Desdescription of processing and
The Basic Principles of Processing
This happens to be the most important subject that you will cover in auditing. It may not be the most important subject in the universe, but it is the most important subject in auditing. This is a Step One, Two-Way Communication procedure. And this is the relatively advanced procedure of conducting a two-way communication, and someone who would have no concept of the four conditions of existence would not be remotely capable of running this process, therefore this would not come at the very early part of one’s study, although Step One itself comes early in training.
This requires two-way communication – every iron you can throw into the fire.
It requires all of your knowledge of Scientology and its theory and practice, to conduct an adequate two-way communication with the preclear, because if you do that you can, just by that and with no further process, resolve his case in a relatively short time. So this must be an extremely important process we are talking about here. It requires all of the knowingness you have of Scientology in order to do it. It is done by a clever auditor. It is not a process which is done by a fellow who, as his furthest effort of cognition toward the preclear, reads off a series of commands. It requires a continuous communication with the preclear – a two-way communication with the preclear. It requires that you establish it and that you maintain it and that you conduct it in such a fashion that the elements which compose the preclear’s difficulty are vanished. Just by carrying on a two-way communication with the preclear, you can cause any difficulty he is having, such as non-exteriorization, such as a failure to take responsibility in other Dynamics, and so on, whatever his difficulties, you can conduct a two-way communication in such a way as to make those difficulties vanish. You will have just as much good fortune with this process as you are willing to be a clever auditor and to follow the exact rules of this.
The primary difficulty with this process Two-Way Communication is that it apparently is entirely permissive, it apparently can wander into any field, topic, subject, address anything – thereby an individual who is not cognizant of its very, very precise fundamentals would go immediately astray. He would go as far astray as men have gone far astray. It’s a process which you can easily get entangled about. It’s a process which you can be argued with about.
A two-way communication could be a very broad field, but it has a particular precision area where you as an auditor can concentrate. If you know the exact mechanics of what you are doing, used cleverly, this becomes the best process you ever had. When you don’t know its mechanics, and you don’t use it cleverly, it becomes the gummiest, most misunderstood, non-advancing sort of a process you ever ran into. So again here is a process that requires judgement yet is very easy to do.
The part of Two-Way Communication we are taking up here could be given a name all of its own, and we would call it DESCRIPTION PROCESSING. It could be given this name, but it’s likely to get entirely lost if we always refer to it by this name. In the first place Description Processing would not be its entire description name. It would have to be DESCRIPTION RIGHT NOW Processing. But we had better call it a process known as Two – Way Communication, which is just exactly what it is labelled under Step One of Intensive Procedure, (Intensive Procedure: The Standard Operating Procedure, 1954, given in The Creation of Human Ability by L. Ron Hubbard.) and this comes at this distance into this material because it uses every single thing that you know about Scientology. And the main thing that it uses is this factor: If you establish the As-is-ness of your preclear’s condition to his satisfaction it will vanish. And you don’t establish its As-is-ness by tracing its consequences, by tracing its basics, by tracing its significances, by discovering what lies under the thing that lies under the thing that lies under the back of beyond the other side of, or „Let’s change it all, change it all, change it all,“ because what will happen? The process will persist 124 won’t it? This is a tricky one, then. It is a process which actually and overtly processes and achieves Alter-is-ness, by using nothing but As-is-ness. You can get a change of case with the preclear very simply, solely by taking his case as it is right now. We want right now, no place else, we want to know how it is right now.
The key question of this process can be codified. The process is not sloppy, it’s not all over the place, it is highly precise, and the key question is: How does it seem to you now? You could just go on asking this question. That is all you want the preclear to give you. How does it actually seem to him right now. If he tells you about the room, or a manifestation of some sort, or something he likes, or something he dislikes, or something he knows or doesn’t know – whatever it is – what you want, and all that you want from the preclear about it in this process is how actually does it seem to him right now.
And by doing exactly that, you get change, change, change in the preclear, at a very fast rate – by doing what? – by asking for nothing but an As-is-ness. What is the condition as it is right this instant.
If you were a very, very clever auditor, all you would have to do is to take this basic question, How does it seem to you now, and couch it in a thousand different guises, always, always pointing straight at this one, that we want this individual to discuss exactly how it is.
We want to know about it. And we don’t want any romance, we don’t want any embroidery, we don’t want any alteration so as to get our sympathy. We don’t want any super-pressure on us so that we will do something. All we want to know is how it is. That takes clever auditing.
It’s quite a fascinating thing to watch a preclear come into cognition – not recognition, because he probably never knew it before (re-cognition would be „I knew it but I forgot it“).
Conditions exist through him, around him, above him, below him – considerations exist of which he has no cognition. These have come into beingness without any understanding whatsoever on his part. He’s never seen them before and yet they’re right there, so what we’re interested in is cognition – looking at it – and we want the As-is-ness of any and every condition which this fellow has.
The preclear begins to change very rapidly. The first thing you know he is saying, „Well, there’s nothing wrong with my throat!“… „The back of my head’s perfectly alive.“ If he doesn’t know the formula of what you’re doing, and he doesn’t track with it at all, and he doesn’t know Scientology, you have ceased at that moment to be entirely human as far as he’s concerned.
Now I have run this process on preclears who were intensely resistive to auditing, who knew nothing could happen, who generally finished up sessions saying nothing happened, and I received the most amazing sort of result. The person knew something had happened.
Cognition had occurrred. And it had occurrred with considerable action. The person knew this extremely well, that something had happened. You can’t run this on anybody without changing his condition. It’s impossible to do so. Even if you ran it poorly you’d change his condition.
Running this process you could do this occasionally. You could throw in where and when. Not often or repetitively. Once in a while. (Let’s not stick him back on the time track.) And recognize well that if he spots this thing even vaguely in the time and place where it began, you are likely to get a whole chain of things blowing, but we are not primarily interested in that, because where, and what, is present time. Time is not just beginningless and endless. It would seem so, but time is a continuing postulate. It is a postulate which continues to be postulated. All time is now. What we call the future, which is entirely hypothetical, is what will be, and that is not an As-is-ness. You could have an As-is-ness about the future, such as „I am worried about the future,“ but you don’t actually have a future in that preclear. And as 125 far as the past is concerned, it has no more actual validity than the future. All that exists of the past is what is in the present. And if it’s not in the present, so what? You could say, well, it might come into the present. No, it won’t. Not if you’ve got the present straightened out. If you have a preclear in a continuous state of beingness, in this present, which is rising and getting better, and his cognition is better and better and better – you’re turning on his knowingness. And if you turn on his knowingness in the present, his knowingness about the past will increase markedly.
I’ve had a preclear start out with a statement like, „I am a body, I know I am a body and nothing but a body“, and tell me he has „heard things about Scientology and exteriorization“ and so forth, and he recites all kinds of things he has picked up from the materialistic practitioners. Well, I read in a psychiatric text once upon a time (this is their knowingness level on this) that people occasionally had the delusion that they were not in their bodies, and that psychiatry used electric shock to move them back into their bodies. This would be more or less the level of practice of monkeys hanging from their tails – they really shouldn’t be fooling around with such things as the spirit. These practitioners sat in their chairs for fifty years and for, I’d say, several million if not several billion hours, and they didn’t notice this? Well they were starting out on the basic premise that man is mud is mud is mud, he’s a body, and there’s nothing you can do about it anyway – and going at it from this angle they were not likely to find out much of anything but the fact that there does happen to be some mud around.
The As-is-ness of the preclear was what was in the road of all the materialistic approaches to the field of healing. This is not to imply that a medical doctor is out of order in practicing on broken bones, obstetrics and such things – in other words mechanical structure – but when it comes over to his doing something about the mind, he has to deal with the spirit, because there isn’t any mind. That was the thing they never learned about. They didn’t find out that what they were studying didn’t exist. They were studying a lump of computing machine made out of neurons and cyclotrons or something of the sort. Well, they could have studied it forever and never found out anything about it, because it has no As-is-ness. They could go on describing it forever, and of course it would continue to persist because it is itself an Alter-is-ness.
Well, don’t you make the same mistake with a preclear. Don’t go chasing after all the endless significances and symptoms – in other words, Alter-is-ness, Alter-is-ness, Alter-is – ness – don’t make the mistake of addressing this, because all you will do is perpetuate the condition. Just don’t make that mistake. What you want to do is quite something else.
You want to find out how it seems right now. You don’t want any action on the part of this preclear who wants to go chasing after significances. He is so fixed on the idea of being an observer that let’s let him observe. So there’s a white area. He says, „Uh… I don’t know… the back of the leg’s kind of white and the front of the leg’s kind of dark. And there seems to be something shooting up through the leg.“ „Well, how does it seem to you now?“ Keep him looking at it, keep him looking at it now. You just want him to describe it and describe it and describe it. And then communicate and communicate and communicate and communicate, and we don’t care if we seem to waste some time with it. So he goes off into wild excursion, something like, „Well, it seems to me like… I don’t know, I can’t quite look at the room when that pain is on. I try to look at the room. I wonder why that is. I wonder why that is. I’ve had a lot of speculation as to why this is.“ You can let him talk for a while. It’s burning time, but remember you’re preserving a two-way communication, and throughout this process you’re preserving a two-way communication, and that is its keynote and that is why it continues to work so easily. Your preclear does not seem to be under duress at any time. Believe me, is he interested in his conditions! And in Description Processing you simply use that overtly to get him to describe them as they are.
But this requires a certain sensitivity on the part of an auditor. He’s got to know when the preclear starts weaving the fancy tales.
126 How is he going to know this? The condition does not alter. That’s an interesting one, isn’t it? He’s describing how horrible it is. He goes on and describes this, and describes it and describes it and describes it for three or four minutes, and there’s no change at all. He describes it for a few more minutes and there’s no change at all.
Don’t shoot him.
You could ask him how his feet seem to him. Get him off that subject, because you hit a lying machine, and if you’ll just get his attention off of it, why, maybe you’ll get some straight answers.
This is where you learn about people. But in what framework are you learning about people? You’re going entirely on the very, very basic material of the four conditions of existence. You will see a person run this cycle over and over and over as he does Description Processing. People become so fantastically patterned, they are so predictable when they start this sort of thing – and they become very easy to process. This is not restimulative, because you’re not trying to change the preclear. You’re trying to find out how he is. You can do this for hours. Cognitions will occurr, such as, that he’s actually had a migraine headache for years and he didn’t even know it, except that all of a sudden it stopped. All of a sudden, he said, „Wait a minute. What’s happened to this pain? I didn’t ever know I had a pain here.“ That sort of things happens in this type of processing.
„Description Right Now“ Processing – Two-way Communication: Step One. This is how you get them into communication, how you keep them in communication and why you keep them in communication along this particular line. You could perform this in 8-C Opening Procedure, but you’re simply maintaining a two-way communication. „How does this (part of the room) seem to you now?“ You’re trying to get the exact condition at that moment which he is observing. You will get continuous change. You are undoing all the change he has put into the condition. But it undoes with great rapidity, so there is some hope after all.
The Basic Principles of Processing
In practice, in Dianetics, the auditor is doing a very simple thing. He is recovering theta which has become confused with MEST by reason of physical pain and emotional shock. He is by dianetic processing converting entheta to theta. A fundamental axiom of Dianetics is that life is formed by theta compounding with MEST to make a living organism. Life is theta plus MEST.
Another axiom is that theta conquers MEST by first becoming enturbulated with it and then withdrawing, possessed of some of the laws of MEST, and returning over the MEST for an orderly conquest.
Another axiom is that theta, in its conquest of MEST, has followed the cycle of contact, growth, decay, and death, repeated over and over, theta each time using the data gained during the cycle to better adapt the organism for the further conquest of MEST.
Theta is thought, an energy of its own universe analogous to energy in the physical universe but only occasionally paralleling electro- magnetic- gravitic laws.
The three primary components of theta are affinity, reality and communication.
Theta has the strange power of animating and directing MEST and bringing it into an orderly, mobile, and self- perpetuating unit known to us as a life organism.
Dianetics is that branch of Scientology that covers mental anatomy.
Theta and MEST in a disorderly collision bring about enturbulation in both the theta and the MEST which actually changes or reverses the polarity of the theta and the MEST. This reversed polarity permits the rejection of theta by enMEST and of MEST by entheta, so that death can ensue and a new organism can be begun.
Theta acting upon MEST with affinity, communication, and reality takes on an aspect known as reasoning or understanding. All mathematics can be derived from ARC acting upon MEST.
Theta may have considerable residual knowledge of its own, but the knowledge in which an organism is interested is information concerning theta and MEST laws as applied to the organism, and each and every organism develops in the ratio that it utilizes and understands these laws. In the cycle of the organism, from conception to death, theta and MEST are many times brought together in disorderly collision. This creates the phenomenon known as physical pain. Perception of threats to survival and dwindling position on the tone scale “charge up” these moments of physical pain as a mechanism to force the organism into, at first, greater survival activities and then, these failing, into death activities in order to free the theta from the MEST to begin a new cycle. The break point, where the organism is no longer driven upward toward survival but begins to go downward toward death, is 2.0 on the tone scale.
Death has been a vital mechanism in theta’s conquest of MEST, since in no other way could the theta become sufficiently unenturbulated to be able to use the information received through enturbulence to create and construct new organisms or new species. Inevitably through this evolution theta, seeking according to theory wider and wider conquest of MEST, would construct an organism which by force of reason could actively handle large quantities of MEST. Man is such an organism. No lesser organism can rationally arrange any large quantity of MEST exterior to the organism, although many lesser organisms have genetic habit patterns which do permit the handling and altering of small amounts of MEST. All learning springs from disorderly enturbulences where theta has impinged too suddenly and sharply upon
MEST. All reasoning is done by freed theta returning over the MEST for an orderly conquest, utilizing the lessons learned in the disorderly conquest. This applies not only to the formation of organisms but to all adventures of man, according to observation.
It is possible that Dianetics, if these theories continue to prove correct as they have in the past, forms an evolutionary bridge which minimizes death as a mechanism for new learning and conquest and maximizes the conversion of entheta to theta, or disorderly experience to reason, within one life span. Should this prove to be the case, the acceleration of conquest of MEST by man should be very marked. Indeed at this time it can be observed that through a past lack of knowledge of the humanities his social orders have been for some time on a dwindling spiral, even though his knowledge of the physical laws increased. Man, according to these theories, could be said to have learned a great deal about the physical universe without learning enough about theta.
An interesting series of experiments recently done by the Foundation seems to bear out the theory that heightened reason- ability is contained in theta which has been newly recovered from an enturbulence with MEST. Individuals were given a test for a few minutes in order to measure their existing intelligence. They were then sent back down the track into an engram by an auditor and the engram was thoroughly restimulated. Immediately afterwards, the engram not reduced, these experimental subjects were ordered to do a second test. In this condition of stress the second test was taken, and it was found that the score on the second test was uniformly higher than that gained on the first test. Considerable additional experimentation must be undertaken, and these results are very far from conclusive, but they would seem to indicate validity in some of the theta- MEST postulates. Other explanations can, of course, be found for the results of these experiments. However, the theta- MEST postulates have permitted new dianetic processes to be derived and have markedly increased the ease of processing and have decreased the length of time necessary to bring about a dianetic release. Further, the theta- MEST postulates shed much light on the third dynamic, and with them it was possible for me to bring into being a new technology of groups which, when tested on pilot projects with groups, was found to have a uniform workability.
To learn anything about MEST, theta must become enturbulated with it, but to utilize the changes in it caused by the enturbulation, the theta must be freed from MEST in order to accomplish a reasonable conquest of further MEST. Death has been an answer, of sorts, but is not satisfactory to the unit organism. Dianetic processing offers a much less drastic theta recovery.
Inspecting a time track at the beginning of a case one ordinarily finds many occluded areas about which no reasoning can be done. It could be said that these areas, as in engrams themselves, contain entheta. Any of several processes which can free this entheta and convert it into theta will increase the reasonability of the individual, as witnessed by many long series of psychometric tests taken before and after dianetic processing. The restoration of recall of the areas hitherto occluded, in that the data contained in these areas is valuable as experience and information, could, of course, be said to increase the health and reason of the individual. But the recovery of the theta which could be said to lie in these areas as entheta could also be postulated to increase the reason of the individual.
The tone scale is actually a chart of the ratio of free theta and entheta in the individual. Above the 2.0 line, the individual could be said to have more theta than entheta. Below the point 2.0, the individual could be said to have more entheta than theta. Simply by converting entheta to theta the auditor can cause the individual to rise on the tone scale.
It will readily be seen that the ideal condition would be all theta recovered and no entheta remaining in existence in the individual. The attainment of this ideal is called in Dianetics a “cleared” state. This would be, at this time, the end goal of processing. Just how often it can be completely attained by skilled or unskilled auditors is open to question. That it can be neared and that cases grow markedly better under processing is not open to question, since regardless of any wonder about the cleared state none who have associated with theFoundation or who have practiced Dianetics with any knowledge at all have the smallest doubt of the ability of dianetic processing to improve cases many times more than was ever before possible. If clears cannot be created easily and swiftly, dianetic processing is still very far from invalidated. Actually, clears have been and are being produced, but their total potentialities remain relatively unexplored.
The dianetic release is more understandable than the clear and has been produced and studied in sufficient numbers to admit of little doubt about the desirability and stability of the state. This is a nearer and more easily obtainable goal. The simple alleviation of pain, worry, and general unhappiness is routine to the dianetic auditor. He can accomplish that goals in anything from a few hours to a few weeks on most preclears. These are much more easily obtained goals, and are quite ordinary in the vicinity of the Foundation, so that these, which some say might have been considered miracles two years ago, hardly cause comment. Occasionally some Foundation auditor is startled into advertising a result to his follow auditors in a processing unit, but these successes are generally taken for granted.
Just as we have the ratio of theta to entheta establishing the sanity or insanity of the individual, so we have the ratio of free theta in the auditor to the free theta- entheta ratio in the preclear establishing the swiftness with which the entheta can be unenturbulated in the preclear.
An examination of this theory will demonstrate that there are three valid processes.
The first and the simplest of these processes consists of changing the environment of the preclear. His old environment possibly contains many restimulative objects and persons, so that his free theta is in continual enturbulence by reason of the restimulation. Shifting the preclear to an unrestimulative environment permits him to “settle out,” which is to say, permits the temporarily enturbulated theta to disenturbulate and the “frozen” entheta to convert, in some minute quantity, to free theta. Part of the environmental change process would be, of course the bettering of affinity, reality, and communication in the environment of the preclear. This by itself could produce a rise in his tone. Falling in love, being an increase of affinity, can make a well man out of a sick man. Being rejected or falling out of love, being a decrease of affinity, can make a sick man out of a well man. Bettering a person’s communication, even if only by giving him a new pair of glasses, will also raise his tone. Validating his realities which were in question can raise his tone. All these things could be considered environmental changes. A special part of environmental change would be changes in health, by reason of nutrition or better living conditions. This process must not be overlooked, since it has been our experience that some preclears who were not doing as well as could have been desired were deficient in their nutrition. The preclear who lives on coffee and sandwiches does not do as well during processing as one who has an adequate and balanced ration with proper vitamin supplements. Good physical exercise can by itself markedly increase the individuals position on the tone scale and a whole therapy to aid psychotics could easily be worked out along the lines of exercise alone.
Probably the worst thing that can happen to a Psychotic is to be placed in the atmosphere normally provided for him by the state. Only a sane, healthy environment where he gets proper exercise and where he has unrestimulative individuals around him could do much to improve his condition. The psychotic will sometimes improve if he is given command over more MEST and, indeed. a fundamental in the production of psychosis is denying the individual a command over MEST.
No better method of tailor- making psychotics could be devised than the usual institution, and it is probable that if the normal person were placed in such an institution, in such an atmosphere, he would become psychotic. Indeed, the incidence of psychosis overtaking attendants and psychiatrists in attendance in such institutions is alarmingly high. This is second only to psycho- surgery and shock treatment in the worsening of psychotics in a psychotic state. Rather than give psychotics such treatment it would be far kinder to kill them immediately and completely, and not partially as does psycho- surgery and electric shock.
The second process which is valid in producing results is education. Education, if defined as the process of making new data available to the individual and causing his mind to attend to and use that data, itself brings reason into the case. Education usually provides new areas of concentration in the environment of the individual and translates many of his unknowns into knowns. Unreason could be classed in two categories: too wide a zone of attention, and too fixed a zone of attention. In the first, the mind wanders over large areas unable to select pertinent data. In the second, where the mind is fixed, it cannot wander far enough to find pertinent data. In neither case can the mind resolve the problem about which it is concerned, due to the absence of data. Superstition is an effort, for lack of education, to find pertinent data in too wide a zone or to fix the attention upon irrelevant data. Personal experience in one’s environment gives one what might be called personal education. A man has become embroiled with MEST, has freed himself, solved problems, has become embroiled again, has drawn back and solved problems anew, so that he has accumulated a fund of personal data about his task of living. Education might be said to be the process by which the individual is given the accumulated data of a long span of culture. It can, no less validly than personal experience, solve many of his problems. Free theta, confronted by too many problems, can, just by this, become enturbulated. Good education can in this way convert some of the entheta of an individual into theta, with a consequent rise on the tone scale. A very sharp proviso, however, must here be entered. Authoritarian teaching, by which the facts are impressed upon the individual and his self- determinism in his utilization of those facts is suppressed, can reduce the free theta in the individual by involving it in a fixed state in the memory bank. Theta is reason. Fixed theta is entheta. Many a man with a college education hammered home by authoritarian professors has been reduced so far down the tone scale that he behaves in life more or less like an automaton. His self- determinism, and hence his persistence and ability to handle responsibility are so reduced as to unfit him for his role in life. Further, concentrating on educational processes past the mid- teens, after which a person should be solving problems of living, has an inhibitive effect upon the mind. An artist specifically is hindered by authoritarian education, since his must be the highest self- determinism if his work is to have any value. Authoritarian education has more or less the same effect upon the individual as hypnotism, depressing him down the tone scale, and indeed, at this time most education is levelled as hypnotic commands rather than an invitation to reason. An education which invites reason and the comparison of taught data with the real world can raise the individual on the tone scale.
The third process which can be considered valid in raising the individual on the tone scale is individual processing, by which is meant any method which will turn his entheta into theta by addressing him as an individual.
It seems to be one of the characteristics of theta that when the theta present exceeds to a very high degree the entheta present, the entheta will tend to dis- enturbulate and become theta. In other words, if we considered these matters in terms of polarity and energy, a positive field if sufficiently strong would inhibit and then convert a negative field near it. A very large magnet placed close to a small magnet will change the poles of the small magnet. When a very large amount of entheta is placed in the vicinity of a lesser amount of theta, the theta may rapidly become entheta. When theta and entheta exist together in more or less equal amounts, or when the disproportion is not large, a relatively stable condition exists, the theta tending to remain theta and the entheta tending to remain entheta. An example of this in the group is the phenomenon of mass hysteria, where one or two members of the group become enturbulated and very rapidly the remainder of the group becomes enturbulated.
This is the basic law of the contagion of aberration. Entheta will enturbulate theta. Misemotion will change emotion into misemotion. Poor communication will change good communication into poor communication. Poor reality will change good reality into poor reality. The engrams in a case enturbulate theta into the entheta of secondaries and locks.
Amongst people one sees this exemplified when a person who is relatively insane enters a group which is relatively sane. The relatively sane may attempt to raise the sanity level of the relatively insane person, and it may occur in this group that the relatively insane person becomes more sane. At the same time, however, the relatively sane people become less sane, unless they have some means or technology for preventing this phenomenon from occurring.
In the case of a husband and wife, it is easy to observe that the mate who is higher on the scale will during the marriage association drop lower, and usually the mate who is lower on the tone scale will come slightly higher as a result of that association. As a further example, the mate who is lower on the tone scale will demand more affection and give less than the mate who is higher. The mate who is lower will demand more communication and give less, and will assert more reality but will actually have less. It can thus be seen, as represented in column AQ on the chart, that the auditor must have a higher ratio of theta to his entheta than has the preclear. A condition must exist where much more theta is available than entheta. An auditor whose theta- entheta ratio is around 2.5 could, with skill, handle individuals lower on the tone scale by not more than one point. A 2.5 auditor attempting to handle an apathy case would find his already badly enturbulated condition worsened so much by the case that the case, having very little free theta, would not get much better. A 2.5 auditor attempting to create a clear begins to work uphill as soon as his preclear reaches 2.5, and the hill very rapidly becomes too steep to climb. The ideal auditor is the one who has a very high endowment of theta and who is at 4.0 on the tone scale. Thus, at the beginning of Dianetics, where we have the usual auditor operating between 2.5 and 3.0, we find it very simple to pull preclears up to 2.0 or 2.5, more difficult to bring them up to 3.0. Where auditors are being heavily employed in processing people they tend to neglect their own processing, and being constantly in the vicinity of and handling entheta, they begin to encounter difficulties with a preclear as soon as the preclear reaches 2.5. It is incumbent upon the auditor to keep himself continually processed and keep his own tone coming up the scale. Where a co- auditing team exists, one person auditing the other, it is considerably more than a fair exchange for each to give due attention to the state of the other’s case, for the moment one begins to appropriate the bulk of processing his own case will slow down in its progress.
Dianetic processing, then, by the theta- MEST theory, attempts only one thing: the recovery and conversion of entheta into theta. Any processing which does not accomplish this in an orderly fashion is therefore not valid dianetic processing.
Theta is many things. For a description of it as it applies to the MEST organism you need only read the 4.0 band of the tone scale chart. Theta is reason, serenity, stability, happiness, cheerful emotion, persistence and the other factors which man ordinarily considers desirable. Any practice which enturbulates theta suppresses the case. The auditor’s code is actually a list of the things one must or must not do to preserve the theta- ness of theta and to inhibit the enturbulation of theta by the auditor.
Where the preclear has a small amount of theta and a large amount of entheta, the auditor must be particularly careful not to enturbulate the existing theta, since it is in the proximity of so much entheta that it enturbulates rapidly. The auditor mishandling such a case, using invalidations, hypnotism, brute force, sadism or devil worship, can send the free theta still in existence down the track and lock it up in an old secondary or engram and so find himself with a temporarily completely enturbulated preclear on his hands. To avoid this danger, one should mark the preclear well on the chart and be guided accordingly. This gives the auditor an estimate of the amount of free theta he has with which to un- enturbulate the existing entheta in the case. It may happen that so little theta exists in the case that the auditor must use the lightest and most pleasant methods of which he is capable in order to make enough theta available even to start down the time track.
The percentile column (the scale from zero to one thousand) is an index of the amount of organism theta available to work the case. At 4.0, one hundred percent is available. At 2.0, the amount of theta and “permanent” entheta are more or less equally balanced, but environmental enturbulation leaves the preclear with very little free theta. Below this point is the death zone, and here as the tone lowers increasingly, more danger exists that all the remaining theta will suddenly at one fell swoop become entheta, thus changing the occasional psychotic into a chronic psychotic, at least until rest, good food, and exercise permit the not seriously enturbulated portions of the entheta to become theta again. It takes very poor auditing to accomplish this, and the danger is hardly a danger at all if one follows the chart. The more closely processing can approximate the mechanics of mind operation, the better that processing is. The least forceful processing produces the best results. As dianetic processing evolves it becomes less and less directive, the preclear being allowed more and more latitude in his actions. This should not go so far as to permit the preclear to free- associate or ramble on endlessly and uselessly, but it does go as far as never driving a preclear hard when he balks, unless he is in the middle of a secondary grief or terror engram and is refusing to go on through with it when if the auditor permits him to leave it the possibility exists that much skilled auditing will elapse before the auditor will have this preclear back into the secondary.
The auditor might liken his job to removing the rocks and shoals from the hidden depths of a turbulent river and making of it a smooth- flowing and powerful stream. The auditor is not changing the preclear’s personality or attempting to improve the preclear by evaluation and suggestions. He is simply making it easier for the mind to do what basic personality naturally wants the mind to do. This might be said to be the total end and goal of processing.