Don’t educate your preclear: process him.

In the early days, before 1950, I processed many people by what later became Dianetics. Most of the people I processed don’t know to this day that they have been processed by Dianetics. If two of my clients had even got together, one of them would have said, “Isn’t it wonderful! Zoroastrianism has been known about all these years!” And the other would say, “Where did you hear about that?” “Down at First and Asafetida Streets,” (which is where I was practicing). “Oh, really?” the other would say, “Well, I know a fellow down there, too — it must be a different fellow, though— he talks about electronics all the time.” In other words, a preclear would come in and say, “I hurt,” or “I’m unhappy,” and I would just use anything on him that worked. Pretty soon he would say, “What is this you are using?” and I would have to tell him something. But what could I tell him? Did you ever go down to the library and pick out a book that had been read by many people? You look through it and you find the lines that are marked. The people who read this book didn’t read it to learn a single, cockeyed thing. All they were looking for was something that would agree with them. They would comb through the book, page after page, and finally they would underline “God is good.” Do you re-educate people like this? No. The preclear says, “This stuff you are doing is Chinese acupuncture, isn’t it?” You say, “Sure, sure. Let’s go over that again, now.” Another says, “You know, I learned all about this by reading Sneeze’s The Breeding of Cats. After I read that, I figured out all these techniques myself.” You say, “Well, well! You discovered my source. That’s wonderful! Now, how about running that again?” You don’t try to educate your preclear. He says, “Well, well. This is related to the work of Gutsbaum, isn’t it?” You happen to know that Gutsbaum was a chemist who did some work on dyes and had nothing to do with teaching elephants to speak German — which is what he is talking about — but you say, “Sure, that’s right. And then what did your mother say?” If you pound him in the head and correct his data, you may send him down the tone scale further in one instant than you could bring him up by 20 hours’ processing.

Inside of every preclear there is a tiny little spark which says, “I have yet a core, an idea, which is my own. I am nearly gone, wiped out, but I still have this.” Perhaps the preclear has the idea that the sun is really the source of all life. As a child he got this idea, and it seemed right to him. So, it’s right to him! Don’t extinguish this idea in the hope that you will improve something else, because you won’t.

He says, “I did some studying on the Egyptian Sun God, Ra, in the University.” He didn’t do any studying in the University. He did it when he was six years old. He says, “I have thought about it quite a bit.” Do you look him squarely in the eye and say, “That is old, superstitious malarkey. That is a lot of bunk!”? No, you don’t.

Who knows? Perhaps this preclear’s highest aesthetic concept is the sun. Perhaps his secret joy is the idea that the sun will bum people to a crisp if they stand in it too long. Perhaps he thinks it is God smiting them. Perhaps he merely likes to stand in it himself. You, as the auditor, must not overlook the fact that you are dealing with a human being.

To agree with the preclear endlessly, to spend all of your time agreeing with his aberrations, is destructive to him and destructive to you. But you have processes to use on him, and you have to agree with him to the point where you can get the processes to work.

When the processes work and his self-determinism increases, he will make up his mind about the Sun God, Ra — without any mention of the subject from you. You are trying to increase his self-determinism. If, at the beginning, all you can find of his self-determinism is the Sun God, Ra — then, agree with it.

Trying to re-educate a preclear while you process him is no good. He will find out for himself, as he comes up the tone scale. You can give him a new idea now and then, if he wants one. But don’t try to change his ideas. They may be all there is left of him.

You are working with basic laws, powerful laws. If you have to educate your preclear to make these laws work on him, you haven’t got your subject down worth a nickel.