Note 1: Most old-time auditors, particularly Saint Hill Graduates, have been trained at one time or another in these auditing styles.

Here they are given names and assigned to Levels so that they can be taught more easily and so that general auditing can be improved.

(Note 2: These have not been written before because I had not determined the results vital to each Level.) There is a Style of auditing for each class. By Style is meant a method or custom of performing actions.

A Style is not really determined by the process being run so much. A Style is how the auditor addresses his task.

Different processes carry different style requirements perhaps, but that is not the point. Clay Table Healing at Level III can be run with Level I style and still have some gains. But an auditor trained up to the style required at Level III would do a better job not only of CT Healing but of any repetitive process.

Style is how the auditor audits. The real expert can do them all, but only after he can do each one. Style is a mark of Class. It is not individual. In our meaning, it is a distinct way to handle the tools of auditing.

At Level 0 the Style is Listen Style Auditing. Here the auditor is expected to listen to the pc. The only skill necessary is listening to another. As soon as it is ascertained that the auditor is listening (not just confronting or ignoring) the auditor can be checked out. The length of time an auditor can listen without tension or strain showing could be a factor.

What the pc does is not a factor considered in judging this style. Pcs, however, talk to an auditor who is really listening.

Here we have the highest point that old-time mental therapies reached (when they did reach it), such as psychoanalysis, when they helped anyone. Mostly they were well below this, evaluating, invalidating, interrupting. These three things are what the instructor in this style should try to put across to the HAS student.

Listen Style should not be complicated by expecting more of the auditor than just this: Listen to the pc without evaluating, invalidating or interrupting.

Adding on higher skills like “Is the pc talking interestingly?” or even “Is the pc talking?” is no part of this style. When this auditor gets in trouble and the pc won’t talk or isn’t interested, a higher classed auditor is called in, a new question given by the supervisor, etc.

It really isn’t “Itsa” to be very technical. Itsa is the action of the pc saying, “It’s a this” or “It’s a that.” Getting the pc to Itsa is quite beyond Listen Style auditors where the pc won’t. It’s the supervisor or the question on the blackboard that gets the pc to Itsa.

The ability to listen, learned well, stays with the auditor up through the grades. One doesn’t cease to use it even at Level VI. But one has to learn it somewhere and that’s at Level Zero. So Listen Style Auditing is just listening. It thereafter adds into the other styles.

This could also be called rote style auditing.

Muzzled Auditing has been with us many years. It is the stark total of TRs 0 to 4 and not anything else added.

It is called so because auditors too often added in comments, Qed and Aed, deviated, discussed and otherwise messed up a session. Muzzle meant a “muzzle was put on them”, figuratively speaking, so they would only state the auditing command and ack.

Repetitive Command Auditing, using TRs 0 to 4, at Level One is done completely muzzled.

This could be called Muzzled Repetitive Auditing Style but will be called “Muzzled Style” for the sake of brevity.

It has been a matter of long experience that pcs who didn’t make gains with the partially trained auditor permitted to two-way comm, did make gains the instant the auditor was muzzled: to wit, not permitted to do a thing but run the process, permitted to say nothing but the commands and acknowledge them and handle pc originations by simple acknowledgment without any other question or comment.

At Level One we don’t expect the auditor to do anything but state the command (or ask the question) with no variation, acknowledge the pc’s answer and handle the pc origins by understanding and acknowledging what the pc said.

Those processes used at Level One actually respond best to muzzled auditing and worst to misguided efforts to “Two-Way Comm”.

Listen Style combines with Muzzled Style easily. But watch out that Level One sessions don’t disintegrate to Level Zero.

Crisp, clean repetitive commands, muzzled, given and answered often, are the road out — not pc wanderings.

A pc at this Level is instructed in exactly what is expected of him, exactly what the auditor will do. The pc is even put through a few “do birds fly?” cycles until the pc gets the idea. Then the processing works.

An auditor trying to do Muzzled Repetitive Auditing on a pc who, through past “therapy experience”, is rambling on and on is a sad sight. It means that control is out (or that the pc never got above Level Zero).

It’s the number of commands given and answered in a unit of auditing time that gets gains. To that add the correctly chosen repetitive process and you have a release in short order, using the processes of this Level.

To follow limp Listen Style with crisp, controlled Muzzled Style may be a shock. But they are each the lowest of the two families of auditing styles — Totally Permissive and Totally Controlled. And they are so different each is easy to learn with no confusion. It’s been the lack of difference amongst styles that confuses the student into slopping about.

Well, these two are different enough — Listen Style and Muzzled Style — to set anybody straight.