Ref: post19.txt

Date: 9 Jan 98

subj : SUPER SCIO TECH - ANSWERS ABOUT THE BOOK

ANSWERS ABOUT THE BOOK

Some questions have come up that I thought I should answer.

On 22 Dec 97, "Rob" <robsep@earthlink.net> asked on subject " THE PILOT "

> First of all, I'd like to thank you for all your work (both technical and
> towards reform) that has had a great impact on myself and many others. I've
> been a Scientologist for several years, but found the tech out of reach due
> to prices. I'm very excited about your new book, but not being trained, I
> had a few questions for you. So here it goes:
> 
> 1). Is it possible to over run objective processes (like the wall drill) by
> doing it too many times (seperate sessions)?

It is possible to overrun an objective by running it too long in one sitting. One might then feel overrun when one tries it again.

If you do feel overrun when you start an objective drill, the best bet is to rehab the win either by simply spotting that you are overrunning or by counting how many times you have gone release on it and then leaving that one alone for the time being.

But it probably will run again with further benefit at a later date.

If you work any one technique too much to the exclusion of all others, you will eventually have trouble because of things that the technique is not addressing. But it is hard to overrun objectives.

> 2). Is there any "non interference zone" in your new clearing book
> that one could run into problems by doing a process at a bad time?

I believe that the CofS non-interference zone was an artifact of grinding away too long at implant platens.

The original clearing course was to be done ten time through the materials. Early CC students often spent a year at it. Often they had only had a few dozen hours of other auditing and very little case handling before they did this.

By this point they might well have been running items out of entities because their own had erased long since and therefore they needed to get onto some kind of entity handling level such as OT 3 without any further distractions.

The self clearing book takes a light approach rather than a grinding one and expects that you will push through to much deeper levels on a second pass rather than trying to grind away at any one area early on.

After a first pass, you should have a large array of techniques

Also, the CofS has a tendency to insist on running particular processes and often creates trouble by doing unnecessary actions. Pushing this into the middle of a series of OT levels would give trouble. But with the light self clearing approach, one would not try to force a process that wasn't running.

> 3). When performing a solo process, would you say the command out loud,
> silently to yourself, or is that irrelevent as long as you understand and
> follow the command? Also, is the "ack" that follows a command dropped in
> solo?

In professional processing, the processor must be careful to deliver the command, get a response, and acknowledge it and this communication cycle is very critical to getting good results.

It is hard to mess this up in solo auditing because you do not have to solve the problem of relaying things between two different people.

The general rule of thumb is that one does what feels comfortable while being sure to get the command done and continue moving forward.

When checking questions on an e-meter, one needs to think them precisely to get a proper reaction and some people like to say them out loud for this reason although it is really unnecessary. There is no other reason for saying the commands out loud. I expect that most people will be doing the book without using a meter. Professionals who are running it on themselves will know when to do things in a formal manner.

With objective drills, it is generally best simply to do the drill without continually stating the command to yourself. In other words, you might simply spot precise points in the room rather than saying to yourself "spot a point", then spotting it, then saying "thank you", then saying "spot a point" and so forth.

On subjective processes, you can often just take each command from the page and do it, but sometimes it helps to think the command to yourself. Here you do what feels necessary to get your attention on the command and do it and you do what feels comfortable to you. Note that Ron's Self Analysis book just has the reader do the commands without any formal procedure.

For acknowledgments, there is a bit of recognizing that you have

People who are trained professionally often like to precisely shift back and forth between their auditor and PC hats because they have drilled the auditor hat so intensively and may run deeper as a result. This could include formal statement of commands and acknowledgments. Trained people should do this if it seems more comfortable.

Eventually the formalities become nothing more than a distraction and one simply does the commands.

To some degree formal procedure will help with the more difficult processes initially but I did not want to distract beginners with learning formalities that they would discard eventually anyway.

As a result, beginners might skip some processes as too difficult that they might have been able to run with a lot of formal training, but they will pick those up on a second pass.

> 4). While on a subjective process, if an answer to one of the commands just
> doesn't come to me, how long should I spend searching for it. Should I skip
> it and come back to it if nothing comes to mind or stick with it until
> something does?

It depends whether the process has started running or not.

If you had some answers, it shows that you can answer the question. As the process begins to work, you might then bump into some charge or difficulty and it is a mistake to drop it at that point.

What sometimes happens is that you find some easy surface

I would even sleep on it and check again in the morning before abandoning something as unrunable if it had shown signs of starting to run. The potential gains from confronting something that had been out of reach is worth the trouble.

But all this only applies if it has started running and is not overrunning.

Overrun is discussed in Chapter 2 so that one can learn about it before doing any subjective processes. That can also make it very hard to answer a question, but it will have run well with real answers and real benefit first.

How hard to push at a process that hasn't started running yet is a matter of judgment. If it is part of a set of related processes and one of them has already run well, you might keep on a bit longer. If it is an area of high interest, you might keep on a bit longer. If you were not feeling your best before starting, you might try again when you are feeling a bit better.

Also, sometimes if you have just had a really big win, the next process might briefly not be of interest because you are still feeling especially good from the earlier one.

But aside from these factors, making a good try for a few minutes should be long enough on a process that isn't running yet.

You can go back and run something that you skipped if your attention keeps going back to it.

Eventually you will get a feel for when you are shying away from something that could be run with tremendous benefit versus trying a command that simply doesn't have anything accessible at the moment.

> My apologies if these questions seem very basic...but I didn't have a half
> million laying around to find anything out in the CofS. 

These were excellent questions which I am sure will be of help to others. This was the exact kind of thing I was worried about having missed because I would take certain things for granted.

> If you ever have a moment of doubt 
> about the impact you're having, I just want you to know that
> what you are doing is giving a chance to many (the majority) to go free.
> You have my vote for president :-)

This is encouraging. And yes, I do have moments of doubt. I believe that the book will give you everything the modern CofS could and more besides, but the actual testing is just as shallow as Hubbard's work was.

For me, the true research run is now, with honest feedback from people as they work through the book.

Since the money motivation and self righteousness are not a part of it, and since there is no arm twisting or forcing square pegs into round holes, I think that we will really find out for the first time how far one can go with these processes.

> Please keep up the good work...
> 
> MUCH LOVE (and I don't mean that half heartedly), Rob

Yes I plan to. There is much more to be learned.

----------

On 19 Dec 97, Jim Fuller <docjava@uniserve.com> posted on subject "pilot self clearing"

> minor typo on part one from freezoneamerica page
> "...
> 7. Rightness......The road our" (should read out I believe
> please don't send back for more word clearing

Correct. This is in the introduction.

> later on, the word "hubris" couldn't find it in my basic dictionary.
> can someone define for me.

See below.

> "If you yourself are already a profession" should read "professional"?

Correct. This is in "Advice and Warnings".

> I hope thes points aren't annoying. I am just so excited about pilot
> project and would like to contribute where I can.
> 
> bye for now
> 
> doctor java

This is helpful. A professionally published book would have been further proofed by an editor to catch things like this.

----------

On 20 Dec 97, cbwillis@netcom.com (C. B. Willis) answered the above request for a definition.

> Hubris is an old Greek term meaning arrogance or acting like one is a law 
> unto oneself. Hubris was considered a fatal character flaw by the ancient 
> Greeks.
> 
> - CBW
> http://www.geocities.com/athens/parthenon/1802
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> | cbwillis@netcom.com | "Values are the infrastructure |
| | upon which civilization |
| | will be reinvented." - CBW |
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Exactly. It especially has the implication of ignoring important things, almost like a godlike apathy. And the usual fatality is due to ignoring a correct warning because it comes from a lesser being. It was thought to be the malady of the Gods and the reason for their downfall.

I am tempted to define Hubris as having the quality or characteristics of a Hubbard, especially as to arrogance and disdaining the advice and warnings of "lesser beings" even when they were correct (joke).

----------

E-METERS

There have been a number of requests for information about the E-meter.

There is a short discussion of it at the beginning of Chapter 22, "More on Upsets". I put it that late in the book because it is only at this point that it would help to be able to do an assessment if one has a meter.

Perhaps I should add a more extensive appendix on the subject.

But what you really need is a number of the clearing series booklets, namely "The book introducing the E-Meter" (or the "Understanding the E-Meter" book), "The book of E-Meter Drills", and the one on "E-Meter Data" which should include the "Instant Read" HCOB which was included in the later editions.

But using an E-meter would be a major distraction for a beginner unless he was already trained as an auditor.

The tendency would probably be to sit and stare at the E-meter (and get the needle stuck as a result) instead of looking at one's case.

If, by some chance, you are not really flying already (meaning that it is easy to get a floating needle at session start), or the tone arm is out of range (reading high or low), or you are having trouble, the E-meter will tend to be a distraction and an invalidation unless you are highly enough trained to do a major case repair such as a CS 53 on yourself. This advice applies to partially trained professionals too.

The processes in the early chapters will run on a case that isn't set up and should gradually get the case flying anyway as long as the person isn't staring at a meter and invalidating each of the wins because the meter is not yet floating.

Even the basic grade zero process was originally a repair action (see the book of case remedies) and will work on a case that is not yet flying. And in the early days of "life repair" (before the CS 53 came out), we would sometimes run lots of processes without a real floating needle until the tone arm gradually came into range and the case started flying.

It will happen by the accumulation of mild wins as long as you don't have some electrical device evaluating for you.

And it is easy to freeze the needle just by staring at it and the action of worrying what is wrong is almost guaranteed to make the needle "dirty" even if it had been floating.

That is really why the auditor keeps the meter hidden early on in processing. The PC's attention goes on it and the needle stiffens up and the PC says "What's going wrong" and the session goes to hell.

Doing some professional courses and working with the meter and seeing yourself on it during weeks of practical drilling, you get over this.

Or once you are really flying (especially after getting a few grades of release), it doesn't matter any more, so the upper level students don't have a lot of trouble with this.

But an untrained beginner is just going to snarl himself up when he should be doing some processing.

A meter is really helpful when you are doing assessments or repair actions. It also makes it a bit easier to flatten an implant platen or dig for things that are slightly out of reach. And it is essential in researching a new implant.

But it is a total distraction in doing objective processes or real OT drills and it is only marginally helpful in running repetitive processes. In those cases it is only of use to the auditor in determining how you are feeling and you already know how you are feeling in solo so why add more complexity.

By Chapter 27, "Keeping Yourself Moving", you should know enough to keep yourself flying with or without a meter. From there on a meter would be an asset rather than a potential liability because it does help you run deeper and lets you spot mistakes more easily.

A meter is not required even for the later parts of the book. But it can be of great help to an advanced student.

In the old days, a Class 0 or 1 auditor was not even trained to read a meter or recognize the meter reads. It was not actually useful in running the processes. They just had the meter sitting in front of them so that they could get used to it as part of the auditing session environment. They learned a bit about it on Class 2, but they didn't do all the meter drills or really learn to handle a meter well until class 3 (which is Chapter 22 in the self clearing book).

If you are already trained as a solo auditor or a professional to the point where you can fly the rudiments and keep yourself flying, then you can use the meter while you run through the first chapters of the book. Note that in objectives and true objective OT drills you only use the meter to check for an FN (floating needle) after completing the drill.

But even a trained solo auditor does not know enough to run setup actions on himself if he can't get the ruds to fly, in which case the right action is to run the book off of the meter until he has such a big blowout that he is flying anyway.

This is even necessary for extremely advanced people if they start researching. In research, you run into things which you don't have a clue about how to handle and sometimes you go in backwards by mistake and make a mess. Then you have no repair and just need to cool things down and get yourself flying again without knowing how to fix what was wrong. The processes in chapter one even work under those circumstances and it is best to do that off of the meter, accumulating mild wins until you have a major gain that gets you flying again. Then you get back on the meter and take another shot at what you ran into. Once you know the anatomy of what you are handling, you can devise a repair, but you have to get through it once before you can figure that out.

Note that Ron's "Creation of Human Ability" doesn't even mention the E-meter. It was not used at all at the time it was written. The meter was developed in 1952, abandoned by 1954, and not used again until 1958.

The runway up to doing case repair is just too long. So you might as well run the processes while you study it. Case repair is chapter 27 and it assumes that you have already read the earlier chapters. It's just too much theory unless you do some processing too.

So I would recommend leaving the E-meter for later unless you are already trained in using one.

------------

Hilderun has suggested that I add a glossary and I agree that this is a good idea. Eventually I'll get it done and posted but don't wait for it.

Right now the book is like a prototype version of a high performance car but it is missing some of the niceties like doors and windows. Those will gradually get filled in over the next few months and eventually we will have an improved second edition.

But this first crude version should take you further and faster than anything we've had before.

Best Wishes for the Coming New Year,

The Pilot