New Techniques - and the End Is Not Yet
New Techniques - and the End Is Not Yet
From Stability to Turmoil Again
MY LAST installment promised to reveal ./L7 how Scientologists go about bettering r V the lot of mankind. There has been a silence, since Scientologists have had this thoroughly overhauled for them in the last few months. Now, your editor and mine has prodded me for the rest of the story, and all I've been doing is gaping at the flood of new ideas and techniques. But I've found a small stabilizing factor: The Washington Congress, with the release of Issue 5 of "S L P", or "Six Levels of Processing". (Issues 6 and 7 already have been issued, and are slight revisions of Steps On) and T”0’ t"rt they are nothing earth-shaking.)
I can't very well instruct in specific techniqueshere—they'd beobsolete by the time this sees print, and oddly enough, this is an admission by the powers-that-be that there must be understanding, in addition to the mechanical use of the techniques. I can't pass on understanding in the scope of any article or series of articles. They have a hell of a time doing that at the Academy and many students stay well past their allotted course time before being able to pass the test. But I can outline the philosophical approach implied, hut seldom directly stated, in Hubbard's new pronouncements.
First, though, a word about Hubbardian pronouncements in general. L.R.H. has shouted "This is IT!" so often that many of us, sincerely interested in the problems of mankind, scarcely even look up anymore. We are reminded of the small boy who cried "Wolf! Wolf!", andletuslookintothisabitfurther. Whoever owned the sheep must have been ready to feed the small boy to the wolf, but perhaps they were chagrined just a tiny bit not to have answered the call just one more time; they'd have saved the sheep.
Hubbard has perhaps made very large noises about very small (or perhaps nonexistent) wolves, but one must admit that he's still looking, and is still sure that he'll come up with the granddaddy of them all one of these days, if he hasn't already.
The techniques of Scientology, with minor changes, were pretty stable for about a year, and it was from this comforting stability that I started this series. But, since L.R.H. has been teaching the London Clinical Units, alas! all is turmoil again. No one seems to think that the present "S L P" is the end, and this is in itself unusual. The change from the continuous presenting of different Scientologies as finished products to the admission that research is continuing is, I think, a healthy one.
Let us see if we can ascertain the nature of the beast that has caused the latest cry of "Wolf!"
In part, it is an extension of a change of attitude noted in these pages for some issues. We no longer browbeat some poor body and thetan through endless hours of wall-fingering. Not at first, anyhow.
Instead, one now begins by getting the pre-clear to agree that there is a session and that you are the auditor, and here is where understanding begins, for you must be able to tell when the pre-clear has agreed and realizes that these conditions exist, and keep the session that way. It's part of getting into two-way communication with the pre-clear, and it should be quite obvious that the better the two-way communication is, the better the re-sults. Unfortunately, this requires a fairly high auditor case-level, for some things can be highly restimulative to a listener who has not been straightened out on such things himself. It seems that Hubbard has at least partly given up on mechanical techniques, and has realized that the auditor must be to some degree aware in order to produce good results.
So, the emphasis now is upon establishing and maintaining two-way communication with the pre-clear. This includes acknowledging all communication originated by the pre-clear (even "burps" and sighs) by such remarks as "O.K.", "All right", "Fine", etc., sincerely expressed. We will have no more auditing machines giving commands!
Anysomatics and/or dope-off are now regarded as lapses in two-way communication, and the session should be re-established ("Are you ready to continue the process?" or "Are you ready to have me process you some more?" and so on). Changes in process are now noted and talked about. ("I'm now going to give you a process in which the command will be so-and-so. O.K.? All right, so-and-so.")
Present-time problems are discussed and handled fay a couple of neat little techniques that de-emphasize them for at least the length of the session. If they do recur, or happen to show during the session, they are never ignored. Talked over, communicated "through", but never ignored. This really should be obvious .
Just enough 8-C—moving the body around the room—is done to establish that the pre-clear is following commands. If he agrees to do it, then does it, chances are that he'll do other commands, unless he slips out of communication. Whereupon it's up to the auditor to get him back in.
The big theoretical advance is the theory of "not know". This runs as follows: Originally the thetan knew, so in order to have a game, he had to "not know"—unknow—something, thenknowitagain. Thishas gonedownscale through many inversions of forgetting and remembering until getting knowledge has become the struggle it is today.
The idea in processing these days is to get the pre-clear able to "not know" various things until he is able to do so with anything. A command could be "Give me something you wouldn't mind 'not-knowing' about that car", or any other object in sight. Many processes are now run out-of-doors, or in bus stations, etc. You may have heard of the precess called "Union Station", or its more recent counterparts, "Victoria Station" and "Waterloo Station". (In case you didn't know, H’.’bbard is now in London.)
The importance of "universes" in a case is receiving continued attention. All of us have at one time or another accepted an idea or opinion or Judgment from another—not made a similar one, now, but accepted another's; it's still theirs, but you're using it, too. The more of these ideas, etc., that you accept from a person, the more you become involved in his or her universe. A couple of major new
