International Viewpoints (IVy), Issue 35 - January 1998

Objectives:

Objectives (2)
(Objectives (1) is on page 24 of IVy 34 -- Christine Norstrand's article
"Heart and Soul:Creativity and Basic Objective Processes")

by Otto J. Roos, Holland

Historical

THE PROCESSES WHICH LATER became known as "the Objectives" seems to initially have played a far more important role in the past than they did at later stages. In the long ago days after engram running, they were gradually developed to full stage activities. They were no longer just being used to sustain, by way of Havingness, the other subjective procedures which were being developed all the way up to Goals running, but they became full scale Auditing Intensives in themselves.

From personal recall after having blown the entire History of Man (without at that time knowing it was that!), lying on a couch as was done in earlier years, it apparently became "necessary" for me to be sold and to be run on hundreds of hours of CCH's!

Having been both a bush-worker and a long-shore man, those quantities of CCH's were at that time, after the earlier auditing received, not exactly the right item. (Necessity level alone puts a person engaged in the professions named above quite into PT (Present Time). Not being in PT, "PTE", present time event, and the "PEV", present time environment, can have dire consequences for forest workers or persons involved in loading/unloading sea going vessels.)

Except for may be a few Havingness commands there was no need "to be put in PT" by hundreds of hours of Objective procedures. However, such Intensives were rather arbitrarily assessed as needed and run.

Danger

The danger is quite easily seen. Once the fellow has been put in PT by whatever activity, continuing this activity implies that its intended result has not been attained. This invalidates the rightness achieved and validates the wrongness that it had not been achieved. This is a double-edged sword of wrong items making the auditing, the auditor, and the pc wrong. The pc then becomes forced to continue to reach what has already been achieved. The activity intending to get the guy into comm with the PT environment now starts to really plough him in.

Mixture

What frequently happened in earlier years was that, in the middle of running valid procedures, sudden orders would arrive from Saint Hill "to drop whatever you are running as it has been discovered that..." and something new would have to be arbitrarily run on pcs who were often doing well. A guy was going great guns on Objectives, and was right in the middle taken off these procedures designed to put him into PT, to suddenly run the goal "to forget" as "this had been found to be rocket reading on everybody". In this way the Objectives could become identified with arbitraries ordered at random and running into huge pc losses. This not only happened with Objectives, of course, but also with other procedures. However, Objectives are, as a unique stabilization procedure, more vulnerable to random unsettling activities.

Confusion

The steps handling the Condition of Confusion (Confusion, one of the lower level ethics conditions. See Management Dictionary or later editions of Introduction to Scn. Ethics (1978 or later). Ed.) basically strip past environments, which inhibit perception of the present, off the pc. Ideally they sooner or later discover where they are. They get into comm with the present environment without being hampered by earlier environments stuck over them, which prevent them from seeing PT as it is.

Although this is a step used when handling Ethics Conditions, it is of course at the same time very valid as auditing tool. It could also be regarded as an Objective. (It can have the same liability when overrun!)

Liability

The Objectives are a very elegant series of procedures. They do have very specific aims. Returning present time, space and event to individuals, by restoring their reach to these, is very valid processing indeed.

However, in the "good old" days there was quite a devilish arbitrary called "a 20 minutes flat spot" connected to some of the procedures. This meant that the process was flat when similar comm lags of equal lengths had been achieved during the last 20 minutes the process was run.

It should be understandable that with that requirement the process would never flatten. A flat spot of 20 minutes of equal lag would just not be achieved. Having been run on some 800 hours of these procedures was quite sufficient to obtain a good personal reality on this.

As the basic purpose of the Objectives was to get the pc more or less stably into PT, their overrun could drive pcs "up the wall" so to speak. Lovely, very effective processes, like the CCHs were often seen to become true battlefields. Auditors were specially trained to be seated between the pc and the door in order to prevent pcs making a run for it and trying to escape. Auditors occasionally had to literally drag pcs from wall to wall to get them to carry out the auditing command.

The main reason why these dramas occurred was the 20 minute flat spot. Even for auditors it was not easy to have an unvarying attention span for that length of time.

As a result overrun and protest became the order of the day. PCs often protested against these inherently great processes. (It was the same as the old TR 0 training where the "not do anything else but be there" rule was driven to the extent of training robots Witnessing LRH audit, one would never see displays of such robotic motionless "in Trs".)

Many of the potential gains to be obtained were obtained and then lost again through overrun resulting in caved in pcs (overrun being one of the causes of PTS, as taught by LRH to the class VII Internes in SHUK in the mid 60's).

Some people may remember how eventually LRH himself changed the 20 minute requirement into an EP of three commands with equal comm lag, and from that point on these great procedures made their come back.

He changed this when running some of these procedures in Saint Hill (UK) and expressing surprise about "what the activities had been turned into by others" (who did try to run according to the 20 minutes rule!).

His changing the rule from 20 minutes into the very achievable end phenomena of three equal comm lags made all the difference!

(LRH, as often happened, accused "others" of having "altered" the procedures by "introducing arbitraries", etc. These accusations were often unfounded.)

Regardless of the unethicalness of making others wrong for having tried to run the data as ordered, LRH's decisions did save the procedures.

Later uses

The procedures became really validated from approximately the late 60's on up, during the Flag Drug research days.

A great change had occurred in the type of reactivity to be addressed. The vast majority of cases presenting themselves for auditing and training were suddenly, completely unexpectedly, found to have been involved in a very extensive use of drugs. This was quite contrary to the 50s to early 60s when drugs, except the medical variety, were a virtually unheard of item in engram running and later case technical procedures.

LRH immediately started an extensive research program on Flag with the Sea Org Class VIII auditors, and a whole new area of importance of TR Training, all the way to Upper Indocs, and the running of Objectives was discovered.

This has since become far more extensively researched, and a large range of standard procedures in the handling of not only drug/alcohol and other resistive cases has become established.

The newly found validity of Objectives has been proven in thousands upon thousands of hours of auditing. The truth and power of these mainly simple procedures has, of course, been seen by LRH from their beginning.

After different periods of absence they have returned. This time to stay!