In this 1961 lecture, Hubbard uses the case of Sprague de Camp as an example of someone who is way down scale, i.e., not able to influence his own mind. Elsewhere Hubbard described de Camp as “one of my archenemies in writing.”
A little kid who was just trying to rehabilitate himself in the next lifetime, you see, and you give him an alarm clock. And he might have been a watchmaker at some time, but that doesn’t prevent him from wrecking the alarm flock. His ability to reach the alarm clock is so unaccompanied with any ability to understand the alarm clock, because he can’t communicate with it, that it winds up with the destruction of the alarm clock. You got the idea?
Well, below destruction of the alarm clock is no influence of any kind on the alarm clock. He cannot do anything to the alarm clock, not even destroy it and you’ve got a total withhold from the alarm clock.
All right. Add up all these withholds and all these “can’t-reaches,” “can’t-haves” actually, on the . . all dynamics and you eventually get a person who’s totally withdrawn. He’s individuated. And he individuates further and further and less and less effectiveness and of course, eventually he can’t affect his own mind. Now that’s the exact mechanic of it. I don’t care how complicated anybody makes it. That is what it is.
Now of course, when he runs “can’t-have” on people, he is running the . . a tendency toward unfamiliarity. He’s making people less familiar with something, so people are more withdrawn from it and then, because of the overt-motivator effect, naturally this reacts on him and that explains the exact mechanism of how it comes about that he stops reaching and starts withholding.
A “can’t-have” results in a “stop reach” and then this results in a further withdraw. And when you get this withdraw up there to a total a hundred percent . . crash, bang, exclamation point . . of course he can’t influence anything and you say, “All right. Now, get the idea of disliking cats.” He does.
You notice that every time a cat walks in the room he gets a black eye. I mean he sees a cat and his eye goes black, you know and you say, “Well, I’m going to fix this up for this man.” And you say, “All right, get the idea of not liking cats. Thank you.” And, “Get the idea of not liking cats. Thank you,” and so forth and you do this for three hours and nothing happens. Cat walks in the room: he gets a black eye in the other eye.
Well, what exactly has happened? His ability to influence his own mind is so low that no matter how many auditing commands you run on the guy, of course it doesn’t wind up with any result. It’s his ineffectiveness is what you’re dealing with and when you’re going in straight on a games condition, you’ll get this ineffectiveness considerably magnified. And of course, it must be a games condition with cats, if all a cat has to do is walk in the room and he gets a black eye, man, you’re way down the scale. I knew such a fellow once. His name was L. Sprague de Camp, one of the great science-fiction writers.
Anyway, this person, when he registers on the E-Meter needle, when the E-Meter needle registers and when you can get tone arm reaction, your command is affecting his mind and then therefore changing his electrical potential, so this tells you if you’re in a zone or area where he is being effective. That’s what it tells you most intimately and directly.1
- Hubbard, L. R. (1961, 20 July). Games Conditions. Saint Hill Special Briefing Course, (6107C20). Lecture conducted from East Grinstead, Sussex. ↩