The philosophical part of this book covers the principle ideas of the theory of auditing. They may at first seem like a random collection of observations of human behaviour, but taken all together they form a structured view of how mental charge is the basis of life’s problems, how it is generated, maintained, and how it affects an individual’s life by giving rise to his "case".
Out of this view the procedures of auditing can be seen as an approach to guiding the pc progressively to discover and come to understand, the basis of his own charge and his effect on others, with consequent improvements in his "case".
The thirty-year growth of Hubbard’s work can be seen as an attempt to evolve an integrated and generally workable conceptual system to describe and enhance human behaviour.
We are now going to look at the practical side of scientology, at its actual methods and their use in day-to-day life. We are going to look at its "technology" as Hubbard calls it. "Technology" simply means "a set of techniques". Much as one might use the word "methodology" instead, we are going to stick to "technology" or "tech" simply because there is a definite jargon within scientology which it is easier to adhere to than to break. Any jargon is useful as long as it makes sense and furthers the communication between practitioners, so we’ll use it. "Scientologese" is quite a useful language once one has come to grips with it.
There are four technologies available in scientology: "study tech", i.e. the know-how of how to study for hours and hours with full comprehension and without fatigue; "admin tech", i.e. all things to do with organisation, management and production; "ethics tech", i.e. the leading of one’s life by one’s own integrity and honor; and "auditing tech,,. They all go back to the same philosophical foundations, formulated by Hubbard in the early 50’s and called "The Factors", "The Axioms of Scientology", and "The Dianetics Axioms". All techniques used in scientology are derived from them, just as engineering techniques are derived from the natural law found by physicists. Hubbard did not "invent" the Axioms and the Factors; he only found and formulated them. He did invent "the tech", though. (Axioms and Factors will be referred to throughout Part Two.)
Of all the technologies mentioned we will mainly concentrate on auditing. Firstly, though, we are going to devote a few quick lines to the subject of study tech - for the benefit of the reader.
There are three barriers to study: the misunderstood word, the lack of mass, and the skipped gradient. All study problems can be reduced to these three barriers - given that the student is interested to start with, doesn’t think he knows it all anyway, and studies on his own self-determinism. The "misunderstood word" is the most deceptive of the three. One reads through a paragraph, comes across a word one believes one understands and therefore does not look it up. Sooner or later one’s concentration goes and the whole text doesn’t seem to make sense any more.
The words one clearly identified as "not understood" or "half understood" are not the problem. These words one may easily go back to as soon as one loses track of the line of thought in one’s text. Yet the word one always understood in one definition only, doesn’t make sense when it is used in a different definition in the text. Not realizing this, one keeps on reading. Sooner or later one feels bored with the whole book and feels like throwing it against the wall. But one doesn’t know which word it was! Because it didn’t register as misunderstood when you were reading it.
So the rule is: when one feels bored or can no longer concentrate on a text one was previously interested in reading, one can be sure one passed a word one didn’t fully understand. Remedy: one goes back to the place where reading was still fun and snoops around a bit. Sooner or later one will find a word one would have sworn one knew - but indeed, in this particular context it has a different meaning altogether So one gets out a dictionary and clears the word in all its definitions, reads over the part after this word again and miraculously the text will be just as much fun as before. There will be no sign of boredom or lack of concentration.
Less deceptive but equally bothersome is the phenomenon called "lack of mass", the second barrier. "Mass" means as much as having a clear picture or the reality of the thing one is studying about. In order to have sufficient reality one must have been in physical contact with the thing and gained experience in handling it. One must have been in touch with the actual mass of the thing itself, with the material it’s made of, it’s size, weight, colour, way of behaviour etc.
When one is lacking this real-life experience with the thing one reads about, one naturally tries to imagine what it would be like. As one reads on one must keep on imagining and keep on imagining and keep on imagining until one finally feels all exhausted and weighed down by the pictures one made up in one’s mind and the effort to keep them in place. Lacking the mass in front of one, one has become massy in the mind. This is the moment when one decides one "must take a break" because this subject is really "too difficult" and "wean one out".
Remedy: get a drawing, a picture, a film of the thing; better even: go out and find one to look at. If no such thing is available you can at least make a sketch or a graph of it, better even a clay model. You can also, valuably, push odds and ends around on the table to clarify the various interrelatednesses and mechanisms you are studying. The paperclips, marbles, bits of string become the objects in question, give the ideas more substance, get the images out of your head and hold them down in the real world.
The "skipped gradient" (third barrier) goes along with a feeling of confusion. It applies to activities rather than study of theory One was learning a skill nicely step by step and felt very stable. Suddenly one feels confused, doubts one’s ability to ever master it, feels uncertain and unhappy.
Remedy: go back to the point of certainty and see what step has been left out or would need to be put in to make it a smooth gradient. This of course depends very much on the degree of ability the student brought in to start with. Accordingly, his gradient has to be adjusted. Too low a gradient leads to boredom; too steep a gradient to confusion.
Here is an example: Joe wants to drive a car He reads a book, becomes familiar with the main terminology, key words such as engine, steering wheel, clutch, chassis, Wheels etc., until he has a general understanding of them. He understands the difference between a wheel and a steering wheel, and that a "chassis" doesn’t serve to "chase" people, as the term may suggest. His understanding is a bit thin, though. It lacks substance. He may do some drawings to show how it works, and better still, plasticine models of the main parts, but seeing the real thing while studying is even more revealing. So he touches the wheels and feels the rubber and plays around with the clutch and accelerator pedals and follows the cables and pipes going in and out of the engine. Now he has the perfect balance between significance (the terms he studied) and mass (the actual car). - Driving, though, is a different story again. This is studying by doing, not by reading. And when the right teaching gradients are kept, Joe will turn out to be a capable and safe driver.
Simple as these things may look, they do straighten out the seeming complexities of study. Their remorseless application makes ladies perspire and strong men weep, but in the end it turns them into good students [17].
Auditing is not synonymous with "therapy", at least not in Hubbard’s understanding of the word. With the exception of "Dianetics", he avoided the word "therapy" as he didn’t mean his tech to be used in the same sense with medicine, psychiatry and psychology. This might generate the idea that his methods were applicable to the sick and disabled only Of course, one does heal depressions, fears, compulsions and psychsomatic ills with auditing, yet the actual purpose of auditing would be better described in terms like "ability enhancement" or "personality development". The point is not to make an individual adapt to a "normality" prescribed by society, but to set him free to be, do and have whatever he desires.
Hubbard’s concept of "scientology - an applied philosophy designed and developed to make the able more able" [2] implies that there is infinite expansion into ever new fields and dimensions of activity, that there is no standstill. It is a growth process, both in the spiritual and the material sense. And there is probably no person who wouldn’t wish to grow in one or both of these aspects. Which is why auditing is for anyone and not limited to cases of psychosis and neurosis.
Looking at it from the outside, an auditing session appears not unlike a session in psychotherapy: two people in a room with the door shut, one asks and the other answers. Yet there are significant differences:
A session is not done by the clock but by end result. It is ended when a subject and the emotional charge connected with it have been worked through and when the pc has had a cognition about the state he was in which will enable him to initiate a change in his life. ("Charge", as we saw earlier, is mental tension as expressed by misemotion.) A session, accordingly, may last half an hour, three hours or even longer - in which case one takes breaks, of course.
Sessions are done as close to each other as feasible; there isn’t just once or twice one hour per week. It is not unusual for a pc to run up 25 to 35 auditing hours within one week. This way a considerable discharge and relief is caused within a very short time. The pc will carry on living on a higher level of emotion and ability than when he came in, and, because he is winning now, his morale will be up, he’ll carry on winning and won’t easily fall into new depressions. The downward spiral has turned into an upward spiral.
Before a series of sessions is staffed, a thorough interview is done on the E-meter in order to detect all areas of charge the pc may have. Then an auditing program is developed by the auditor which considers the subjects the pc is interested in, brings them in their order of charged-ness (heaviest one first), and suggests one or more auditing processes for each one.
The auditor does not deviate from this program in session. He does not improvise. He stays flexible, yes, but only within the limits of the processes prescribed by the program. The quality and correctness of the program can be estimated by the amount of interest and gain the pc has. When he "goes out of session" (mentally, speaking) the programm needs revising.
The auditor knows no more of the pc but what the pc has said about himself in the interview or finds out during the session. He "doesn’t know all about him" just by looking at the way he sits in the chair. He is only interested in time, place, form and event of the incidents in the pc’s past, and in the pc’s considerations regarding them. The whole session is done by recall with the pc in his normal wakeful state. There are no drugs, hypnosis, electric shocks, trances, rites or initiation ceremonies. The pc will successfully re-experience his past traumata without any such aid. Once the original incident causing the pc’s difficulties has been found and "run out", his psychosomatic or emotional troubles will disappear. As the auditor’s task is to make the pc find the exact beginning of his troubles, and as these may be earlier than birth, it happens quite by itself that the pc slides into prenatal or even past life memories. This is not enforced by the auditor but a natural consequence of the pc’s improvement in his recall ability and "confront" (i.e. mental stamina).
The auditor is bound to follow a code of behaviour, the ‘Auditor’s Code". As the pc is aware of this code, he knows what he is to expect in the session. Amongst other things, the Auditor’s Code demands that the auditor give no comments, opinions, evaluations, invalidations, or interpretations of any kind regarding the statements of the pc. He is not to do so either in or out of session, whether to the pc himself or any other person. As it is the auditor’s task to help the pc find his own truth about himself and his life it is self-evident that he must not guide or "enlighten" him. The Auditor’s Code is the mainstay of the trust the pc is setting in the auditor. It is a strictly functional code, the breaking of which would lead to immediate disaster [1].
The ultimate goal of an auditing cycle is the pc’s ability to handle mental masses and energies all by himself, in which case he would be cause over his own mind, i.e. his imaginations, thoughts and pictures. This state is called "Clear".
From there on out, the pc would be fully responsible for himself and expand in life without further need of auditing. This result can only be attained by a number of intensive auditing cycles. If one were to only "fix up" a pc anytime life had knocked him about too hard, one would confirm his position on the effect side of things and not help him to be cause over them. In auditing one works towards an increase of responsibility and ability and is not satisfied with patch-up jobs.
In view of what is brought to light in sessions, the folk wisdom of "time heals all wounds" may be considered thoroughly disproven. The charge of an incident of 250 years ago is still there as soon as you put your finger on it. Those little bits of life energy tied up in the shock, pain and grief of that incident, are not recovered simply by time going by. They stay tied up. And each further bit of life energy tied up this way makes the person (thetan) shrink and wither - which is why children usually are more cheerful and enthusiastic than adults. The accumulation of failures and losses and the effort to keep them out of sight are a burden which increases from lifetime to lifetime. Life energy (theta) is locked up in all of this. After it has been regained, the person looks brighter, feels more hopeful, futurebound and active. This is the whole purpose of auditing.
© 1991 by L. Kin
© 1991 by Edition ScienTerra
[1] "Scn 0-8", by L. Ron Hubbard (LRH), 1970. [return]
[17] "The Volunteer Minister's Handbook", by LRH, 1976. [return]
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