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avowed focal intention: bring to awareness and confront. The auditing
situation induces non-confrontation. Avoiding more than cursory probing
of his real-life trouble spots is the auditee's most efficient tactic to
get him through the process to success. Repression (what Hubbard may
have meant by "non-confront," "overwhelm," "unawareness," "lack of
responsibility") is, of course, an unconscious mechanism. When a loaded
area looms threateningly near, the auditee's inner antennae start to
twitch (in psychotherapy called "defenses" or "resistance"). He may
easily evade confrontation by a diversionary maneuver such as "going to
an earlier incident," preferably a "past life" -- which he probably
knows he is expected to deal with at some point, if not actually
directed to. The auditee thus favors Hubbard,
while giving short shrift to his own material, his true access to
valuable discovery.
He is rewarded for this evasion. At the very least he will be
acknowledged. If he has an insight, it is not discussed or questioned,
but assumed automatically true and beneficial (and, again, he may have
"selected" the insight from foreknowledge). If he "cleans the needle," a
substantial reward is imminent, end of process and a new grade. This is
likely. His defenses proved successful; his relief at manipulating the
situation, and the auditor, conduces to a "clean." The machine is still
God, and God is on his side. Wog emotion blows off a ton of charge with
Good Indicators In.
Constant small rewards that "free up" the needle include, besides
acknowledgment, non-judgmental attention and strong eye contact --
especially from an attractive auditor. Earthly incentives -- status in
the group, and less cash outlay for auditing time, for example -- make
quick progress through the process additionally compelling, and nudge
the needle in the right direction. The auditee also has added incentive
to "clean" when he is tired, bored, feels he has done enough or covered
the material before, or runs out of responses. "Certainty" and a
predictable floating needle get him on to the next episode --
rewardingly.
The stylized auditing communication ensures that the auditee avoids
confrontation, cuts corners and hastens through the process. The
communication is new and different. The "comm cycle" exchange is worlds
apart from conversation or discussion; his responses are "computations,"
little more than meter readings, unquestioned, unchallenged and
unanalyzed. The auditee operates in a vacuum. Essentially he talks to
himself.
He is only doing what he is supposed to do: tense up a bit on new
material, then relax ("restim/destim"). The auditor has no way of
testing the auditee's decision to "clean"; he cannot read minds with his
machine, and must not "evaluate" or "invalidate" by asking, for
instance, "Could that floating needle merely indicate your eagerness to
pass the grade?"
Nothing, then, prevents the auditee from responding to questions,
and "reading" and "cleaning," as his inner sense mandates -- as long as
he "meets Hubbard" and gets through the process. He has the information,
the opportunity and the inducement to rapidly ascend the various stages,
methodically skirting pertinent inner data, while receiving plaudits for
unearned abilities and achievements. This transaction revolves not
around the "bank" but around the auditee's feelings about his situation,
a situation that happens to include a presumed "bank." The "charge" is
not bank, but about bank.
Hubbard said: "The E-meter is never wrong. It sees all, knows all."
In the real world, auditor and auditee sit to either side of the machine
-- arbiter, overseer, dispenser of judgments and gifts -- neither aware
that the session phenomena and effects demonstrate not Scientology but
human psychology, that Hubbard's truth is not necessarily the auditee's
truth, and that they are playing a game of let's pretend -- in Hubbard's
language, a "mockup."
Dianetics -- whence it all began -- was Hubbard's distortion of
abreaction ("reliving") therapy, which had helped war casualties, and
whose proponents made no universal claims. Disbelievers in Dianetics
found numerous flaws. Hubbard's mind model adheres to the ancient
morality play, Good versus Evil (Hubbard focused on "bad mind," and said
next to nothing about "good mind"). The book Dianetics is a
flamboyant assertion of truth on word of authority (in later years,
self-proclaimed "Source"), written in a self-enclosing language, for
example, "clear" used as a noun and meaningful only in Hubbard's context
of other self-enclosing
terms. The Dianetics theory makes no allowance for vast realms of
mental-emotional phenomena. The method had no lasting success, and
proved dangerous for certain individuals.
Dianetics auditing produced no "clears" worthy of the name, and its
inventor had financial and organizational troubles with the Dianetics
movement. The unstoppable Hubbard solved the problem by creating
Scientology, an exclusive enterprise he styled a religion, through which