From the earliest days of Dianetics there have always been four grades of auditing FIRST of these was the Book Auditor (bless them), the people with the verve to do or be damned with Dianetic or Scientology written material but without formal training.

In this PAB I want to discuss a question which many field auditors have confronted me with — i.e. that of increasing the preclear’s willingness in practicing a musical instrument, or to keep writing, or just to regain a lost ability.

SECOND of these was the generally certified auditor — the HDA, the HCA, who had been formally trained at one or another central organization school. Trained over seven years, their skills were varied by the period in which they were trained. These were the “backbone” of the subject, the leaders of groups, the authorities in areas.

If you take an individual and make him play a musical instrument (as parents and schools do), his ability to play that instrument will not improve. We would first have to consult with him as to what his ambitions are. He would eventually at least have to agree with the fact that it is a good thing to play an instrument.

THIRD were the specially coached or trained auditors, BScn, HAA, DScn, who by repeated training kept abreast and who had a large span of schooling and training skill.

Once in a while we find a bad boy. He cannot be put in school and has to be sent to a military school. They are going to force him in order to change him. Occasionally this bad boy is sent to a school which simply thinks the best way to handle such cases is to find something in which he is interested and to allow him to do it. Such a school once existed in California and consecutively produced geniuses. The roster of World War II’s scientists practically marched from that particular school. They figured that it must have been the example set by the professor, his purity in not smoking cigars or something like that.

FOURTH were the Staff Auditors of central organizations. As could be expected these were trained against the necessity of producing sweeping results to uphold the repute of the Foundation or the HASI or the Founding Church. Their skills were above and beyond certification and their degrees were anything from HDA to BScn. They spent, and spend even today, many hours of training in any week just to hold their own with the subject and the repute of the “clinic.”

What actually happened was this. They took a boy with whom nobody got any results and said, “Isn’t there anything you would like to do?” The boy said “No,” and they answered, “Well, fuss around in the lab or grounds or something and someday you may make up your mind.” The boy thought this over and decided that he wanted to be a chemist. Nobody ever sent him to a class and told him to crack a book, and nobody ever complained very much when he blew up something in the laboratory, and the next thing you knew the boy was an excellent chemist. Nobody interrupted his desire to be a chemist. It existed then, and from that point on he was not himself interrupting his willingness to be a chemist. Educationally this is a very interesting point.

Now something new has happened. A plateau of training and processing skill has been reached. With Advanced Processes and the ferocity of the Training Drills, we can divide up processes and processing to match these four grades. We are rich in skill now, broadly so.

Supposing we had only a few minutes as a coach on a football team and we wanted to pick out the number of men who were going to be the first squad and quickly put them in good shape so that they could win a special game; we would only have to ask this question: “Now I want any one of you people whose desire to be a football player stems from the age of ten to step forward.” Maybe half of the squad would step forward. Here would be your first team.

We have been producing excellent results for a long time. But now we can produce results on lower level and higher level cases than ever before.

What about the little runt that has only been the water boy? He is the best quarterback in the world because he wanted to be a football player. But the man who was merely qualified and who thought it was a good way to get through school, get a scholarship, some coaching or make a couple of dollars, or perhaps only really wanted lots of women because he knew that women gyrated around football players, will utterly pulverize the team because he is an unsupportable person. He is doing this on a via, and he isn’t really willing to be a member of a football team. His willingness is missing.

Thus a book auditor, using the below described processes, without much training could produce fair results on average homo sapiens, patch up the environment and live better.

Now let’s have this ordinary team play against a team of all-stars and they will make the all-stars look like a bunch of punks. It is too simple a method of selection for anybody ever to have used.

Thus a generally certified auditor, without further training, using the processes in which he was trained, could do very well on preclears. Remember, they were and are good processes. And this is true of pre-1957 upper grade auditors. However, the processes, even so, do not go “all the way south” or “all the way north.”

You could by a series of almost straightwire questions ask a fellow who has difficulty in playing a trumpet, “Can you recall a time when somebody told you it was a bad thing to play a trumpet?” This limited process might stand up for two or three questions and you might be able to key out the lock he has against being a person who plays a trumpet and his ability to play a trumpet goes up. Then somebody else walks up to him and tells him something about how bad it is to be a trumpeter and he goes right back to where he was. It is not a permanent improvement at all.

But here enters a new grade and level, more or less equivalent to the upper grade auditor of yesterday. This is the VALIDATED AUDITOR who has been drilled up to the level of this plateau and could go all the way south on cases if not, perhaps, all the way north. As I am so sure of this now, we have stopped looking southward. That’s what makes it a plateau. Such an auditor could audit a person in a coma or a day-old baby or somebody 10 years shocked in a spin-bin. So there’s a positiveness about the grade never before possible.

It is possible that a person who was very good on the piano in his last life is born into a family who didn’t have a piano. Why? Because he cannot confront one. There isn’t one now because he cannot have one. Now he starts to learn something about this and he goes along fine until he thinks that he ought to have an upright piano to practice on. This has been restimulated a little and his parents say to him, “Oh, I don’t know. That’s much too expensive. You’ll have to pick something else.” Somebody has raised an objection to it.

It is not probable that a staff auditor rating will ever be superseded. This level is what it is and is independent of quality of degree. Just now central organization staff auditors are at grips with fully grasping the fact that they can go all the way south and soon will be happy with that and will then be trying for “all the way north.” (The nearest approach possible to absolute clear is now the research line and will someday soon be the “clinic” auditing line.)

Well, his willingness at that time is exerted in the direction of trying to be a part of this new team called the family and this is being subordinate, and so is his idea of playing the piano. He doesn’t force the matter but that confirms to him the scarcity of pianos. He is liable from then on not to be able to play a note or even learn how to read music. He is just as liable to be stopped again.

Hence, we get 4 levels of auditors and 4 levels of processes in Scientology.

The willingness to write is systematically killed in American universities. I have lectured on writing to Harvard university students many times, and they have asked me how one develops style. Personally, as far as style was concerned, all one had to do was express what he wanted to say and that was style. It is no more complicated than this and sometimes, just for gags, why, write in the valence of Shakespeare or other literary figure. I have said to these students, “Style — well, I can tell you how you would find out whether you had a style or not, or how to develop one. Just sit down and write a hundred thousand words.”

The class fainted. One hundred thousand words. Nobody could write one hundred thousand words. From there on out that killed it. What was this all about? We obviously had a class of writers that had been carefully trained to be very good in every line they wrote. That isn’t how you write at all. You write! That is all you do, write for lots of people about lots of things. These students were looking for some magic sesame and the professor there is carefully monitoring them of quality, quality, quality, correcting their ideas, punctuation marks, their schematics and so on, correct, correct, correct, chop, chop, chop, for there isn’t going to be a writer in this class, you dogs. The final result of this is a complete unwillingness to write.