For the last ten months, ever since the Philadelphia Congress in 1953, I have been engaged in a research as thoroughly fundamental as the actual subject of Scientology. This research was directed toward the training of auditors. The immediate question asked in this research was one which has remained relatively unanswered for four years: “How do we train an auditor so that he will apply the processes known to be workable in such a way as to make the subject work for him?”

A major difficulty lay in the subject itself, for it was in a state of change. Certain processes would be found quite workable, better each time, and these would be published, but this continuing parade of processes had a tendency to invalidate auditors who had been trained earlier. Thus it began to appear, I am well aware, that an auditor was expected to be in a constant state of training, and that unless he had the “latest dope,” he was not to be considered top-notch. At almost any time from Book One on I could have levelled off in research and investigation, as each Foundation Board pleaded with me to do, out of their financial desires, and could have trained intensively on the processes which existed so that auditors would do them as they were given. There is no doubt, however, that this would have been a losing program, for life kept unfolding new data before me, and a greater and broader understanding of the entire picture was progressively easier to view, and the actual goal of processing kept advancing. Processes, when issued, if done by an auditor as issued, each time would have raised the majority of individuals to whom they were addressed up to the goal which was at that moment envisioned for Man. But the goal kept advancing, higher and higher levels of beingness continued to come into view, and so there was no choice for it. One could not agree with people who, out of financial need, sought to stop research; and although one was very conscious that a hardship was being worked upon trained auditors by releasing continually new processes for them to learn, there was no choice for it but to continue in the research and investigation of the subject of Man and of Life.

We passed out of the field of homo sapiens in late 1950, for it was obvious that we could make people saner than people had ever been. After I had completed, through 1951, my examinations of the whole track, it was obvious that the individual, the “I,” the personality, was not the body, and in early 1952 I was able to make the first announcements concerning exteriorization. By September of 1952 processes had been developed which made exteriorization much better and more stable, and using these processes I had no great difficulty in exteriorizing cases. After training the first group of auditors in Great Britain (September, 1952, the time of issue of SOP-l) I began to realize that there was a considerable nervousness on the part of auditors to face the fact of exteriorization. Indeed, exteriorization as an accomplishment or an existing state has never been very acceptable simply because the average public, indoctrinated to believe that one stepped out of the body at death and went to Hell or some such thing, found it too incredible. Man had been trying to do this thing for at least 2500 years, and although he had some cognizance of it he had never achieved any uniform success in making it come about at will. The experience of training these British auditors demonstrated that whenever an individual is low on havingness the effort to get him to face the no-mass character of a thetan becomes impossible unless one brings up the havingness of such people to a point where they can bear to view “nothing.” Such people, those low on havingness, actually get sick at their stomachs physically, and very uncomfortable, at the thought of exteriorization, or the exteriorization of others.

Then proceeded the various Standard Operating Procedures from 1 up through 8, and more recently, including 8-C and 8-D. All of these were routine, aimed in the direction of bringing up a person’s ability to handle space and nothingness to a point where he could bear the thought of exteriorization, and so exteriorize. But having many auditors, and being unable to process each one individually, there was a considerable scramble of ideas and technique applications. As an example of this, for a while in Great Britain all of the thoroughly “stuck in” cases had a general agreement amongst them that there was such a thing as a “white five.” This strange beast was actually a psychotic who merely had the idea that he could exteriorize, but actually wasn’t exteriorized, but anybody who did exteriorize was crazy. This stemmed immediately from the discomfort entailed for a no-havingness case in viewing “nothing.” Any time they were asked to view nothing, they became sick and so they invented an explanation to keep them from looking at nothing, which is to say, to keep them from exteriorizing people.

In view of the fact that exteriorization alone brings about a rapid recovery of a case, and in view of the fact that the thetan stuck in a body is not unlike a thetan stuck in a theta trap to a degree where he has inverted and become the trap, one had to carry forward with exteriorization if one were going to deal with illness on any broad scale at

In training over a hundred auditors in America in the Advanced Clinical Courses, I was learning every day, every week, every unit, better means of bringing an auditor up to exteriorization as a case, and bringing up his willingness to audit people into an exteriorized state. By the time we had reached Unit VII [7th ACC], and well before it was completed, I discovered that we actually had achieved, not a process designed to immediately exteriorize people, not even a process to run out engrams, but a process which could be handled by an auditor after relatively little training. So here we had a slight disparity of goals. Here we had my goals, which consisted of an achievement of an understanding of Life sufficient to bring about a higher level of beingness and livingness, here we had exteriorization, here we had all the SOPs, and here we possessed techniques innumerable with which to achieve these goals, and on the other hand, an abrupt dichotomy, I discovered I had invented a process some months previously which could actually be communicated with sufficient ease to auditors so that they would use it as given, and with which they could produce some astonishing results. But this process actually was not aimed at exteriorization. This process would be recognizable to anyone thoroughly conversant with Dianetics. This process could have come into existence in June of 1950 except that then one would not have had the least idea of keeping this process up long enough so that it would actually work.

Now let me tell you something about this process. I have known since 1947 that getting an individual into present time was the most convincing and abrupt therapy which could be performed. I have been in institutions and have told inmates simply, “Come up to present time” with a resultant regaining of a stable sanity on the part of these inmates. Anyone in the field of Dianetics was familiar with “Come up to present time.” One always ended sessions that way. But after a considerable study, I had found by 1949 that the anatomy of present time consisted of the ground, sky, walls, objects, and people of the immediate environment. In other words, the anatomy of present time is the anatomy of the room or area in which you are at the moment when you view it, and this is present time. Putting a person thoroughly into communication with this environment, which was present time, was, of course, indicated. But processes of that time were mainly subjective, addressed to the mind, on the mistaken idea that the mind was a brain, and that the body had something to do with thinking processes and personality, and so, beyond bringing people to present time by telling them to be aware of their surroundings, as I was doing in early 1950, this principle was not used.

Actually, not until I developed SOP-8-C did I begin to understand what it might take to put a person into communication with their immediate environment, simply by looking at it, touching it and becoming aware of it. All manner of liabilities ensued in the way of somatics and various other phenomena, and it was not until I had made many exhaustive tests that I was willing to accept the fact that somebody could be brought into present time by making him contact the walls, floor, ground, ceiling, sky, trees, people, of the exact moment in which he was, for many, many hours, with stable therapeutic results.

Applying this broad awareness and communication with the environment for tens or scores of hours as a total process, Scientology came into possession of Opening Procedure of 8-C.

In Issue 24-G of the Journal of Scientology, we find SOP-8-C complete, but we find, heading it, the following:

OPENING PROCEDURE: (Ten minutes to two hours, with MEST body). Part (a): Send preclear to exact places in room, one place at a time.

Part (b): Have preclear select places in the room and move to them one at a time, still under the auditor’s direction.

Part (c): Have preclear drill in physically holding on to and letting go of objects and spaces on his own decision to hold on, decision to let go.

In the Auditor’s Handbook as published by the HASI, printed edition, $5.00 [incorporated in The Creation of Human Ability; see page 44], we find “R2—16: RUN PRECLEAR THROUGH OPENING PROCEDURE OF 8-C, Parts (a), (b), (c), EACH ONE UNTIL THE PHYSICAL COMMUNICATION LAG STABILIZES.”

Now go over to the end of Intensive Procedure in the Auditor’s Handbook [The Creation of Human Ability, page 166] and find that we are not now running Opening Procedure of 8-C from “ten minutes to two hours,” but we find: “As a summary comment on these processes, it cannot be indicated too strongly that a preclear who is psychotic, neurotic, or who is having any psychosomatic difficulty must be run on Opening Procedure of 8-C (R2—16) for many, many, many, many hours.”

Thus we have considerable importance being placed today, as a direct result of my experience with the Advanced Clinical Units, on Opening Procedure of 8-C. If it were not effective I would not put any stress upon it. But continuous test has demonstrated that the final remark at the end of Intensive Procedure in the Auditor’s Handbook means exactly what it says. Anyone who is psychotic, neurotic, or who is having any psychosomatic difficulty can best be run, and should only be run, on Opening Procedure of 8-C, with the commands as given in the Auditor’s Handbook and in the PAB prior to this one. But, the most cheering and wonderful thing about this process is that for the first time in all these years we came into possession of something which could be taught, and which auditors, as represented by those in the Advanced Clinical Units, could use, would use, which they understood, which they did not vary, which they would keep up with, and with that process we entered into training.

Immediately after this discovery, I found that “Duplication: Difficulties of” was the bugbear back of training. Thus, Opening Procedure by Duplication, completely aside from its terrific therapeutic values, brings a person upscale to a point where he is actually able to follow and duplicate processes.

Thus, with these two Opening Procedures we discover that we are indeed into the strata of training, and today we can guarantee that processes released are effective and, more important, that they will be done as released. And now, and only now, is Scientology capable of going forward as Scientology, and only now can we consider that an auditor, when he has been trained, will not have to shift and vary that training.

As a result I am devoting the next many PABs to the subject of training, and making out of them what amounts to a course to be used by auditors who themselves are doing training, and for the use of auditors who wish to come up to date, in such a way as to be from there on “in date.”

Thus I feel that we have accomplished something.