Volume 6, Issue 4, page 5

Skeptical, Unwilling Preclear Accepts Auditing Only to Please Her
Husband—But at Happened Proved to Her Dianetics Was No Hoax

By IDELLA STONE, I-45, HDA, D.Scn., HRA

EXPERIENCE in Dianetics has been
so different from that of Alphia
Hart that it seems to me I should
record the other side of a dichotomy (May, 1959, ABERREE.)
1 Our family always has been addicted to science-fiction. When we
read in the April 1950 ASTOUNDING
about Dianetics, I immediately decided this was a hoax, as John
Campbell had published a lovely article a
year earlier, very scientific in its terminology, but a hoax thruout. However, at
that time I was reviewing books for the
Los Angeles DAILY NEWTS, so I asked to review "Dianetics". Therefore, I probably
had the first book in this area. I read it
probably five times (thoroly once, then
cursorily) in an effort to do a fair review. My understanding, therefore, probably equaled or exceeded that of anyone
in the country; later experience with Dianetics showed me that I did not understand it at all. Dianetics cannot be understood without subjective experience.

I did not "believe" in prenatals; I
still felt that Dianetics was probably a
hoax. But my husband seemed so "sold" on
it that I felt any open resistance On my
part would lead to the loss of a very
good husband. I decided that if I let him
audit me, he would lose his faith in it
when he saw that nothing happened. So I
proceeded to lie down and "be audited".

At that time, I was a broken-down suburban housewife, full of constant chronic
somatics, subject to about four colds a
year which kept me in bed from one to two
weeks; tired and ailing all the time;
practically a hermit because of extreme
susceptibility to motion-sickness which
made me make excuses not to go with the
family on Sunday excursions; no memory
for names and faces, which added to my
desire to be a recluse (and how desperately I tried to remember them by any
memory systems I happened to read, and
how futile these efforts were); feeling a
complete failure; the mind that had been
acceptably brilliant in my youth now
served only to let me plow thru such
trivial reading as the SatevePOST; subject to anger dramatizations which always
filled me with burning shame afterwards --
an apathy-grief-anger case complete.

So, tongue in cheek, I was audited by
Remi on the infant-death of my first child
by a previous marriage. Fourteen hours of
grief -- and at the second Pasadena Dianetic
Group meeting, I introduced ten persons
to each other without a fumble or bobble,
and then nearly collapsed with astonishment. When we had even dear friends to
our house for dinner, I'd always make it
a point to be "busy" in the kitchen if
any introductions had to be done, because
even familiar names would disappear when
most needed. Suddenly, I found myself endowed with a good memory for names and
faces -- the kind I'd had many years ago.
But of course it couldn't be Dianetics,
because we'd run nothing to do with memory. Besides, when my baby died, I had
isolated myself and nobody ever told me to
forget anything at that time, so naturally all this grief I had been running had
nothing to do with it (Ah! pre-clears!)
The next Sunday, the children were so
noisy Remi took me down to a new subdivision, where we parked and I crawled into the back seat and curled up to be
audited. My auditor now demanded that I
go over all the times I'd been motionsick; this induced a fair amount of nausea. We went over everything I could remember a few times, and then he demanded
the prenatal "holding this in ", (I learned
later that he did not "believe" in prenatals, either.) Preclear then began to
argue with auditor that there ain't no
such. Auditor was awfully insistent, tho,
and finally to stop his prodding, I "made
up" for him a "prenatal " in which my Mama
was being morning-sick on a train, two
months post-conception. I had no feeling
of reality at all on this; I had no faith,
I was "making it up" for the auditor. I
contacted a phrase and felt unutterable
shame flood over me, so that it took almost half an hour (by that inaccurate
subjective time preclears calculate by)
for him to coax it out of me. Finally, I
said, "She says, ' Goddamit, can't you see
I'm sick? Go away and leave me alone! '' I
thought the shame was my own at the idea
of my mother's use of rough language, and
it wasn't until some years after my experience as an auditor that one day it
dawned it was HER shame at being encountered in this "unladylike " situation. We
ran this and ran it, the preclear with a
great feeling of impatience that the auditor should attach so much importance to a
totally imaginary incident. When the nausea cleared and I felt wrapped in a lovely golden glow, we ended the session.