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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which was available to all those who subscribed to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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Sometimes a right item . . .Part 1
by Phil Spickler
16 Nov 1998

My efforts at hibernation having recently been disturbed by the sound
of one hand clapping, I sent a signal to my keepers requesting
permission once again to communicate, and after the usual delay as
various time-locks sequenced, the final portal slid open, presenting
a brief window of electronic opportunity which permits what now
follows.        The subject at hand, dear friends, is called Listing
and Nulling, or L & N for short.  I'm not absolutely certain when Ron
(or someone using his name) came up with the notion of asking
questions that yield lists of answers, but I know that the history of
such efforts has yielded in its day everything from light humor and
enormous cognitions to people who seemed to be in the throes of some
awful mental, emotional, and physical condition that might cause
their faces to get a greenish, blackish, look and/or result in having
their teeth start falling out, just to name a few of the unpleasant
physical possibilities, often accompanied with major mental and
emotional difficulties. This was particularly in evidence before the
Laws of Listing and Nulling were created and published, and from
those laws the great savior of this form of auditing known as the
correction list.

The good results of correct listing and nulling undoubtedly yielded
some of the greatest gain per moment of auditing of any type of
auditing since well and properly run engrams.  Conversely, the bad
results from incorrect listing and nulling were about as bad as it
could get, and the longer such auditing went uncorrected, the more
mischief it could effect in the long term in the life of the
recipient ("preclear" to you, bud).

I'm thinking back to that period in Scientology when the procedure
known as R2-12 came into existence, and the idea of using listing
processes to find opposing items and resolve them.  There was also in
this era a procedure known as 3GA-Crisscross, and somewhere along the
line came up the notion of having everyone in the vicinity write up a
900-item Goals List.  And not long after all of this, I believe we
entered the period of GPM running.  All of these yielded brilliant
results, as well as heavy casualties, and it was not until around
1967 or perhaps early 1968 that a greater understanding through the
Laws of Listing and Nulling came about.  If the Laws were well
applied and the preclear was run on the listing question that read
well on an E-meter and that the preclear understood as a question,
you could safely navigate the troubled waters and come up with an
item that certainly seemed at the time to blow said pc's mind.  And
if things didn't go well, you didn't try to solve the problem by
endlessly, page after page after page, listing for an item, but by
simply assessing correctly a L & N correction list you could promptly
and easily end up doing just the thing to ensure that the right item,
with all the very good indicators, would be found.  It was also
possible, if the pc's folders were intact, to go back into that grim
period when L & N was delivered in a very heavy-handed way and start
correcting earlier lists and finding right items, which would result
in a great resurgence of livingness in the pc that was receiving this
life-giving correction.

One of the curious things that we will speak about in the not-very-
distant future would show up when you were looking in the folders of
a pc and finding some of the earlier listing and nulling and
item-finding, and you might come across a listing question that was
properly presented to the pc and properly listed to one item, with
the complete end phenomena of a successful process.  The Case
Supervisor will instruct the auditor to recheck the item to see if
the pc still found it to be his or her item.  Well, to our amazement,
when this was done, the item no longer proved to be the right item,
and instead the pc would come up with a brand-new item to that same
listing question, which would once again yield full and correct
right-item end phenomena.  You, my dear reader, may well ask, "What
is going on here?"  Well, friends, we now come to the crux of the
matter, namely, the composite nature of all us human beings.

That's right, the composite nature.  Ron, early in the history of
Scientology, and most especially in the book _History of Man_, and in
lectures and Professional Auditor Bulletins back around 1951 or so
had made it quite clear that we were dealing with a composite, and
that in order to make some sense of the resulting confusion regarding
who's who in all this, it was vitally important and necessary to
determine the correct ownership of not only case but *result* in
order to avoid a lot of wasted effort or even worse, further
complicating what was already extremely complicated and confused,
which is to say the degree of complexity, unknownness, lies,
misownership, groupers if you will, necessary to keep something
constant as a human being. Without all that, it would probably vanish
in a rather startling burst of pure light and energy as all of that
entheta and enmest converted at once to free theta.

Now we certainly don't want to go around causing our customers,
business associates, friends and ourselves to vanish this way, even
if it is rather pretty and causes quite an effect on those more solid
apparitions observing such phenomena.  On the other hand, it's not
necessary to spend a whole lifetime in a state of unknownness about
the nature of the composite and just how much you want to do with it.
Thus, in the simplest terms, if we were to use Listing and Nulling as
an example, you may find a right item for someone, or a group of
someones, only to find that that item is not true or correct for a
fairly large number of individuals and groups that also go into the
making-up of the composite all headed up under the grouper known as
"I" or "Phil Spickler" or whatever you want to name that large
civilization known as a human being.

So, failure to take this into account means that there's a very good
possibility that a large number of the things that make up the
composite will be left with an item or an answer that is not true for
them, and that sooner or later this will start to make them feel
sick, mentally and emotionally and spiritually screwed up, which will
eventually walk them (with their checkbook) into the confines of some
group that will offer, at greater or lesser expense, just the thing
to fix them all up.  Of course, when the fix-up is complete, there
will be a greater or lesser number of areas still present in the
composite for which the fix-up is not the right thing, not the right
item, not the right answer, and eventually, if the person can afford
it, he'll be dragging that group back to get it straightened out,
which will result  --- ad infinitum, ad nauseum, the fix not being
true for everyone.

Leaving the so-called individual human being for just a moment and
taking a larger look at groups of groups, such as a country for
example, like the United States of America, or South Africa, you'll
have no trouble noticing that what is the right answer for one
individual or group, which may be passed into law, is now not true
for a large number of other groups and individuals, and so they
suffer along until some day, through the use of voting or revolution
or rebellion they get their set of ideas that indicate to them to be
the Truth of that country, and now that truth becomes very wrong for
other groups within that selfsame country that now have to live under
it as the Law. Abortion, in the United States, is a wonderful example
of the above, in which we have given an item, in the form of Federal
law, to everyone in the United States.  The item is a right item for
some, and a terribly wrong item for many others, causing all the
aforementioned phenomena to occur inside this large third dynamic,
giving all of you reading this a chance to see the effects of an
enforced wrong item.  This is the way it is, when you are dealing
with a composite or a grouper, which is to say, when a large number
of different things are compressed through force or persuasion to
live under one thought or one person with the notion that it will be
for the good of all.

There are some third dynamics that do not enforce the presence of
their members but which are held together by conscious and willing
ARC and common purpose to create a lot of fun and a lot of freedom
for the term of the agreement -- the big difference in these
composites is that they are conscious and voluntary.  Some examples
of such groups would be: a tiddlywink contest, or getting a group of
friends together and going swimming, or holding sheep races in the
field where the alfalfa has just been freshly mown, or spending the
evening with some good friends dancing and singing.  Imagine what it
would feel like if you had to do any of these activities whether you
like it or not every day of your life, and this will give you some
idea of the condition of some of the things in an enforced composite.

This brings us to the conclusion of Part 1, and here is a hint of
what is to come in Part 2,  in which  we will further examine and
expand upon the idea of whose case exactly are we dealing with in
auditing, and perhaps even more importantly, whose result.   This
will include a re-examination of the whole notion of what is an
Ascension Experience and what happens to such experiences as
time-and-a-half goes by.

I must close now, as I see that my attendants are approaching, and
they are preparing to shut down this small window of electronic
availability. There is a strong smell of freshly cut alfalfa in the
air, which brings a smile to my face as I am gently led through the
many time-locks to another night of deep rest and dreaming under the
watchful and friendly eye of the guard sheep.

'Til next time -- all the best, Phil