7. WRONG IDEAS IN STANDARD TECH
Here I am going to talk about the technology of auditing rather than the high level flaws that I have been pointing out all along.
First of all, the bulk of the auditing technology is correct. It has gone through a long evolution and many of the flagrant misconceptions of earlier years have long since been corrected. But there are still some wrong ideas.
The most basic mistake is to consider that the standardness, correctness, and exactness of the procedure is senior to the PC's gains, maintaining communication with the PC, and granting beingness to the PC.
Our primary target is to produce the best result possible for the PC, this is senior to everything. To achieve this, it is more important to remain in comm with the PC than it is to do the procedure right, because communication is the most important basic we have and nothing can occur in its absence. Furthermore, if the PC's abilities and awareness are to be raised, we must make more of the PC rather than making less of him. Therefore, we must always grant and encourage his own beingness and reinforce his own positive efforts even when these don't fit perfectly into the rote procedure that we are trying to inflict on him. These things are known, and they can be found in the auditor's code. What is not known is the correct relative importance. These things are senior to everything else in the technology including the CS series, the class VIII materials, and all formal procedures of auditing.
When he was writing about art, Ron realized that absolute technical perfection was a dead end. For maximum aesthetics, you get as close as you can to perfection without losing the communication line. If only he had realized that this applies to auditing technology as well.
If you deliver absolutely perfect standard technology, the PC will not make gains. This is robotic and you might as well program up a computer to audit the guy. On the other hand, if the auditor just slops around and makes a mess, there wouldn't be any gains either. The quality of the auditing and quantity of results is dependent on how close you can come to standard while maintaining communication, granting beingness, and keeping other basics in. This may mean occasionally violating standard procedure. The real skill comes in in minimizing the violations rather than in adhering perfectly to standard while the session and the PC go to hell.
If you beat the auditor over the head every time he violates standard procedure with a good result for the PC, then you will kill his ability to be with the PC and use his knowingness and understanding to do what is really needed by the PC even though it isn't in the textbook. The CS must validate these successful violations rather than attacking the auditor.
The standards are there for a reason, and that is the fact that they usually work and trouble results from violating them. On that basis, there will be many instances where violations of standards result in failures and poor results. This is where you correct the incapable auditor and teach him the right way to do things. Don't wreck his judgment by fixing a theoretical mistake that might not be a mistake in the specific case. Instead, fix the real mistakes which are obvious in their failure to help the PC.
The above assumes that the standards are always correct. Even in that case, you must allow for deviations because there are no absolutes. But there can also be actual flaws in the standards, or better ways of doing things. In the past we have seen endless corrections of mistakes in the standards themselves. So if you find that the auditors are getting results with some consistent violation of standard procedure, then maybe you had better revise the standard procedure.
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There have been a number of points which have shifted around over the years. Often there were results either way and there were arguments in favor of either approach.
One of these was whether or not a real FN could occur above 3.0 on the meter. At one time this was an absolute (never call one above 3.0) and some cases were messed up. At other times, anything was accepted without any judgment and some cases were found where processes were left incomplete. Maybe the auditor has to actually look at the PC and be in good enough communication to tell whether or not the PC has gotten release from something. If you're good, you should be able to see this even without a meter. And if the auditor is already well trained and the PC seems happy, maybe the CS should take the auditors judgment as being better than the mechanical phenomena of the E-meter.
Another is the exact definition of what is a read on the meter. In the old days, any change of needle characteristic was taken up. In modern times, they limit themselves to falls and instant FNs, rocket reads, and (in special cases) rock slams. In the first case, we sometimes took up something that was inaccessible (a rise generally indicates a non-confront and if you take one up sometimes it is unrunable). In the second case, we might occasionally miss something that does need to be run. In practice, it might make a difference what you are trying to do. In repair actions, you might take up a read that you would not use in normal processing because it might be your only entry point into some terrible auditing error that was done earlier and you might have no choice but to fight your way through something that is barely runable to get the matter straightened out.
There is also the case of rare and unusual meter reactions. One of these is the sharp instant rise which looks like a fast long fall in reverse. These are very rare. They should be taken up. What you have is a dramatic flinch and non-confront, but the person is right on the edge of looking at it. Its one of these "oh my god that can't be" type reactions. Simply calling it a few times will often turn it into a spectacular fall as the person takes a real look at the item being checked.
One problem is spectacularly large reads. Really huge FNs, theta bops, and rock slams can be confused with each other and can also be confused with giant rocket reads that dive off of the dial. These reads can be 2 or 3 divisions wide on the TA and if they are really fast the needle can slam against the pin with audible force as it shifts on and off the dial. Your immediate action should be to turn the sensitivity down to 1 so that you have some hope of identifying the read. You may also have to swing the TA up or down to catch the end of the read and you may have to recheck the item with the TA already sitting at the position where you are guessing that the read will shove it too. We could really use a meter with a sensitivity setting way below 1 for identifying these giant reads.
The super duper ultra sensitive meters are needed for repair actions where there is so much blocking the PCs view that you need all the help you can get. When a PC is really flying, especially on advanced levels, the reads should be spectacular and you need a less sensitive meter. This silly business of needing a more sensitive meter to run NOTS means that they are running the wrong process. If it is the right action, it will read well. If it doesn't, then either its unnecessary, or out-gradient (something else needs to be run first), or the procedure itself is flawed in some manner. The NOTS material can read well on the meter sometimes. Done at the right time, these can be very beneficial. But run by fanatics who are trying to blame all case on NOTS factors, you get this strange quick of needing more and more sensitive meters to find things that are not reading as expected.
By the way, it would be nice to have a super cheep but ultra sophisticated meter for use by solo auditors so that the ordinary population could run do-it-yourself solo processes etc. A simple and cheep whetstone bridge could be plugged into the serial port of a PC (Personal Computer). A sophisticated program could do signal analysis and put up a graphical display. It could probably do ten times as much as the current meters because of the flexibility and power of doing things in software. I would guess that such a thing could be marketed for under a hundred dollars.
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An extremely misleading datum is "The PC Doesn't Know What Is Wrong With Him". This was coined on the assumption that if he really knew what was wrong with him, it wouldn't be wrong.
This is pretty much the case for somebody walking in off of the street. Anything they could figure out or handle with the data they currently know and their current level of confront has already been handled and if it is still wrong, then they don't have the correct answer to it.
But this changes as soon as you give them more data or raise their level of confront.
Try listening to the PC for a change. When he's halfway on something, he often does know what's what and has a partial view of the truth. If he saw it all, it would be gone, but when he has a partial view, he is often right but not quite free of it. If you left him alone, he would actually get through it eventually on his own but it might take some time. If, however, you keep insisting that he doesn't know when he really does, your going to mess him up and create a big ARCX as well.
An extreme example was the mess up on people who had gone clear on Dianetics before the Dianetic clear bulletin came out. They would usually know that they were being run on wrong actions and they often felt that they were clear but wouldn't dare claim to be. In this case, they knew better than the auditors and CSes and nobody would acknowledge their rightness.
A good button for ARCX correction lists (the L1) and repair lists (the green form) would be "Were you right and nobody would accept it?". This is a key point because we are trying to rekindle the fundamental rightness that lies under all the aberrations and when the PC has it but you shoot it down, you are pushing him right back into the bank and killing his real hopes of freedom. This can cause the kind of ARCX where the PC wants to burn down the org because it is acting suppressively towards his case.
Of course you don't want to lose control of the session or go chasing after every idle thought or get derailed by the PCs attempts to avoid looking at something. But you should be able to tell the difference between a PC who is non-confronting and one who is perceiving truth. And you should be able to finish a cycle of action while noting down things the PC suggests for later handling, and keep the PC reassured, and really address those things as soon as the current process is done.
And don't make a fight out of not taking the PCs orders. You can bend a little and still not lose control of the session. Sometimes the PC is right. Validate it. Getting the PC to the point where his ITSA of his own case is actually correct is the most important gain he will ever make because it is the one which will let him find his own way out.
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Another sore point is the datum that "All Auditors Talk Too Much". A policy from the late 1960s states this explicitly.
The interesting thing about this one is that it is true and yet the policy was written in such a manner as to be totally destructive of auditing.
The policy presents this as something to be corrected. The end result was that auditors stopped talking and auditing ceased to occur. This was to some degree remedied in later years (by a revision to TR4 handling of originations), but still remains a trouble spot.
The correct datum is that any auditor who is really auditing the PC will talk too much. Maintaining two way communication is senior. If the auditor talks too little, there will be no auditing taking place. If the auditor tries to talk precisely the right amount, he will occasionally undershoot and betray some of his PCs by losing the comm line. Therefore, he will talk too much if he really intends to get results instead of trying to make some CS happy or meet some arbitrary standard. Again, however, it is a matter of coming as close as possible. The highly skilled auditor will only talk a hairsbreadth too much rather than blabbering away at the PC and occasionally saying the wrong thing and getting into a mess.
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One fatal flaw has been the use of endless setups, preparation, and repair before letting the PC get moving on new grades and OT levels.
This has mostly come about as a solution to the mistakes of having defined clear incorrectly, blaming all case on NOTS, considering things to be absolutes rather than a gradient of increasing confront and awareness, and the many grades and processes which are missing from the current lineup. This makes CSes scared to let somebody start something because it might not handle what is wrong and the PC might fall on his head.
The grades and levels work quickly to increase ability and awareness. Unnecessary repair and setup actions (and the infamous unnecessary sec checks) grind along slowly and waste everyones time and money.
The only criteria that should be considered before embarking on one of these major steps is whether or not the PC is flying (e.g. running well, high toned, FNs and cognites easily, etc.).
In some cases an out-list or out-int will be a roadblock and you have to solve it. In other cases, it doesn't matter. Look at the PC and see if he has the free attention necessary to run something new or whether his attention is fixated. That's all you care about.
There are many things wrong with the PC. You need to raise his confront in lots of areas. No single area is the right reason behind all his aberrations, and that means that you can't get evangalistic and try to cure everything with one approach. Move the PC forward as quickly as possible, getting a big win on each of many different major areas. When you get too thorough in one area, it begins to bypass the charge of the other areas that you are not handling and eventually it will blow up in your face.
Don't promise perfect stability or absolute solutions. Promise instead that you will move him along as fast as possible to increase his horsepower and abilities.
As far as NOTS goes, it is a lesser case factor and mainly causes trouble when it is assigned as the reason behind the PCs problems, overts, and upsets. Its simply the WRONG WHY. Indicating the correct "why" behind something never really harms the PC, even if it is a bit out-gradient and hard to confront. But taking something that does have charge on it (and there is generally some charge on NOTS) but is not the correct why for something and jamming it down the PCs throat is a sure way to mess up the PC.
The point at which to begin NOTS is when the PC starts noticing entities and gets interested in handling them. It shouldn't be kept a secret from him. It should be identified as something which will show up eventually and we have the tech to handle it when it does. Meanwhile, it can safely be ignored. Just don't let the PC start blaming his case on them, because that will kill him.
The correct gradient into doing NOTS is to do OT drills first. That is what gets his perception and horsepower up to the point where he can just dust himself off and get these entities out of his way. You get the PC up to the point where he is trying to project energy and percieve at a distance and things like that and he's noticing that there is stuff in his way that's muddying things up and reducing his horsepower. That is the real effect of entities. They do not abberate the person significantly (the PC was already abberated before incident 2, else why was he walking around in a body and letting himself get bashed around by a nasty ruler), but they do get in the person's way, especially in regards to OT abilities.
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In comparison with the vague fumblings that usually occur in metaphysics, Scientology is a precise technical subject. But we err in equating it to a mechanical technology such as engineering. This misleads you into thinking that its all mechanics, and its not.
In building bridges, you simply do the tech mechanically and a bridge results.
But Scientology tech is more like the tech of painting or playing the piano. These things have a very high theta component and if you only apply the techniques mechanically, you do not get the desired product. The tech is only a prerequisite to real understanding and ability, it is not the final result.
Scientology is, first and formost, a philosophy rather than an engineering decipline. You need to study and apply it as a philosophy. And because it is an applied philosophy, you also need to master the mechanical aspects of the tech, but don't get lost in them or think that they are the end product.
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The basic problem is one of attitude. The effort seems to be to defend the technology and make it right when what you really need to do as an auditor is to build up the rightness of the PC and what you need to do as a CS is to build up the rightness of your auditors.
If you validate beingness, knowingness, and responsibility, then you will get more beingness, knowingness, and responsibility. On the other hand, if you validate rote procedure, then you will get more rote procedure (and will in turn need even more rote procedures because the old ones wouldn't be enough in the face of a deterioration of beingness, knowingness, and responsibility).
Despite all of this, there are some really good auditors, supervisors, and CSes working for the CofS. The shame of it is that they are the exception rather than the rule and they are subject to invalidation for the exact things which set them above the crowd.