View source for Auditor's Code in Practice (7ACC 540713)

'''Series:''' 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)

'''Date:''' 13 July 1954

'''Speaker:''' L. Ron Hubbard

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Okay.

Let's talk about the Auditor's Code. The Auditor's Code is a moral code. There are two codes used in the field of Scientology: one of these is a moral code and the other is an ethical code.

Scientology, to that degree, has the conditions of a civilization. If you'll look through Scientology, it has nearly every condition of civilization. And these conditions are extremely important to an auditor, because people are going to want to know exactly how a Scientologist is expected to behave so that they can have some faith in him. They want to know: Is he a civilized being or not?

The reason they want to know this is because in the field of healing they have not been used to civilized beings. There have never been civilized beings in the field of healing. I don't know what it requires, actually. You stand in there and butcher people, knowing you can't make them well or knowing there's only the foggiest chance. But it doesn't take a civilized person. It takes somebody who is pretty badly crusted over. Well, the public at large has become indoctrinated into a callousness in the field of healing.

Scientology would move forward with only a third of its effectiveness if it moved forward with its actual, civilized attitude toward existence. It is, rather than demonstrates – it is a civilization in that it has a moral code, an ethical code. And it has, as well as that, an agreed-upon conduct that is just a general agreed-upon conduct. It also has agreed upon certain data in connection with existence. It has agreed upon what's good and what's evil. And it's agreed, as well, on something that practically nobody has ever agreed on before – there must be no confusion. This is agreed upon. We do not recognize the existence of a mystery. And that is a fantastic thing for any organization to move out with. We do not recognize the existence of an unsolvable problem or a chaos which cannot be handled one way or the other.

Well, this is startling in itself. But let's see how we began and where this Auditor's Code, which I started to talk to you about, came from. In training the first few people in Dianetics, it became apparent that there were certain things that they were doing which were destructive to the state of case of their preclears. And looking over these things, it seemed necessary to bring them sharply to their attention. Hence, the Auditor's Code.

Now, the first Auditor's Code was actually rather longer and much cruder than the present Auditor's Code. At one time the Auditor's Code was so shortened as to be stated: "Don't invalidate and don't evaluate." The two "shuns" – invalidation and evaluation. Actually, most auditors auditing know those two things and they think of that as the Auditor's Code.

Well, there were a great many other points in the original Auditor's Code. And one of these days I probably should go back and collect all the various renditions of this Auditor's Code and just put them all together to show you how it grew. It would be an interesting and amusing thing. But actually, we're much more interested in the Code itself and its general purpose.

Its purpose is to hang up in full view the most flagrant errors an auditor can make which deteriorate a case. But oddly enough, the moment you have hung that up, you have hung up a code of how to be civilized. The moment you have done this, you have hung up this code of how to be civilized. It isn't a specialized code. It doesn't have to do only with Dianetics and Scientology. It has to do with other things. It has to do with this one, particularly, of how do you keep from ruining your fellow human being with just day-to-day contact? And that would be one of the first definitions of civiIization.

Civilization is a word which has been much abused and much maligned. But we could say that a civilized code of conduct would simply be grease on the wheels of the Third Dynamic. The Third Dynamic could exist in the presence of a code of conduct and cannot exist continuously, without deterioration, in the absence of such a code.

The Auditor's Code, then, is not an arbitrary, nor is it a code which tells you to be sympathetic to the preclear, nor is it a code which is necessarily relegated to the field of healing or the practice of Scientology. It would simply be a code of how to be civilized. And if you were being very, very polite indeed, you wouldn't invalidate or evaluate for people to whom you were speaking, beyond this point: you would simply keep the communication going, adding your ideas to it, and weaving theirs into it, and weaving theirs out of it while they wove yours in and out of it. And you would just have an interchange there which would go along and there would be good affinity preserved all the way along the line. You wouldn't evaluate or invalidate anywhere here. All right.

How do you apply this code today? And what does it consist of? Well, the two "shuns" are certainly there. But something new has entered the code, something new is in this code. You don't, out of the sake of politeness, leave somebody ill or uninformed. You see that? You don't let an inherent diffidence for offense stand in your road in making somebody well. In other words, just because you have to be rough once in a while, just because you have to be sharp – these things would not make somebody sick, in moderation. But just because you have to be polite, and you would refuse to do these others, you might very well fail to make somebody well.

Now, let's see the reason for this. Today, we are very much closer to truth in the handling of preclears. We know so much better what we are doing and we can do it so much more easily, that some of the caution we, perforce, had to apply, is no longer applicable. Some of the caution is not applicable.

It wouldn't matter too much today if you were to drop a preclear at the end of the session without entirely and completely running out whatever you were doing. You could drop him at the end of the session and pick him up at a subsequent session. And certainly with people who have been through the Advanced Clinical Course, you would have some feeling that if – even if he did go away – sooner or later, swinging back into auditing, somebody would run out his auditing, you see? There is a shared responsibility for that. Because we have processes which remedy it. You could simply have the fellow spot the spots of the last auditing session, even though it were in the same room. And you would knock out – well, if you did that with Remedy of Havingness, you would knock out that session. You could leave somebody, then, in a comm lag.

In the old days, to get around this – do you realize we sometimes had to audit people for eleven hours at a stretch simply because we couldn't let the case go? Very often happened that some auditor was auditing somebody late into the night simply because the case was running and he really didn't dare stop it. Another thing is, is we had superstitions of various kinds. One of them was boil-off. We believed if you were to disturb somebody very badly in boil-off, that it would be a shock – practically stop his whole reactive bank or something of the sort.

Well, as we grow up in technology, so we can be more freely civilized. But remember that – it's freely civilized. We can be free only because we know what we're doing. There are many, many cautions which we do not employ today, which we employed in yesterday.

For instance, I set up as a test one day to break all points of earlier Auditor's Codes. And I just broke them this way and that on some preclears, one after the other, just to find out the amount of consequence resulting from it and whether or not I could patch it back up again. Now, this was fairly serious.

There's somebody who is sitting in this room right now that doesn't realize that he was subjected to part of this series of tests. I told him while he was exteriorized to simply make a sound. He couldn't do it and I dropped it. And waited for him to spin in or do something horrible simply because I had told him something – this was not part of the Auditor's Code, this was technique – I had told him to do something and gave him a tremendous failure. I could do that because his case was in pretty good shape. Well, actually, it didn't stall him. It sort of hung his case up for a little while, but it didn't kill him. That was what was important.

Well, this is how well-off cases had gotten and this is very true with you. Do you realize that yesterday you could have practically spun a psychotic or a borderline case with a couple of Auditor Code breaks to a point where the case would not have been redeemable? You would not, immediately, have been right in there pitching.

Let's go into this more technically. Now, what are the differences? Why today can we be more overt in auditing than before? Let's just take that up as a single subject. And we discover that we are auditing people in present time.

Do you remember Dianetic reverie, when we were auditing people who were in a light fog? And when they were pushed down into an engram, they were in a heavy fog. And anything which you said to them registered with a great deal of force and effect. So, therefore, you had to be very careful.

There isn't a single thing you are doing today except producing communication lags – just isolate that one out over here – isn't a single thing (except that) that you're doing today, that does anything but bring the person more into present time. In other words, here we had all the way through Book One: "Come up to present time," it kept telling you to tell the preclear. Finish the session in present time is what I used to talk about.

Well, all right. If present time is this important, here today, four years after the publication of the first book, we find processes are as good as they put the preclear in present time – there's a constancy for you. But the preclear is being put into present time today on the basis of having a rocket tied to his coat collar. And that sometimes, with this goal in mind, an auditor finds he has to be very, very overt.

So, in addition to an Auditor's Code, we have the Code of a Scientologist. I'm not going to give you this code, mostly because I haven't written it down and haven't done much more than talk it over with the IGS and so on. (The boys are very anxious for this particular code.) It represents primarily as a code of practice, something which would better not only the preclear but the auditors and that civilization to which auditors belong. In other words, it betters every part of it.

And part of its proceedings would be: One, don't talk about Scientologists to people who are not Scientologists. Don't criticize or give or receive criticism about other Scientologists. In other words, be completely unwilling to listen to entheta about your fellow auditors. And be completely unwilling to give out entheta about them.

Now, you'd say, that is the introduction of an arbitrary. No, it isn't. That is merely the unification against one of the primary modus operandis of the society at large in trying to keep an organization from growing. Do you know what the society at large is brave enough to do and all it's brave enough to do? It's brave enough to cut affinity lines. And that's all it can do.

Now, the neurotic preclear that has been over across the street to see a friend of yours and get audited, got audited as well as that friend of yours could audit him. Whatever the state of the case was at that time, the Scientologist who was auditing him was doing his best. Maybe it wasn't the best educated best. Maybe it wasn't the very latest or the very most useful. But this Scientologist was doing his best for this preclear.

And this preclear has gotten upscale a little ways, and maybe something else has occurred. Maybe he is a very, very resistive case and maybe he passed this Scientologist a bad check or something (you never know quite what goes on in such circumstance), or maybe did something else which brought an abrupt end to these sessions. Or maybe it's true, as the preclear always represents, that the Scientologist wasn't doing him any good, or refused to audit him any further simply because he couldn't pay or – whatever you hear from the preclear is probably wrong.

But he comes over from this friend of yours to be audited by you. And the way he gets you to audit him is to represent himself as a hard case and by befouling the reputation of that other Scientologist that was auditing him. His total purpose in doing this is to be as destructive as he dare be, and that is simply to cut some communication lines. He's making a bid for sympathy. He's telling you why you have to audit him.

Now, my experience back along the track has been rather considerable with this. It's a wonder that there's any affinity between me and anybody in any part of the organization. Simply because everybody who walks in the door, who is rocky on his mental pins even vaguely, will give me the sorriest, longest-drawn-out song and dance you ever heard.

Once in a while, it's true. Somebody has been in, he's taken a course for three minutes, he attended it with one-quarter of one ear open and he blew! And everybody in the course knew this fellow was in horrible condition, anyhow. And he suddenly winds up in some other part of the country representing himself as giving a series of sessions of which I get half the profit! (This, by the way, just happened.) An amazing, fantastic thing! And then, of course, feels very hurt because the IGS has jerked his certificates so that it practically charred while it was coming out of his hands. They wonder why this occurred. But that's very overt.

Yes, you can expect things like that to happen once in a while because you're still dealing to a large degree with Homo sapiens. And by the way, it's only where you're dealing with Homo sapiens continually that this happens. It really doesn't happen very much when you're dealing with Scientologists, auditors whose cases are in good shape.

Now, how any affinity line exists at all is a wonder because there is hardly an auditor anyplace whose reputation has not been so blackened to me by personal representations on the part of their preclears and people in their areas that, if I didn't know my people better than that, I would never for one moment believe that there was one Scientologist in the world that one should waste a moment's time on. They'd all lost. They're all psychos. Obviously! And I don't think there's a Scientologist anyplace who hasn't, sooner or later, had my name blasted around one way or the other.

Now, in view of the fact that as many stories as I have heard about myself, coming back to me one way or the other – you know, catching them in letters passing from somebody's hands to somebody's hands, you know – in view of the fact that I have yet to read or hear a single correct rendition of my life, whether it was well meant or badly meant, I must then assume that 99 percent of the material which I receive about our auditors must be in a like state of perverted communication.

So I merely have to assume this: that Man, Homo sapiens, has as his last effort to make nothingness, the cutting of affinity lines and the perverting of fact.

Therefore, a Code of a Scientologist would contain this one: You just don't talk about other Scientologists. That's all. You can say, "They're all right" but – so forth. Somebody comes to you and says, "Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap and then he – this and that."

"Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. Uh-huh."

"Well, you really ought to report him – you really ought to report him."

"Well, that's fine."

"Yeah, but aren't you going to do something about it?" "No."

"Well, why aren't you?"

"Well, that's all right. Do you want to get into the session now?" It'll stop. Just with no more booting along like that. All of a sudden, the whole body of people known as Scientologists become a survivor type. That would be dreadful, wouldn't it? You don't give a friendly ear at all to somebody coming in and giving you a long song and dance. Well, you shouldn't give them a friendly ear.

My grandmother, by the way, used to have – used to have an old saw. She had a pocketful of them, a large capacious pocketful of them. She was always bringing out the right one. Sometimes she brought out the wrong one, but it was very interesting anyway. And "If a dog will bring a bone, it will take one away." And that's true.

If they'll come to you and tell you about me, and tell you about the fellow that lives down the street and how bad it is, how bad it is, how bad it is – you poor guy – they're going to go one-half block further down the street and tell them how bad you are! So let's just cut the guy's comm line. That's a horrible thing to do, isn't it? And the fellow says, "Well, I have the uh … I have the … the evidence that this all took place and it's very horrible and they just butchered my case and this ruined everything."

Sure we know cases have been ruined. Sure we know auditors have been messing up people now and then. Yeah, but we don't say so. So I mean, we just skip it. And you say, "Well, that's fine. You have a perfect right to select any Scientologist you wish. That is on your own determinism. You can select any Scientologist you care to select. You have a right to be treated by any of them." R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! And you'll just stop that one last overt operation.

Now, there is an Auditor's Code drawn up, isn't it? However that's stated, that's the meat of it.

Another thing is this one. Started to talk to you about the Auditor's Code – well, this is how far it's gone. Part of the Code of the Scientologist should be never to take money from an individual that he does not believe he can help. Isn't that a horrible thing? Never, under any circumstances, accept as a case, somebody you know you cannot help.

You know what would happen if you promulgated that and put it up on your wall? It would be the end of the medical profession and psychiatry. You'd just kill them right there in their tracks. They would die. Why would they die? Because they, every day of their lives, accept money from patients and promise them assistance for the sake of a few bucks, for conditions they know they cannot help. Now, that's real curious, isn't it? Well, wait a minute. Does that really cut your throat? No. You can help practically any condition under the sun. So, we'll put that one up in lights: We do not accept money or accept people unless we have a reasonable idea that we can assist them.

Now, some preclear is going to point this out and say that he didn't get his second head gone or something of the sort and return your fee, Well, if you've done a Certainty Assessment on him before the processing and a Certainty Assessment afterwards, ail you'll have to do is show him the two, and it will even come up to him that he sure has been helped. This is obvious to him.

I don't mean to peel off that particular clause of the Scientologist's Code. It's just the fact is, you are helping them. And this has never happened before in healing. So, we're in a brand-new field, aren't we? We can tell somebody that we can help him, we can have some fair idea of doing so. But we can also say to him, "We are not permitted to assist somebody or promise assistance to somebody that we know we can't help." I mean, that's that.

Now, the Auditor's Code has now been supplemented to that degree. And the Auditor's Code, today, consists of these particular parts. Evaluation and invalidation are definitely out – definitely out. But new things have occurred which make it necessary to write, if anything, a little stiffer Auditor's Code. And that would include this:

We do not get angry at a preclear.

We do not leave the auditing room because of the turn of temper of the preclear.

We do not promise punishment to the preclear unless he complies.

And you'd say, "For heaven's sakes, why do we put these in?" Because every case I have audited in the last six months have had one of these clauses done to it, which was what hung it up. Auditor left the auditing room because the preclear would not comply. The auditor got mad at the preclear and the auditor promised punishment to the preclear – that's two different divisions – he got angry at the preclear. Most preclears are in such shaky state that if you demonstrate rage or anger toward them in an auditing session, they become rather ill, to say the least.

Now in addition to that, there are some other things that become, today, part of the Auditor's Code because, remember, this is a technical code,

We don't audit people – we don't audit people after ten o'clock at night. It's an oddity, isn't it? And yet, every spinner for four years who has had anything bad happen to him in auditing has been uniformly audited after ten o'clock at night.

We do not audit a preclear who is poorly fed. We feed him and then we audit him.

And we give him no more auditors than is absolutely necessary by the exigencies of – situation. We do not change auditors any more than we absolutely have to. Now, I could tell you that cases right here are hung up right this moment because we've had too many auditors on the case. Two is too many. It's all right; you can get away with it. Today you can get away with almost anything.

But why do we change the Auditor's Code after all these years and run in this? Because we differentiate sharply with this code today and say it is a code of technical operation and, therefore, it should include those things which, when breached, have produced harm to preclears. Therefore, it's a code of technical operation.

Well, the Code of Honor, as released some time ago, would be the ethical code. And that's the luxury of what you can afford. And that is the way with ethics and morals.

We consider it would be immoral of you not to do something for a preclear. That's your purpose, then, it's immoral not to hew to that purpose. See? That's morality.

And ethic would be the ethical code of conduct. That's luxury. Whenever a person is pluperfectly sane and has great abundance, he can then indulge in ethics. That's quite distinct from morals, you see. He has to be quite a guy to be ethical.

And we have, in addition to that, the code of practice. So we have these three codes.

Now, I talked to you about the Code of the Scientologist. Now, that shouldn't be confused with an Auditor's Code. We have the Code of the Scientologist and it says, "We don't talk about other Scientologists." That's all. And that we add to that: "We don't talk about Scientologists, about our own or connected organizations of Scientology; we do not indulge in public disputes with regard to the merits of Scientology; we do not permit Scientology to be used in paid advertisements – paid advertisements to advertise other products." We can advertise Scientology if we want to, but we won't permit Scientology to be used in paid advertisements to advertise other products. And in addition to that, "We will not accept money from people we cannot help." And that's the backbone of the Code of the Scientologist.

Now, we're having that printed up, in essence, and you can hang it on your wall. And that and the other two codes, would do more to reassure somebody coming to you for help than any other single items which you possibly could do.

What about the Auditor's Code today? It's become three codes – three parts. And it's a very, very practical concern of how do we get to be a nice, big comfortable organization with its affinity lines up all the way around. These codes are how you do it.

AUDITOR’S CODE IN PRACTICE PAGE 2 7ACC-19A - 13.07.54

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