6404C21 SHSpec-17 Problems and Solutions

There are some research maxims standing apart from and monitoring the
body of scientology, having to do with how you figure it out. Excalibur was a
whole book-full. Some of these maxims are in Dianetics: The Evolution of a
Science. These maxims give the rationale and the how of how you figure it
out. Every once in awhile, one of them gives you a grip on existence.

For instance, one maxim was, "Take a body of knowledge that has produced
bad effects and results. You move it out and pay no further attention to
it." You can eventually corral the truth by elimination, by this approach.
You use this all the time when analyzing cases. You see what didn't work, so
you don't run the PC on that. The reverse maxim doesn't happen to be
workable. Something having been true in one instance doesn't prove that it
has any wide workability. Auditors who don't realize this get stuck in a win
with some offbeat process or approach, and wind up with failures.

In trying to pilot a way through the goals plot, when items read one day
and not the next, when they checked out and then turned out to be something
else, LRH had a datum to cover the situation: "A problem is as complex as it
presents potential solutions." It is the number of solutions, not their
complexity, that determines the complexity of a problem. This defeats the
idea of the "one shot clear", beautiful though the dream may be. The problem
of government must be terribly complex, since it has had many many solutions.
It is not that a big solution equals a big problem. It is that a complex
problem equals many solutions. This could be the situation that you are faced
with when a PC doesn't respond well to processing. It could be that you have
a complex case on your hands that will only be resolved by a complexity of
processes. If a person's problem in life has required many solutions, then it
must be very complex and will require a complexity of processes to resolve.
Simple solutions don't work on complex problems. You don't resolve all
political problems by voting democratic.

There is another maxim: "A solution must be as complex as the potentials
of the problem." In this context, "potentials, means "threats along the
dynamics. Here, you are talking about a dangerous problem. For instance, a
problem that has the potential of knocking out survival along various fronts
is a big problem. You will get defeated if you offer a simple solution. If a
person has a dangerous problem and you give him a simple solution, he will
reject it. Problems that are simple don't become dangerous. Only complex
ones do. They require complex solutions. If this were not the case, the
person would have solved the problem already. A problem wouldn't be dangerous
if the problem hadn't been allowed to coast along pretty far.

The proper course of action in handling a problem is to find out all
aspects of the problem that must be solved. There are bound to be some that
are not apparent at first. Find how many solutions will be needed. You could
look it over by dynamics. The procedure is:

1. Get what the immediate pressure is. Indicate that there has to be a
solution.

2. Get the situation differentiated out into its component problems.
Indicate the necessity for a solution for each.

This takes the confusion out of the situation. Just getting the guy to sort
it out makes him feel better, because he can now at least see the area
better. Also, you have put the buffer of needed solution" in front of every
element of it. The PC will be half way handled just by that action. Then you
can find solutions on a gradient. He could start gradiently to see which
problem could be solved now. This makes Level 0 a breeze, when it is usually
rough. Level 0 is rough because most people's problems are so big that they
don't know they have them. They don't look at the importances in their
vicinity at all! Man is in this condition because no solutions have been
possible. Simple solutions to complex problems fail. The International City
idea is good and complicated. It has to be, because of the size of the
problem that it is trying to solve. The usual solution, "Vote Republican!."
is utterly useless.

As you go up the levels, it may appear that you are confronting more
complex problems, but actually both problems and solutions become simpler, as
you go up the levels. As you go up, you are actually confronted with fewer
problems and fewer demanded solutions. The psychologist and psychiatrist
think that you go down through Man's psyche to the bottom. They are wrong.
You are there. You have to go up, to heightened awareness. A person on his
way up has to get more and aware of kinds of awareness and of existence. His
only route is up. Psychiatrists think that you have to go down in Man's
psyche to get to rock-bottom motivations, etc., through three or four
sub-volitional layers. This is untrue. You don't go down in Man's psyche.
You are there. There isn't any hidden, deep motivation. All you have left is
the individual, and he is motivated. You have to go to higher levels. "This
fellow hasn't got an unconscious to be probed. He is unconscious." The
psychiatrists are looking for the wrong thing. They are looking for the
hidden depths below a guy's level of awareness. Those "deeper levels of
unconsciousness" that they are looking for are sitting in the chair right in
front of them. It is not the recesses that are hidden. You can't get the
individual further down, with drugs, etc., and learn anything. In order to
discover anything about the individual, you've got to make the individual more
aware, not make him less aware, in order to find out more about him.
Psychiatrists are asking the fireman in a ship to help them find the fireman.
And the fireman, having lost his identity and beingness, will willingly try to
help out by looking for himself. You are looking for Man's spirit, but he is
the spirit.

A thetan's increasing awareness of his beingness, his awareness of
existence, and the problems and solutions of life are what delineate the seven
levels of processing. You could draw up the levels just by asking people at
various levels, "What is a problem to you?" If a person's awareness of his
relationship to existence is increased, you can bring about a heightened
condition of livingness, performance, ability, etc. And that is the only way
to do it, regardless of claims for drug enlightenment or high performance on
drugs. Drugs reduce awareness. People can think that they perform better
when drunk or drugged. That is because they are less aware of their
condition.

The "logic" that if we became a little less conscious, we would be a lot
better off has been extant since the beginning of this universe. The "final
solution" to problems has been to become unaware of them. The penultimate
solution is, "I'm doing right," the assumption that whatever you are doing is
right.

So if someone wants to improve himself, he has two courses:

1. To become more aware.

2. To become less aware and hope that you don't get run over.

The latter is treacherous. It is hoping that everything will be all right.
Hope substitutes for control, confront, awareness, and certainty. "I'll just
forget about it and hope that it doesn't bother me. I'll become less aware,"
is the idea. For instance, women in the 19th century fainted as a solution.
This is like the "black panther" mechanism, only worse, because one is not
simply ignoring the black panther; one is becoming unaware. People get
somewhat terrified when you reverse the flow on them and get them to confront
all the things of which they have become unaware.

The trick of becoming unaware is that you never actually get there.
"This universe [is] a progress towards less and less awareness. It's the route
to total sleep. And the trick ... is that it's so rigged that you never get
to sleep. The lower you go, the more problems you've got, because now the
littler problems seem bigger." Becoming unaware of the big problem brought
the thetan less power or force. It reduced his confront. So now he is less
able to confront little problems, so the little problem now seems as big as
the big problem seemed one stage back. It seems far more threatening. The
power and threat of the big problem is vested now in the smaller one. There
was a bigger problem of the same gradient that he had ceased to confront:
[say, a gale]. He became unaware of it almost purposely, and this put him
into a confront only of a slight wind. But the big problem was full of
terror, so the breeze is full of terror. There is the trick of uncovering
hidden memories. Occasionally you can uncover memory by trickery, and
increase the PC's awareness slightly, and he will lose a little fear, but it
doesn't improve his condition much. He just shifts to another fear.
["symptom substitution"] "All little fears are irrational and are based on a
bigger fear." Freud pointed this out. This happens because "the individual
solves the bigger fear by becoming less aware. You can find the bigger fear
that caused the lesser fear. This is what Freud was looking for. But you can
also throw the PC into the bigger fear and knock him for a loop, by not
bailing him out. You mustn't increase a person's awareness beyond his ability
to confront. He has the choice either to cognite or to bolt. He is very
likely to bolt. That is why analysands commit suicide in analysis, when they
do. Don't process by reaching into the deeper states to find the fears that
motivate this individual. "There is no deeper subconscious for the individual
to go [into]."

If you exteriorize a person without taking off the charge of why he was
in his head, if you take him out of his head and make him confront problems
that he had gone into his head not to have to confront, you will find that now
you can't get him out again with a can opener.

You can put someone into a higher level of awareness. He now becomes
aware of the problems that he has not handled. This alone makes it necessary
for him to progress by gradients. You will make it as long as you let him sit
down for awhile and enjoy the view. He is a victim of self-created charge,
great masses of it. When he gets more aware, he backs off from it. You have
to take charge off by getting TA action. Then he can easily move up to where
you can get more charge off. It is not a spectacular activity. As the PC
moves up the line, his problems look bigger, but only because he can see
more.

"Reduce the complexity of the problem by reducing yesterday's
solutions." This is the key to processing. A person at Level 0 has dangerous
problems and must have complex solutions. How do we get around all this? The
old solution is what he is sick from. Cures, cures, cures: It is no use to
solve somebody's problems for him. What gets us away from this is that we
aren't giving people solutions.

The basic error is the most fundamental part of the problem that can be
as-ised, because of the chain of solutions. As an auditor, you "are not
giving the PC new solutions for his livingness. You are taking out of
existence old solutions, which now exist in the form of problems.... You're
as-ising what has been solved in the past [and caused the person to] become
more unaware.... You're as-ising old problems." You are as-ising past
solvents. You are backtracking the way he came down. Running solutions is
running yesterday's problems. You are taking out the old think that made him
drop doing and be [un]aware. On R1C and R1CM [This is R1C with the meter.
You follow the BD after you complete the cycle of action you were on. See p.
623, below.] you are backing the PC through yesterday's problems, by getting
his solutions. If you run such a thing as a problem, you are running it below
its proper level of awareness. Here is the trick: A problem, by definition,
is something that you can't confront, and a solution is a way by which you
don't have to confront something. So your effort to handle the problem is to
solve it, and if the way in which you solve it is to become less aware of it,
you have moved into lower awareness levels. You are looking at yesterday's
solutions. Whether you are running problems or solutions, you are actually
running solutions. When you ask for problems, you are asking for something
that the PC couldn't confront. When you ask for solutions, you are asking for
something that the PC could confront. Running problems requires you to
confront only the PC's no-confront. Therefore, you don't run problems. You
run solutions, which latter really are problems, but which can be confronted.
"It's the difference between running no-confront and confront ... , [though
you are actually running the same thing, from a different point of view.] If
you call them problems, then you are saying the individual couldn't confront
them. If you [call them] solutions, then you are saying [he] could." So when
you run solutions, you get rid of the problems that he sets up to avoid
confronting things, by backtracking his solutions.

When you do this, the PC becomes more aware and more capable of
confronting, up to the point where he can confront the problems that made him
decide to become unaware in the first place, and he finds that those, in turn,
were solutions, so he finds out what that was a solution for, etc., and he is
all set to move on out to freedom. This way out is Route 2.

This principle holds true all the way up. GPM's were very complex
solutions, which must have had complex problems behind them. The main problem
was an unwillingness to confront. So you don't ask the PC to confront it all
at once. You do it gradiently. That is why levels are there. They are there
on the basis that the individual, at any given time, is at his lowest level of
awareness. You bring him up from there, not down." [You] reduce the
complexity of the problem by reducing yesterday's solutions." You've got to
walk him back up into further awareness for him to hold his own in the
environment he has now entered. That is how to process someone. That is why
a manic sometimes turns on, where the PC gets boosted up a bit too high for
him at a particular time.

So realize that you are getting off the charge that debars the individual
from confronting the problems that he has. The most complex being you will
confront is the lowest-level PC. If you reduce the complexity of the problem
by as-ising yesterday's complex solutions, you can get charge off, and the PC
can act better now, because his awareness level came up. When you first ask
for a datum, you won't get it, but you will get off charge. Then, when you
ask for the datum again, since you have gotten charge off the area, you will
get it. This is how processing works.

"The road into this universe is successive unawarenesses, and the road
out is successive awarenesses.... He got himself into trouble by solving
himself into trouble.... There are no lower levels of awareness for you to
explore. There are only upper levels." The road out is not spectacular. You
take the PC out via the road he came in: successive unawarenesses undone.