Withholding as a strategy for survival

Introduction: How withholding is a strategy for survival? A fascinating text that you can use right away to start changing your viewpoints and better understand the society in which we all live.

What makes a person? What is a thetan, and what does it mean to be "Clear" or "OT"?

In Scientology, we have a fundamental understanding of how life works, and we teach this principle from the very first moment: it is the ARC Triangle – Affinity, Reality, and Communication. These three elements together make up understanding. One could also say: the more ARC, the more life there is. Because life is ARC.

Moreover, we all strive, not just Scientologists, to reach a high, if not the highest, state. We all strive for things to go well for us and our dynamics. In one sentence, this means: to be connected.

Affinity is expressed to a significant degree through emotions. An essential goal in Scientology is to be high on the tone scale – that is, emotionally high. However, this definition is somewhat inaccurate. The actual goal is to have all emotions available to you and to be able to live them, without being stuck in them. This way, you can easily and quickly find yourself back "on top."

With the above points, we wish to convey three essential messages to every person: We should be connected – with our fellow humans, near and far – but also with the living and non-living world, such as animals, plants, and the material environment.

The second message is about our emotions. We are not robots. Emotions are not weaknesses, even though they are sometimes seen as irrational. They represent humanity and empathy and are essential for creativity. Emotions are not a flaw but rather an expression of life.

The third important point is learning and self-education. There is so much to learn, especially about life. There is so much to understand. It is like the ARC Triangle: The more you learn, the more you understand, and the more you can implement or achieve. This, in turn, allows you to learn more. This is a very important cycle: If you don’t apply your knowledge to the dynamics, studying helps little. But if you understand and apply this cycle, you reach unprecedented heights.

Below is an excerpt from a lecture by Ron. As I studied the lecture, I could clearly see how Ron greatly benefited from this cycle. You can see beautifully how he gained a deep understanding of life through the application of studying people – that is, studying the PCs and their associated cases.

The excerpt is fantastic, the lecture is brilliant.

Much love

Max Hauri

Here you can find the transcript and the audio of the lecture: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16EhZCfmW50ZghxPSOzTTXDvLEjBflYuI?usp=sharing

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Withholding as a strategy for survival

Excerpt from the lecture "Withholds" given by L. Ron Hubbard on the 6 February 1962

Withholds equate to survive.

A withhold, reversely, would be holding onto a piece of information which would damage survival. A preservation of identity. The self-preservation of an identity. Now, you have to remember that a thetan can't be hurt. A thetan can only get connected with something that connects with something that connects with something and then he gets himself onto the circuit.

So here is the thought involved in this: That a person withholds to preserve himself. You do not tell the police that you really did park three hours in the no parking zone, you see? You say, "I just arrived."

Now, why do you withhold that information? That is the police could lessen your survival if they found it out. Correct?

All right. The police could lessen your survival if they found it out. Now, therefore, the withholds which you have are things which you feel, rightly or wrongly, that if you let them be known, they would reduce your survival.

That is, they would decrease your reputation or identity; people would think less of you – this is all part of the same thing, you see – people would think less of you if they knew.

We've made the step now above the idea of a withhold being totally a matter of mores. Now, we've gone a little bit further and we have a little bit better rationale. And that rationale is that a withhold is something a person believes had better be withheld because, if he didn't withhold it, it would reduce his survival as, of course, an identity.

If you were building an identity on repute – nothing wrong with this. It's a standard trick of the universe. Your credit is good. People think well of you, you see. All of those various things which go into repute. It's a standard trick of the universe. I mean, you can't even live in this universe without this trick – in a body, of course. And if you are working to enhance your repute to be a good citizen, a member of the community, a person on whom people can depend, a person who has good job references – all of the rest of this sort of thing. You got your nose clean with the government so it'll pay your old-age pension, you know, that kind of thing. All of these things. You've never been known to vote for law and order. You always wanted what the government wanted. But what are you doing there? You're building up a survival identity. All these things build up a survival identity. Nothing wrong with this, of course.

Well now, a thetan goes on the cautious side of this, so he always withholds more than he has to. And naturally, all withholds, then, are built uniformly on the basis of self-preservation. The source and cause of any withhold is self-preservation. That's it. I mean, that's your technical fact. Withholds, self-preservation. Self-preservation, withhold.

All these other things parade out from this fact: self-preservation. Now, self-preservation, of course, is a misnomer. A thetan doesn't have to preserve himself. It would be silly for a thetan to even try to preserve himself. A thetan is only involved in preserving an identity. So self-preservation is a misnomer in that it shouldn't be self-preservation. It should be the identity preservation. Preservation of an identity.

Actually those things that would be stuck – now, let's be very technical – would only be those points where you failed to preserve your life. That would really be stuck because it's the failed postulate. See?

But the postulate impulse, of course, was to preserve your life whether it won or lost. You see how that would be? Therefore, a death hangs up more than a life.

The failed postulate mechanism is, of course, senior to all of these mechanisms.

If the person has a withhold that he must then withhold he, of course, is in danger. Do you follow that through?

You see, you can always enter one of these dangerous situations from two sides. A person must be in danger because there is a piece of hemp hanging over a tree. Now, that is restimulation. Has nothing whatsoever to do with anybody hanging him, but he knows a piece of hemp hanging over a tree is for hanging. So therefore, he can actually think he has done something to be hanged for.

Now, do you see what withholds are? Do you see what withholds are all about? A withhold is an effort to survive. If you find yourself withholding, you must be trying to survive, is the conclusion that you could reach at that moment. You see, you've done it so often this way, it's such a grooved pattern, that you must be trying to survive. So therefore you must be in danger.

He has found himself withholding. What are the immediate conclusions that run off automatically from that first conclusion? What are conclusions two and three? That they must be in danger. See, he found himself withholding, so, (1) he found himself withholding, (2) he must be in danger and (3) therefore that he must survive. That's sort of the actions that he take.

So you miss a withhold on the pc, he gets two and three automatically – bang, bang. It doesn't matter which we call two and which we call three. But those are the conclusions he comes to.

"Oh, I am sitting here withholding something and the auditor hasn't pulled the withhold." The instant reaction is "I must be in danger." And the immediate response is "I must survive" by which he means "defend myself." So he takes defending actions. He gets defensive actions at once.

You miss a withhold on a pc, you get a defensive action. Wild animals are savage for only one reason – because nobody ever pulled their withholds. Wild animals are not natively savage. They just happen to be in a state where they can no longer get off their withholds. That's all. See, they're individuated. A wolf is being a wolf. That he is being a wolf means he has withholds. So therefore, if he found himself withholding something, he would attack you. Or oddly enough, if he found you withholding something, he would attack you. Any withhold will restimulate a wolf. He goes savage instantly.

But do you know, wolves aren't necessarily savage? You know, they're the best fathers in the whole animal kingdom? They're rather interesting beings. But when they get the identity of wolf straight down the groove, they are very easily led to believe that they're withholding, that they are in danger and that they must attack. And these conclusions – it doesn't matter where you enter that triangle – they interpret almost anything that they're in danger. They interpret almost anything that they must attack. They interpret almost anything that they're being attacked and therefore they must interpret anything may kill them, so that they must withhold in the vicinity of almost anything. So you seldom run into them.

In order to handle a wolf so that he wouldn't bite you, you would have to demonstrate to him conclusively that he was not withholding anything. Isn't that interesting And do you know, that I handle wolves that way, very successfully? That there is no point in withholding anything, that there's just no point. They get into a very jolly frame of mind. They tackle you and you pick them up on both sides of their jowls and you throw them about twenty-five feet and you go over and pick them up and pet them. Well, it sounds absolutely incredible, doesn't it. But there's no point in withholding anything because they're not going to damage you any and also you're not going to damage them. It's quite remarkable, you get right down to it. You get an idea – there is a meeting ground at which nobody is hurting anybody. It's just jolly good fun as we wrap each other around tree trunks, you know. A wolf will take an awful lot of punishment.

You walk up to a wild animal as though you're withholding something and you've had it. You've had it right now. You walk up to a wild animal as though you're not withholding anything and he stands there and looks at you and wonders what you're doing.

So you show him what you're doing. You very carefully always show him what you're doing. You don't excite his curiosity so you don't have a withhold involved and you can actually walk right up to one, he'll never attack you.

It was not any magic that kept Daniel [Book Daniel, Chapter 6. Daniel – a faithful servant of God – was thrown into a den of lions because of his unwavering faith, but he miraculously survived, as God protected him.] alive in the lion's den. It's just he never gave anybody the impression they were withholding.

All right. Now, you've given the pc the impression in Security Checking that the pc is withholding. And then you didn't pull the withhold to show the pc the pc wasn't now, withholding. What do you think the pc's going to do? He's liable to leap out of the chair with all fangs bared and does. Not that pcs are wolves, but the one-two-three applies to the pc.

If the pc is withholding then he must be in danger, then he had better defend himself. And that's how the missed withhold makes a pc so savage and what makes it such a deadly mechanism. And why you've to handle this mechanism and stop fooling around with it.

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Now, do you see what withholds are? Do you see what withholds are all about? A withhold is an effort to survive. If you find yourself withholding, you must be trying to survive, is the conclusion that you could reach at that moment. You see, you've done it so often this way, it's such a grooved pattern, that you must be trying to survive. So therefore you must be in danger.

So you say with truth a man is his own worst enemy. And Scientology is that study whereby we're making a man his own best friend. That's true. Wouldn't you like to be a friend of yours?

L. Ron Hubbard