That is the perfect auditing question: a question that will produce an answer from the pc that does not have to be challenged or qualified in any way by the auditor. You mustn't question an answer.
Now, here's a perfect Q and A—in case somebody came in late and doesn't have a copy of the bulletin—here's a perfect Q and A:
We run into Joe. We say to Joe, "How are you, Joe?"
And Joe says, "Awful."
And we say, "What's wrong?"
Well that's very socially acceptable. You'll hear it up and down the highroads and byways in every language, including the Chinese and Scandinavian. Everybody does it. It's social machinery. It would be unsympathetic of us not to do it. 
We ask a question. We say, "Well, have you had a good day, Bill?"
We meet Bill, you know? And Bill says, "No." Inevitably, we have to amplify the thing, see? So we say, "Well, what happened?"
That's a Q and A: That questions the pc's answer.
Correct. This is correct:
"How are you?"
"Awful."
"Good."
When you get an answer like that, it is much more polite to say, "Thank you."
Do you know, the funny part of it is even in social concourse, the fellow will feel better if you handled it that way. He told you how he felt, so give him the cheery ack, man—the cheery ack.
All right. Now let's take the auditing question. Now here's where auditors tie themselves, not just into knots, but double carrick bends, bowlines on a bight and other unlikely cask hitches, and so forth.
We're doing rudiments. We say, "Do you have a present time problem?"
"Yes."
"Well, what is it?"
Flunk, flunk, flunk, flunk! He answered our question. So therefore there's something a little bit phony with the question. See, that question is not the perfect auditing question. Because it isn't perfect, it leads us into a Q and A.
Now the best question, of course, would [be] one which would require him to tell us. So you would have to add to it, "and if so, tell me what it is."
You don't always run into this problem, but the proper non Q-and-A response is "Do you have a present time problem?"
Pc says, "Yes."
You say, "Thank you. I will check it on the meter."
So, therefore, the slightly offbeat question leads us into an inevitability of a Q and A because we would be prompted to say, "Do you have a present time problem?"
"Yes."
And the auditor would be prompted to say, "Yeah, well, what is it?"
Hey! Wait a minute. The guy did answer your auditing question. Your answer—I mean, question—is "Do you have a present time problem?"
You cut his comm, it'll throw him out of session; you've thrown the remaining rudiments out, don't you see?
The trick of keeping rudiments in is not throwing the others out while you're getting one in. And in view of the fact that there are more you are not working than the one you are working, the probability of your doing this is great if you don't know this rule about the perfect auditing question and what a Q and A is.
You can throw these things out wildly if you don't. Now, auditing is of course, is what you get away with and you don't run into this in extremis. Most times it goes off just fine.
You say, "Do you have a present time problem?"
And the fellow says, "Yes. I had a fight last night with my auditor."
Your proper response to that is, "Good," or "Thank you." The Q-and-A response would be "What about?"
And that just throws the comm straight out the window, you see, because it's an incomplete cycle; you have not bought the pc's communication; the pc will go out of session and rudiments start shedding out of the session like a white dog when you're wearing a blue suit.
There you are. You've had it, don't you see?
Now, auditors do these others such as changing because the pc changes. An auditor who does this constantly, after it's been called to his attention, just should be shot. I mean there is no other cure for it. I see them keep it up, you know? Actually, it tokens tremendous impatience. That is all.
This auditor is so anxious to do something for this pc that he's got to do it all in the next ten seconds. And therefore, he won't even run the full bracket. See, he'll do something like this. Actually, he's trying to help the pc like mad, usually. "Think of a problem you could confront. Think of a problem you could confront. Think—how are you getting along on that process? Think of a problem you could confront. Think of a prob--- how are you getting along Do you have problems now? You Clear yet?" "Oh, well, we'll have to do something else. Let's see. Invent a problem. Invent a problem." That's best. "How you doing? You Clear yet? Well, maybe we shouldn't be running Problems at all. Uh—let's—let's get down to something more fundamental. You used to talk about your mother an awful lot—uh—let's see. Now—uh, what has your mother done to you? Thank you. What has your mother done to you? Thank you. What has your mother done to you? Thank you. What has your mother done to you? Thank you. We don't seem to be getting anyplace here. What has your mother done to you? Ah, well, let's skip that."
Do you know auditors actually have done this? I'm not just joking on something that has never existed. You see it less commonly that way. More commonly, they will change from session to session. They won't flatten what they did in the last session because it's much better what they thought of today, you see?
So that type of thing—the auditor just simply needs training, but basically needs some confidence.
This auditor will also go off into extraordinary solutions very easily because he doesn't have any confidence in the ordinary doing anything because he's never done it.
And as far as following the pc's instructions again, you get a pc who is blasty, who is upset, who is misemotional, and so forth, and a lot of auditors just back out of it. And then they will do what the pc wants them to do. And it just about kills the pc. That's the usual source of that.
We're not worrying about that right now, however, we're worrying about this most basic and fundamental Q and A for which we do have an immediate and direct cure.
The first cure is always ask the right auditing question. The right auditing question is one which prohibits a Q and A.
There is no perfect right auditing question. You actually can get along with relatively sloppy ones like, "Do you have a present time problem?" Nobody has ever run into this so seriously on the present time problems.
"Yes," the pc says.
But it's a bad auditing question because it can be replied to so that you have to say, "Well, what is it? Heh-heh." Of course, that's a Q and A. The pc answered it, and now you pretend that the pc hasn't answered it. But the pc did answer it. Well, the pc gets the idea that he hasn't answered it, so there, if he hasn't answered it—you don't think he's answered it—then he knows what position he's in. He knows he's not in-session because the auditor didn't hear him. So therefore he must be withholding, so therefore he must be a missed withhold.
And if he's a missed withhold, then the thing for him to be is mad at the auditor. Very logical. But you'll find out that that is one hundred percent just like that. The exact mental response of one hundred percent of your pcs, no matter whether they look nice about it or look happy about it or anything else, that is the response of every pc who sits in front of you.
If you want to drive . . . Take the mildest, best, goodest, most educated pc you ever had anything to do with; pc's never really been in-session; he just—sort of socially answers responses, you see, and tries to be nice about the whole thing; and you never really get a bite on his case; and he's always sitting there in a very quiet, charming, nice—never makes any changes. You ever see this pc? Pc exists.
Take this perfect pc who never has any changes and just start this racket on this pc.
"Do you have a present time problem? Have you ever had a present time problem in your whole life? Yes, I know, but yes," you say, "Yes, I know, but have you ever had a problem in your whole life?"
The pc answers something. You say, "Well but—now look, look, look, look, listen now. In your whole life have you ever had a problem?" See?
And the pc says, "Well, yes, I—I—I had appendicitis and—and uh— and—so—so forth."
And you say, "Uh—now look, I'm talking to you. Do you have—you, see? Have—have you, you—right there, you know? Have you ever had a problem in your whole life? I—I want—I want you to tell me now."
And the pc, "If—I—yeah, my back's out and they gave me something."
"When are you going to tell me? Now just own up to it. A problem?" And listen, you keep up some kind of a racket like that—you could make it more flagrant than that—and do you know, you think a pc is peculiar who screams. You think this is a certain type of pc. Well, I assure you that that is not a type of pc—that's a type of auditor. Because you can drive that good pc, that perfectly educated pc, you can drive them absolutely into a screaming funk that you have just never heard the like of. you would just never dream that a human being can be that upset. And you can do it to every pc you audit.
And when this is done too much to a pc; when it's done at the wrong moments; when processes are also changed on the pc too often and when the pc is also giving auditing directions which have been accepted, and let's composite the whole thing, you see? We get somebody—all you have to do is look like you haven't received the question and thereafter the guy will start screaming—just look like you haven't heard him. you know? Be looking at the window when he speaks. You were going to come in right afterwards and say, "Yeah. All right. Thank you." you were going to do that, but you just paused for just a split second, and he saw that you were looking at the window and he'll start screaming
"God damn you. you ought to go back to the Academy and, Jesus Christ, whoever the hell told you you were an auditor? For Christ sake!" That's it.
In other words, you the auditor, can create that state of mind. you can create that situation much more easily than baking a birthday cake.
Now, I'm not talking now—because I myself a few times have been driven into "Christ almighty!" you know? I think poor Philip one day—I only did once—he missed fifteen or twenty. And the next thing you know, he— going like this because I had said a couple of very mean things—which of course I didn't mean—but the guy had just . . . I'm not always a good pc or a bad pc, but just all of a sudden the no acknowledgment, the no acknowledgment, the no acceptance of the answer, something like that, and you sit there in amazement.
You sit back here—I've got a good reality on it and you say, "What the hell?" You know? You're saying, "For Christ's sakes, why don't you get your mind on it?" You know? And you sit back and look at yourself, "Did I say that? Huh? Was that me? Who was that? Did I hear some noise in here?" Because you're in the irresponsibility, of course, of being a pc, and you just react.
I did it to a pc, almost with malice, one time, but actually not on purpose. And that was when I learned exactly what the mechanism of it was. I had to look at exactly what had been going on. And I analyzed it and then I turned around and I did it again and brought the same response.
Now, I've taken other pcs and I can start up the same response. And then I analyze any situation where that is occurring and I find the same response. That is it man.
Of course, the pc will go into apathy, go into a complete funk.
Now, there is an extreme action of questioning the pc's answer. That is the extreme response on the part of the pc to not receiving the pc's answer, because of course the pc thinks he's withholding
And that's the whole mechanism—his replies have been missed. So therefore, he is a missed withhold. And he gets upset! Just as you'll find missed withholds works on everybody, so this mechanism will upset any pc.
But now look, look. Now listen to me very carefully. Do we have to produce the extreme state of screaming, of apathy, of making the pc ill, to have it in effect? I mean is there anything short of the extreme state? Oh, yes, yes. There is a twilight zone of in-session and out of session caused by the almost not-responded-to answer, the occasionally not-acknowledged reply by the pc. This sort of thing causes a borderline of not being out of session totally and not being in-session, but just being in a condition where all the rest of the rudiments keep going out all the time.
Everything is sort of flying out, and you're sort of keeping the pc in session, you know, just—just by gripping the table edge with your fingernails, you know? It's just barely keeping the pc in-session.
What's the answer to it? Don't Q-and-A. The pc says something— acknowledge it. Well, how can you keep from Q-and-Aing? Always ask the right auditing question. Of course, that is impossible to bat one thousand on the right auditing question, so therefore, make up your mind whether you're occasionally going to accept some nonsense from the pc, or drive the pc into an ARC break. And, actually, if you ask the wrong auditing question, you are honor bound to buy the nonsense.
But what if the nonsense throws out the end rudiments? Then you've worsened the case. Then you have to get the end rudiments in. Now, we've got some kind of a chain reaction going.
You ask the wrong auditing question; you cannot directly acknowledge the question because it isn't the kind of answer that you want or is a damaging answer to the pc, so this throws out the end rudiments. Therefore, you have to get the end rudiments in in order to get this other rudiment in, and so forth. And then you ask this same question again, but of course, the pc gives you the wrong response which throws it—look at the chain reaction here. And that pc will not be in-session.
That is the only thing you can say about that—pc won't be in-session. 
The pc will be half, three-quarters out of session all the time, all the time, all the time. Tone arm action is out and so forth. And then you have to become an absolute expert at putting middle rudiments in. Oh, you even develop systems sometimes to keep your middle rudiments in and you get very arduous. And it all stems back to the wrong auditing question in the first place, which forces you into a Q and A. You say, "Do you have a present time problem?" He says, "Yes."
You say, "Well, what about?"
What's this? You know? So you've already driven it a little bit up the wall, see? The exact right response is, "Do you have a present time problem?"
"Yes."
"Thank you. I will check it on the meter."
Now, for Christ's sakes, if you will pardon my French, don't ask him this again. See, if this is where we are going to get with this particular question, we had better ask a question which is far more intelligent, because there is an old, old datum that comes forward from 1950. And that is you can ask an auditing question once or twice without restimulating the pc.
You can always ask any process once or twice—even three times. But when you get up to three times, you're on the border of—now, you've got to flatten it from there on, see? Do you see what I mean?
So you can always ask a question, take the answer—it laid an egg. Well, let's sort out what would be the proper question here, now, and ask that question, get the answer to that and acknowledge it. But we'll do the pc far less damage if we do it that way. Far, far less damage if we do it that way than if we shift in midflight and Q-and-A.
"Do you have a present time problem?"
"Yes."
"Well, what is it about?" Oh, God, we've had it now. We've done a Q and A. Pc will go just that far out of session. Inevitably, although he still looks the same—you don't see it, it doesn't get written on his forehead in letters of fire—he has still done it. An invariable rule because it busts up the comm formula and does a lot of other things.
All right. So how do we approach this problem? We ask a question and if it obviously is the wrong question to ask and doesn't produce the answer, we back out of the same door we went in, gracefully, by completing the cycle of action always. You're always safer to complete the cycle of action.
Now, there's several other things you could do. you could do an interim: "I am not asking you questions. I am trying to find out what the responses are on this meter," like you have to do in Prepchecking You say, "All right now. you don't have to answer any of these, but I'm going to ask you several little What questions about this thing and see what the best reaction we get now."
"Now, well, what about stealing vehicles?"
"What about killing girlfriends?"
"What about—whatever it is—yeah, well, what about stealing vehicles? Thank you. I got the What question now. All right. Now let's go back to this incident which you just had there. Good."
And we just prepcheck it. you see, there's a fumble period. I suppose you couldn't dignify it any more than call it a fumble period.
You ask a middle rudiment. Here's an example.
"In this session have I missed a withhold on you?" Cheerily, cheerily, cheerily. See, very happy—perfectly legitimate. You get away with it eighty-nine percent of the time. Oh, more than that—you'll probably get away with it ninety-five and a half percent of the time, you see? And it's those other few percent there and you run into that one head-on, see?
"Yes, I've been sitting here thinking what a rotten auditor you are. And how mean all the Instructors are to me."
And now, of course, you say, "Thank you. I will check that on the meter. In this session have I missed a withhold on you?" Clank! Whew! Now you see, right there you've had it, see? You know you're walking through the valley of death. You're walking down the street at sunset—let me put it that way— with Black Bart in town.
This is a deadly activity in which you are involved. So you say, "All right. Thank you very much. Now have I missed a withhold on you in this session?"
"Yes. I think you're giving me a bunch of no auditing. You know, I've had twenty auditors since I've been here, and you're the rottenest of the lot."
Damage, half-truths, untruths. See, we're just compounding this felony, see, madly. So you say, "Good. Thank you. Have I missed a withhold—in this session have I missed a withhold on you?" How far can it go?
Well, you can not only take in all the end rudiments, you can also take in all the beginning rudiments. You can get them all out. See, that's the auditor's dilemma. Well, you're asking the wrong auditing question. So it is much safer to do it this way.
Oh, yeah, inevitably you will use something like: "In this session have I missed a withhold on you?" for the excellent reason it lets him tell you the "thinks" and the other things. And you don't want to prepcheck this guy and go back and find all the things he has done to you because he hasn't done anything really in the session.
He did something this morning that you missed in the beginning rudiments, and 80 forth and et cetera, ad nauseam. Yeah, all those things are true. But you'll ask something like this, you see? And most of the time you get away with it. So you say, "In this session have I missed a withhold on you?"
"No." Clank!
"Thank you. I will check that on the meter. In this session have I missed a withhold on you?" Clank! And what are we going to do? Well, you just enter a fishing or fumble period. That is what you do. I've been trying to work out this data to a something-or-other and I have a package question which serves as a middle rudiments. "In this session..." I won't give you this package question. You'll start writing it down. But it'd be something like this: "In this session have you withheld, invalidated or suppressed any datum about listing, or anything about listing?" Do you understand?
I'm talking about just giving you an example of a package question. And you can name each one of these things as you go by, and you'll get the fall, you see? And you watch for the one that falls. That's very smooth. Otherwise, you're left in a fish and fumble period.
But, I don't care how perfect you make auditing, you'll still have fish and fumble periods. You say, "Well, just—just a minute. Let me check this over on the meter. Withhold, invalidation, suppression, untruth, half-truth, impression, impress, damage, command and a wrong command—haven't answered a command—meter. Meter. In this session, have I failed to find out something you were doing about a meter?" Clang!
And he says, 'Eh—well, yes. Ha-ha—thanks. Ha-ha, ha-ha. Yeah, haha—I'm sitting here fiddling the cans so that you—so you'd get the goal "to have more women" because I always get such a bang out of running heh-ha— that kind of a stuff, you know?"
And you say, "Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I'll check that on the meter. Good. In this session have you tried to influence the meter?" whatever it is. "That's clean."
In other words, there's the fish and fumble period. You actually sort of run a little assessment so you could have a package question in the middle rudiments which would run a nice assessment for you. But if it were too long, you'd get lost.
Now if you're going to have such a package question, remember you're going to have to repeat it, so it had better be fairly standardized.
I'm telling you in this lecture how you figure these things out rather than giving you a bunch of pat data, you understand?
Now, there will always be a fish and fumble period in Prepchecking as far as I can figure it out. Otherwise, for the sake of smoothness and gallantry, you're throwing away efficiency. You're just discarding the possibility of getting the right What question.
You sit there and look at Mr. Meter and you say, "All right, let me test out a few questions here. Now what about throwing baseball bats at cops? What about throwing things at cops? What about doing things to cops? That's it. That's it. What about doing things to cops?"
"Now, you were just telling me about throwing a baseball bat at a cop. All right. When was that?" See, that's a fish and fumble period.
Well frankly, doing a list and nulling it is a fish and fumble period, isn't it? Well, there is always these areas in auditing when you're trying to find something out. And the mark of a good auditor is that he goes ahead and finds these things out without throwing the rudiments wildly out.
See, now you could go at this in such a way as to throw them wildly out. I'll give you an idea: "Well, this listing isn't going very well here, because I don't think you've given it very many right items for this particular list. They don't seem to really be the kind of item that I would expect on this list. So this is sort of—of crude here, and although we've listed 1285 items on this particular list and we only have two items on these other three lists, I—I think—I think what I'd better do is figure out some better wording for the goal we found. And see whether or not we can't get this thing more adequately worded, because this thing doesn't show a sign of blowing and we have twelve hundred and fifty items, you see, all on this one list, you see, and it shows no signs of anything happening
So I think we ought to go about it that way. And if that's all right with you, why, we'll go back to the Goals Assessment.
Now, "What have I done to you in this session that you are upset about? Good. Good. What was that? Yeah. Oh, I didn't do that, you know, at the beginning of the session."
Well, I think by the time you had done all that, you would have the pc ready for his—to be measured for his straightjacket. Particularly, is that type of auditing would have gradually led up with 825 withholds to the cubic withhold. That'd be very corny, wouldn't it. But the funny part of it is you can do some mighty wild, offbeat things in an auditing session if you do them very smoothly, particularly if they are in the guise of letting you find out where you're going, without giving the pc a bunch of missed withholds or making the pc withhold madly.
And the only thing you've got to avoid is committing yourself to a cycle of action you can't complete. And if you commit yourself to a cycle of action you can't complete, of course, you've had it. I'll give you the crudest, oldest example: "What has your boss done to you? Thank you. What has your boss done to you? Thank you. What has your boss done to you? Thank you. What has your boss done to you? Thank you. What has your boss done to you? Thank you. What has your boss done to you? What's the matter with you?"
See, that has committed you to a cycle you dare not complete. I'll give you another old-time process: "Mock up some unconsciousness. Thank you. Mock up some unconsciousness. Thank you." We'll get you over being unconscious all the time. "Mock up some unconsciousness. Thank you. Mock up some unconsciousness. Thank you. Mock up some unconsciousness. Thank you. What's the matter with you?"
In other words, that's committing yourself to a line of action you can't complete. Well, recognize that a question which lets the pc answer as a motivator in the middle rudiment is something you actually can't satisfactorily complete. It's all going to be astray. Something like this:
You're going to say, "In this session have I missed a withhold, on you?"
"Yes."
See, you sit there like an idiot, man.
Now, the wrong way to weight the thing is to throw it over onto a Q and A. That is always wrong, no matter what you do—it is always wrong. Let that be your guiding principle.
So you say, "Good. Thank you. I will check this on the meter. In this session have I missed a withhold on you? That's dirty as a dishrag. Thank you very much."
"Now, in this session have you been up to something I didn't latch onto?"
He says, "Yes."
"All right. Good. Thank you. I will check the meter on that. In this session have you been up to something I didn't latch onto? That's dirty. Thank you." Let's see now.
All right. "Ah, what have you been up to that I didn't find out about? Oooooh! All right. Good. I will check that on the meter. What have you been up to that I didn't find out about? Thank you. That's clean."
See, the mistake you make is always beginning a cycle which you feel would be very unsatisfactory to complete. But the big mistake—the big mistake would be failing to complete a cycle you started.
Don't kid yourself. You're going to find yourself in an old bunch of Western tales by old Charlie Russell, the Western painter. He had an old plainsman named Bab, and Bab was talking about the time he was being chased by the Sioux Indians and he got into a canyon. And there was 10,000 Sioux came boiling in through the front of the canyon, you know filling it up to wall to wall. He kept backing up further and further into the canyon. He finally looks around over his shoulder and it's a box canyon; it's totally cleaned off. And old Bab sits back and relaxes and doesn't go on with the story until somebody prompts him and says, "Well, Bab, what the hell happened?"
"Oh," he said, "they killed me." That's where you're going to find yourself someday—back up that box canyon. There's no way out of it.
Well let me tell you. The way you never get out of it is with a Q and A. You just never get out of it with a Q and A. Ask the right auditing question, is the way to prevent Q and A.
And it's all right for you to sit there and tell me, "All right Ron, go on, invent the exact, perfect wording that always keeps us from never getting into a Q-and-A situation." I don't know. I don't speak Chinese. I couldn't invent it in Chinese, so why do you demand I invent it in English. 
Now, the joke of the thing is that I can give you a good approximation; I can give you a good code situation; I can give you something that is probably completely embracive about the thing.
Well let me tell you. Someday or another, you're going to run into somebody who is doing something weird, because pcs can invent them faster than you can cure them up, man. And you had better know the principles back of the auditing command—"the perfect auditing command," (quote) (unquote) —as well as the command itself, because you'll find yourself in a situation where the perfect auditing command doesn't pull the withhold.
And you say, where am I at? Well, you're at a position where you have to develop an auditing command which does get the pc to give you whatever the pc is doing, and which gives you at once the only real mistake that you can make—which is to fail to complete the cycle of action and to do a Q and A. If you Q-and-A at that point, why, you've lost that much of the pc in the session.
Now, you don't always notice that a pc has gone out of session because they sometimes drift out of session little by little, tiny by tiny by tiny. And the total aggregate of it is, is the guy is miles out of session, but he's gone on such a gradient scale, hardly anybody noticed.
It's like the prisoner that escaped from the jail. Just everyday they were supposed to be sitting on their bunks at the last inspection. And every night when the guard came by—this was an actual escape, by the way, from Alcatraz of all places—the prisoner was an inch closer to the door. And he gradually built it up so that the guard got so used to that, that he had a prisoner actually standing at the door at the time when the last inspection was made, do you see?
And finally, the prisoner was able to stand at the door and keep the automatic lock from going shut, opened the door and walked out and swam to San Francisco. I think they elected him mayor. Anyway . . .
A pc can drift out of session; you should know what he's drifting on. He's drifting on his feeling he cannot communicate to the auditor. That is what he's drifting out of session on. And the way to throw somebody wildly and almost permanently out of session is just lower the bars on him to prove to him conclusively and forever and aye, from there on out, that he will never be able to communicate to the auditor or he will never be able to tell any of his withholds.
You start punishing somebody for getting off their withholds and you produce this immediate and direct result. The fellow feels then he can never be audited. Why? That is—you see, you're dealing with the actual machinery of a mind. You're dealing with the actual responses of the mind. We're not playing with kid's stuff here, you see? We're not playing with psychology or psychiatry or other dirty words, you see? We're actually functioning right straight on the middle buttons of the mind. And that is communication, withholds, missing withholds, that sort of thing. And the person will stay in there and pitch, and do almost anything under the sun, moon and stars, for an auditor that he can communicate to. He'll almost take anything off of an auditor he can communicate to.
You see me run a session someday that looks awful rough to you and you wonder, "How in the name of God is that pc still in-session?" If you thought emotion, misemotion, argument, things of this character, if you thought these threw people out of session and if you thought that being kind and sweet and good as an auditor keeps somebody in-session, you should watch a good, knockdown-drag-out session, by somebody who knows better than to miss a withhold. And that is a pretty fantastic session.
I've done this, you see? I've asked an auditing question. The pc doesn't speak Chinese, the pc speaks English. I've asked an auditing question and I demand that that auditing question be answered—and go on and on demanding it be answered.
See, the pc's trying to answer some other question, and just never permit the cycle to shift in any other direction than to a perfect completion of the answer of that auditing question.
Cheer the pc up. Say, "Yes, yes, you can talk to me about any of those things. That's fine. I'm glad to hear about that. Fine." And so forth. "But I asked you if you'd ever seen a rat. And you keep talking to me about hats."
The pc will even come up scale on something like that. He'll say, "What the hell do you know? This guy listens to me. you know, he listens. That's true. I did talk to him about hats. He asked me if I'd ever seen a rat and I said girls in their teens wear thick hats. I did—I said that, and he heard it. But I heard him and therefore I ought to tell him whether or not I've seen a rat. And I can tell him that because he'll listen. Proves it because he knows that I didn't answer the question."
"Yeah, I've see a rat!"
There, that pc would be in-session, come out the other end smiling My God, you would have thought for half an hour there was nothing but a confounded dogfight going on in the room. That was because the perfect communication cycle was always insisted upon, that the answer to the auditing question was given. But you have to be very, very smart, and hear your own questions because the pc very often answers your auditing question.
And when you don't hear that exact answer and don't realize it's an exact answer and you refute it, well, you've had it.
But by permitting him to answer something else beside the question asked, you also throw the rudiments out. And that's not a Q and A. "I'll repeat the auditing question. What have you done, done, done, done? Not what have you thought about doing. I asked you something you've done."
"Oh, oh, oh, oh yeah. you did, didn't you?" Guy listens. Good auditor.
Funny part of it is that the cycle, the completed cycle of action, must take place. The cycle of communication must occur. It must go all the way through, but only on the subject which the auditor has introduced, otherwise, it's a complete miscontrol and it isn't a response to what was asked.
So if you think you can sit there and be kind, and you say, "Well, have you ever seen any rats?"
And the pc says, "Yes, I've seen—a lot of girls wear thick hats." And you say, "Well, good." Because Ron always said that you mustn't Q-and-A and you have to accept the pc's response.
Don't be surprised if at the end of a half an hour of doing this kind of thing your pc is not in-session, because the withhold in this case you have created and the withhold is the right answer to your auditing question. Here is—this thing falls on both sides of the fence.
So therefore, there is a thing called control, there is a thing called the right answer, and so forth. So you must ask a question—this is the rest of it—you must ask a question that can be answered and then complete that cycle of action of getting that question that you asked answered. And don't buy any other answers.
And if you do that smoothly, man, pcs will just do almost anything for you, including go Clear. But you see where the tightrope walk is, is how do you keep the pc in-session while not permitting the pc to give you the wrong answer to the auditing question. Well, you have to be smart enough to know when he has given you the right answer; and when he has given you the right answer that you buy it and you don't challenge him.
And I'll say this at least once. You're going to find yourself sitting there gaping The pc is absolutely right. He has answered the auditing question and you have developed the whole thing into a dogfight.
And you said, "Do you have a present time problem?"
And the pc said, "Yes."
You know, that kind of a situation, but it'll be in some other guise.
You'll be prepchecking somebody and you'll say, "Well, did you ever really know your mother?" Why you asked that, God knows, you see?
And the pc says, "Well, I—actually, actually, I don't know."
Well the question is, did the pc answer the cycle? Is it part of the cycle? Is that a right answer? And you go up in smoke and then you finally look back at your question and you realize that he's given you the only possible answer he could give you under the circumstances. And that is the answer to the auditing question and you're the one who has thrown him out of session.
There is two ways, now, he can go out of session: One, is you "complete the cycle of action," (quote) (unquote), or the cycle of communication on a wrong answer, because the right answer is now a missed withhold. Or you failed to complete the cycle of action on a right answer and, of course, now the right answer is a missed withhold. Now, that is the tightrope walk which you walk, and you should know exactly what you're doing with an auditing question.
Now, when you see a session running off the rails, when you see a session doing peculiar and odd and strange things and the pc doesn't look right with your auditing, don't look at the pc as a peculiar ape. Don't develop that. And neither develop a good communistic self-criticism. Don't develop that either.
Just look at the questions which you're asking in a session and ask it to yourself if they are answerable by this pc and if you are accepting the right answers that the pc gives you here. Just look at the whole thing on a cycle of action on a communication line. See, a cycle of communication. Is it complete? Have you asked a question? Has the pc answered the question? Have you then responded in such a way, as the pc, knew you answered the question? And have you straightened out what you were trying to straighten out? Well, if you've done all those things and so forth right, and the pc is getting worse, then I'll let you in on something—something very, very tremendous. It must be his environment that is caving him in.
Now, the way—the way it goes—the way it goes. . . What you've got to reconcile yourself to is your pc drifts out of session, something is going wrong Yes, you're doing something that is failing to complete that communication cycle. You're doing something that appears to—a Q and A—doing something like this.
Could be in your earliest sessions the pc—that you've inherited a pc, of course, that has been mucked up with this kind of thing And you have to straighten out the pc's communication cycle and that sort of thing But if you have to go on straightening out a pc's communication cycle, if you have to go on patching the pc up, if you have to go on crowding him in-session, session after session, and if you have to go on sweating blood over this pc, look at your own wording and your auditing and this lecture and you will have the answer. You'll be able to analyze it.
It's a very ordinary thing to analyze. I mean it's a very easy thing to analyze. The funny part of it is, it'll be as crazy when you finally see what you are doing as this business of "Since the last time I audited you, have I missed a withhold on you?" And it isn't quite a question, don't you see?
So that has been followed by this, that and the other thing and lifted out, and then one day, all of a sudden, you get the right question. And the right question is "Since the last time I audited you, have you done anything that you are withholding"
And the pc says, "Brrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzz," and so on and so on.
And you say, "My God, my God, my God."
Well, remember something, there is every period between session has been missed. You've walked into a lousy auditing situation then, you see? My God. Ghastly things staring you in the face. It's always going to be coming back up and should be prepchecked. So you have to prepcheck some rudiments. You see that?
Mark my words, it'll be something like that. It'll be something the auditor is doing that the pc cannot respond on and the auditor isn't finishing the cycle with or can't finish the cycle with.
And if you get that down pat, you'll be able to analyze your own auditing, you'll be able to analyze auditing in general, you'll be able to tell why pcs are improving or not improving.
Only thing TRs do is get you to improve your skill in handling these things so you're not taken by sudden surprise and so forth. So that these responses are very usual and natural. But I always think it's best to know the principles underlying these natural responses, and there are some very solid ones.
Okay?
Audience: Yes.
Thank you. Thank you for staying over.