Refund and Reparation

Shock is a sudden depression, either the shock of loss suddenly pulling Theta and MEST apart or the shock of something such as an injury or an engram pushing them in together. But the rapidity of the shock has a lot to do with it. The violence or suddenness of loss, or the suddenness of impact of Theta and MEST—either one of them—acts to suddenly change the wavelength of Theta, and it pulls Theta down the scale. It will, then, more certainly trap the Theta if it is sudden. If the loss or impact is slow, the Theta starts down against it and comes back up.
That is why you can take a person into an engram and run him through it phrase by phrase: because the time factor is different. This engram, then, doesn’t affect him as violently as it did at the moment of impact. The impact is usually sharp; even during an operation when he is being cut with a knife it is fairly sharp. When you start through this engram at auditing speed you are going much slower than the destruction of the tissue.

So you get this sudden depression. The more sudden the depression, the more likely the Theta is to remain down. And if you can cause a very abrupt and sudden drop in tone in anybody, there is a greater chance of the Theta going down, and if you could cause a drop in tone as sudden as that caused by a high-velocity bullet striking an individual—if you could do this just by saying something to them—the person would die. Actually, when you cause a physical impact you are addressing the MEST, and it sort of drives out the Theta; the Theta reacts together with the MEST. But theoretically you can do this on the Theta side alone.

That is why people say “Break the news to him slowly.” That is actually a very good idea but it is usually done wrong. What they do is break the news to him confusingly. For example, somebody comes in and says, “I have something to tell you. I think you had better sit down.”

The person says, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

“Now, just be calm.” And the poor man to whom he is talking starts spinning and starts going anaten right there. Then he says, “Well, the chauffeur just ran off with your wife.”

This is getting him confused and that is just exactly like hypnotizing him. Actually, that is all hypnotism is: getting the mind good and fixed or good and confused—one thing or the other— and then putting in a suggestion. The Theta is not aligned to receive it or think about it—and doesn’t think about it afterwards.