2. VARIATIONS AND PREREQUISITES

   
  A. TRs

TR means Training Routine, or in older usage, Training Rudiment. These are the basic communication drills. The success through communication course is a modern beginner's TRs course.

The 1966 lineup had a beginner's communication course known as the HAS (Hubbard Associate Scientologist) course.

This was a TRs course (TR 0 to 4) taught on a light gradient.

During 1966-67 this was taught with the permissive coaching variation given in HCOB 29 April 63 "Modernized Training Drills Using Permissive Coaching" in TV5. This bulletin was cancelled in 1970. The tech vols show this as by LRH but the older copies show that it was by Reg Sharp for LRH.

In 1966 this was the only prerequisite to level 0 so that the training consisted of doing a permissive style TRs course and then going directly onto level zero which included a run through the 1961 style TRs (HCOB 17 Apr 61 Training Drills Modernized in TV4) which is very close to the 1971 revision (HCOB 16 Aug 71 Training Drills Modernized in TV7). (this is in NTV 9 as revised 5 JUL 78, and oddly enough there is an even later revision of 4 SEP 80 in TV 14 which must have been cancelled before the new tech volumes were released).

In other words, both standard TRs and permissive style TRs training was in use concurrently in 1966.

I would recommend the permissive coaching version as being a good variation to do once sometime during one's training but that it should not be the primary version used. After the permissive style was replaced by standard TRs in the early courses, it was brought back as a one time run through sometime during early auditor training, possibly on level 1 or 2. It then came and went periodically from the checksheets.

Based on an older comment by Ron about not doing bullbaiting on new people, bullbaiting was very briefly removed from the TRs course and the stats crashed instantly so it was put back in. New people liked doing the bullbaiting and the course was boring without it.

HCOPL 1 JUL 65 "Comm Cycle Additives" included the statement that "all auditors talk to much". Initially this only reduced excessive chatter but it began a steady decrease in communication because no matter how little an auditor talked, the policy still said that they talked too much and so they would talk even less in the following year. Because of this, by 1968 the communication had become minimal and robotic and the TRs became very unnatural.

Early TR coaching had the idea that you should coach the thetan rather than the body. If you coach the body, the student's attention goes onto his body instead of staying on the person in front of him and the TRs become much harder to get through.

With the initial class 8 course in 1968, quickie tech failures were being blamed on out TRs and so marathon TRs drilling was being done with more and more robotic results and an increasing emphasis on physical rather than theta oriented coaching. This culminated with the "hard TRs course" that drilled blinkless TRs late in 1969. The end result was extremely poor and inadequate TRs and auditors who were out of communication with the pc (preclear).

To correct this out communication, the old PAB on handling pc originations was put back in and auditors were drilled in actually communication with the pc again. And eventually the blinkless TRs were cancelled.

Also, to handle the excessive unnaturalness, LRH demo sessions became part of the TRs training so that the students could hear how one should audit. Unfortunately, there was already such a tradition of minimal talking and robotic application that they only went about halfway with this. However, it was still an improvement. The demo tapes used are the ones marked MTS-# in the tape master list that I put out recently.

But by this point TRs had been made arduous and the flaw of coaching the body rather than the thetan never was corrected.

As a result, TRs became a big deal and a separate professional TRs course was developed which had to be done as a prerequisite to class zero. And even with that they tend to be a bit unnatural in most cases.



B. Study Tech and Word Clearing

My original class zero course in 1966 only had a single study tape, the one on data assimilation.

By 1967, there was a separate student hat checksheet with the study tapes and various bulletins on giving checkouts and so forth. This was initially thrown in as a freebie with level zero and later became a separate course that was done as a prerequisite.

Modern metered word clearing was introduced in the early 1970s. This especially included the method 4 meter checks for misunderstoods on bulletins and the method 1 rundown which was a major case action. To this was added having the student look up every word in the study materials to produce a "super literate".

In earlier training, handling of misunderstoods was primarily used as a corrective action when a student got into trouble. That seemed to work very well.

The later handling emphasized misunderstoods excessively. This tended to slow students down with unnecessary actions and tended to make people afraid to study for fear of getting MUs.

In practice, the ability to pass words one does not understand without becoming unconscious, irritated, or confused is more valuable than simply getting huge numbers of words defined because that allows you to determine the meaning of something by further study. And the ability to get accurate meanings from context improves understanding, it is only bad when you get the wrong meaning and end up misunderstanding something.

Eventually all of this evolved into the "key to life" and "life orientation course" putting more prerequisites in the way of starting auditor training.

There are people who have trouble reading. Sometimes a grammar course or some word clearing will be helpful. But once a person can read to some degree, the best way to improve the skill and make it comfortable, fast, and pleasant is simply to have them read huge quantities, and that is best done by giving them things they enjoy reading even if it is the worst trash imaginable. With enough quantity done with high enough ARC, the misunderstood word phenomena pretty much ceases to exist.

So I would say that the correct prerequisite is to make sure that the student can read comfortably (and handle that if needed), and then have them listen to the study tapes.

The study tapes are:

These are all from 1964 except for the last one which is from 1966.

SH Spec-24 ren 387 18 Jun Studying: Introduction <ST-1, study cass>
SH Spec-28 ren 391 9 Jul Studying: Data Assimilation <ST-2, study cass>
SH Spec-33 ren 396 4 Aug A Summary of Study <ST-3 study cass>
SH Spec-34 ren 397 6 Aug Study: Gradients and Nomenclature <ST-4 study cass>
SH Spec-35 ren 398 11 Aug Study: Evaluation of Information <ST-5 study cass>
SH Spec-36 ren 399 13 Aug Study and Education <ST-6 study cass>
SH Spec-40 ren 403 22 Sep A Review of Study <ST-7 study cass>
SH Spec-76 ren 439 18 Aug Study and Intention (also known as "Roundup of Study") <ST-8, study cass>