Lecture: Indoctrination of the Preclear (March 7, 1952)

I’d like to talk to you about indoctrinating the preclear. This is very sequitur to how to get through to the preclear and teach him what you want, and have him do what you want. A preclear is as easy to audit as he has no barriers to your auditing him.

Now, first and primary barrier to your auditing him, of course: the incident which you’re trying to audit. That’s really the first barrier that’s been giving him trouble. Don’t expect it not to give you trouble because it very definitely will give you trouble one way or the other. You can fully expect any incident to be a rough incident. The only mistake you will make in this regard-the only mistake you will make in this regard is to suppose that this incident follows some other laws than those you know. And that I might ask you to fix in your mind very strongly. You will learn this by experience but at first you had better accept it on belief: that an incident, regardless of how it sounds or looks, will follow precisely the things which you
are being taught about it here.

I noticed this in training auditors a long, long time ago. That the auditor insufficiently acquainted with his tools was only too happy to suddenly suppose that new phenomena, never before encountered, had been encountered by him. And therefore, use this as an excuse to change his mode of auditing to try to make the preclear do something else. And in such a wise he would miss running the incident and invariably and always would have upon his hands an unwell preclear.

If you were to start into an incident with standard processing and were then to change over after you had run an incident a time or two, to counseling the preclear, in a large percentage of the instances you would send your preclear into a very sad, low-toned state. And you might even send him to the hospital.

I am reminded-one time a fellow down at the house watched two preclears, one after the other, change from fairly alert, fairly normal individuals into sick people. He watched this, one after the other. He saw one preclear go from no temperature to a temperature of 103 merely by being run down the track and run into a measles incident. He saw him turn red, saw him begin to agonize and immediately tried to interrupt the session and so on, because obviously the preclear was being made sick. Obviously he’s being made sick. Now this is “Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. So horrible. This mustn’t be, this mustn’t be, this mustn’t be.”

So just for kicks I let him take the preclear’s temperature. It was found to be 103. Preclear had the clammy cold touch, he had the semblance of a rash-he looked terrible. And this man, an endocrinologist of no repute, insisted-nay, demanded-that this preclear be sent to bed promptly and that no more auditing be done.

The other preclear was run into an incident, and I didn’t finish running out the incident for the good and excellent reason that he was boiling off in it. And he had seen a man faint or go unconscious, and therefore, that person obviously needed immediate treatment, and he proceeded to try to administer it. (He was making quite a nuisance of himself.) And the second preclear got furious with him. Of course, the fellow was in a boil-off, and it’s rather high-tension stuff he’s running. Suddenly finds himself slapped in the face with a wet towel, he doesn’t appreciate it.

I didn’t do too much to prevent all this because I’d just as soon the fellow got unpopular. And the upshot of all this was, that almost forcibly holding down this objector, I ran out the measles incident on the first preclear and finished the boil-off on the second preclear. And they both came up smiling, looking better, temperature was normal on the first preclear; second preclear – all the nervous tension was gone.

This was really grim because it completely violated another man’s reality, utterly violated his reality. When a person gets a temperature, he has a virus, he is sick. If he is sick, he’s supposed to go to bed. If a person goes unconscious, he’s supposed to be revived. That was the codified reality of this person.

That reality does not hold in auditing. If a preclear develops a temperature, you’re supposed to run it out. And at first you may find it very hard to believe that your preclear’s temperature will go away by the simple process of auditing. All that temperature is, is a facsimile with a thermal in it. It’s a facsimile with a thermal in it. And in order to demonstrate this, you can run any preclear – or just remember vividly, very vividly, remember exactly how everything was on a hot day, or run the preclear into the hot day, and he’ll feel the heat again. This is thermal. Fever is no different.

Now, the lesson involved is that the first few times you run somebody, follow the rules. After that, experience will tell you to follow the rules. If you don’t get results on a preclear, the chances are ninety to one that you’re not doing something called for in regular auditing procedure. The half of the remaining one chance will be that the incident has some sort of a freak phrase or twist in it that is causing an illusion, but is still running according to rote. And the remaining one half of one chance has to do with the fact that the preclear has not been indoctrinated in running it, and he’s trying to run something else. ¹

Notes