Science of Survival

page 14-20

                          CHAPTER TWO

                      The Auditor's Code

  The first thing any auditor should know and know well about
processing is the auditor's code. This has been called the code
of how to be civilized. Much more important than knowing
mechanical techniques is knowing well the attitude one should
have toward a preclear. This is not for courtesy but for efficiency.
No preclear will respond to an auditor who does not adhere to the
auditor's code.

  It must be remembered that the mission of the auditor is not to
reduce engrams, not to run out secondaries, not to eradicate
psychosomatic illnesses, psychoses or neuroses, but to raise the
preclear on the tone scale. It happens that these incidentals of
removing neuroses, psychoses and psychosomatic illnesses as
well as increasing the persistence and general responsibility of
the individual follow in due course so long as the auditor attends
closely to his primary mission of raising his preclear on the tone
scale. If he does not give this his first attention, he is not freeing
theta and converting entheta, and if he does not do this he cannot
efficiently accomplish the other goals. The index of how well he
progresses with the preclear's case is the tone scale. Mechanical,
lackadaisical, and careless auditing can actually remove
psychosomatic illnesses and yet not raise the preclear on the
tone scale. This may be paradoxical, but what happens is that
the entheta in the engram causing the psychosomatic illness is
converted into another type of entheta which is not

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physically painful to the preclear. It is, nevertheless, entheta,
and the preclear is not raised on the tone scale. Thus, the auditor
must closely attend to every means which will raise the preclear
on the tone scale and should disregard the immediate and
short-term goals of the eradication of specific "illnesses," bad
habits, neuroses, psychoses, obsessions, and compulsions. The
auditor must remember that even such a degraded practice as
hypnotism can, by the implantation of positive suggestions,
suppress certain physical and mental disorders. Though these
are suppressed in one quarter they will manifest themselves
as something entirely different. A person is saner to have
"psychosomatic illnesses" than he is to have mental aberrations.
Hypnotism can in a small percentage of cases eradicate the
"psychosomatic illness" but will produce in its stead a lowered
tone in the individual. Electric shock and psychosurgery may
alter the behavior pattern of the individual and may suppress him
into some tractable condition, but the result is inevitably harmful
to the ability, efficiency, and general worth of the subject, with
the further detraction that they cause damage to the brain from
which the individual never completely recovers.

  Simply by addressing processing from the viewpoint that one is
changing entheta to theta and freeing up all available theta in
the case one will make the most rapid progress with the preclear.
Experience in the field has demonstrated that irascible,
authoritarian auditing can continue for as long as five hundred
hours, that actual "psychosomatic illnesses" can be removed and
that some small improvement can be seen in the general tone of
the preclear and yet that neglect of emphasis on raising tone
might permit such a case to continue on another thousand hours
without producing a clear, the entheta being transferred from
one part of the bank to another, endlessly.

  The auditor should give attention to the environment of his
preclear. Cases have been observed in which the preclear was in
the vicinity of a marital mate who produced such constant
tension, so many invalidations, and who had so little

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thought for or belief in any possible gain for the other that the
processing was only of small benefit and the auditor was wasting
ten hours of auditing time for every one which was effective. In
such a case the auditor has every right to recomment a change of
environment for the duration of the processing.

  The auditor should not draw back from educating his preclear,
so long as the education is not on a command basis but is done
as an invitation to the self-determinism of the preclear to
manifest itself, an invitation to the preclear to reason things out
on a basis of his own adjudication. This is particularly beneficial
with children. Indeed, children are surrounded by such ordering
about and restrictions that their self-determinism is often too
slight to cope with anything like their personal situations. In
such a case it is definitely the role of the auditor to invite the
child to think things out for himself, occasionally redefining
words or situations for the child. Actually, an auditor can take
two or three preclears and form an educational group wherein
mutual discussion of their own problems will result in a rise
of tone in the preclears.

  The third method of processing, of course the most lasting
method, is auditing, or individual processing, wherein the auditor
concentrates on freeing all available theta in the case and
converting as much entheta as possible to theta. The auditor's
first step towards accomplishing this, should he consider the
environmental situation compatible, is to promote affinity,
communication, and reality with his preclear and to found a
group of two - himself and his preclear.

  The auditor must recognize that he is dealing with a person, in
every case, whose conduct is not as good as it will be. Thus,
the auditor must practice much self-restraint and must form an
example for his preclear. To do this the auditor must never
under any circumstances or for any reason break any part of the
auditor's code with the preclear.

  Breaking the auditor's code, at first glance, may not appear to
be a very great sin. But an auditor has undertaken to aid

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a fellow man, and his dedication to that purpose must be sincere
to the point of sacredness. An auditor, by misusing his
position through what he knows about the human mind, can
bring havoc upon an unsuspecting preclear. Carelessness alone,
if it is backed with good intention, can seldom do much harm.
But malicious intent, wherein an auditor expects to "gain"
heavily by use of deception and misuse of the sacred trust he has
taken unto himself in helping his fellow man, can cast a preclear
far back down the tone scale.

  If one does not feel that he can keep the auditor's code wholly
and completely, he should not under any circumstances audit
anyone, nor should he permit himself to be persuaded to audit
anyone, and any preclear should be very wary of permitting
himself to be audited by anyone who potentially would break the
auditor's code. The preclear who finds himself confronted with
an auditor code break should instantly and finally terminate his
processing with that auditor and should find another who can
keep the code. A man who will break this code once will break
it many times, and the preclear should never persist in the
arrangement out of the argument that he can get only one auditor.
Anyone who breaks this code is under 2.5 on the chart and
should not be auditing but should be in process of being audited
himself.

  An open-hearted and sincere effort to practice Dianetics, after
a thorough study of the principles contained in this book, should
the student adhere to these principles, will produce marked and
beneficial effects upon human beings never before attained in
man's history. To produce these effects the auditor must embrace
the auditor's code and keep these principles as sacred as if they
were the vows of priesthood.

  The auditor conducts himself in such a way as to maintain
optimum affinity, communication and agreement with the
preclear.

  The auditor is trustworthy. He understands that the preclear has
given into the auditor's trust his hope for higher sanity and
happiness, and that trust is sacred and never to be betrayed.

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  The auditor is courteous. He respects the preclear as a human
being. He respects the self-determinism of the preclear. He
respects his own position as an auditor. He expresses this respect
in courteous conduct.

  The auditor is courageous. He never falls back from his duty to
a case. He never fails to use the optimum procedure regardless of
any alarming conduct on the part of the preclear.

  The auditor never evaluates the case for the preclear. He
abstains from this, knowing that to compute for the preclear is to
inhibit the preclear's own computation. He knows that to refresh
the preclear's mind as to what went before is to cause the
preclear to depend heavily upon the auditor and so to undermine
the self=determinism of the preclear.

  The auditor never invalidates any of the data or the personality
of the preclear. He knows that in doing so he would seriously
enturbulate the preclear. He refrains from criticism and
invalidation no matter how much the auditor's own sense of
reality is twisted or shaken by the preclear's incidents or
utterances.

  The auditor uses only techniques designed to restore the
self-determinism of the preclear. He refrains from all
authoritarian or dominating conduct, leading always rather than
driving. He refrains from the use of hypnotism or sedatives on
the preclear no matter how much the preclear may demand them
out of aberration. He never abandons the preclear out of
faint-heartedness about the ability of techniques to resolve
the case, but persists and continues to restore the preclear's
self-determinism. The auditor keeps himself informed of any new
skills in the science.

  The auditor cares for himself as an auditor. By working with
others he maintains his own processing at regular intervals in
order to maintain or raise his own position on the tone scale
despite restimulation of himself through the process of auditing
others. He knows that failure to give heed to his own processing,
until he himself is a release or a clear in the severest meaning of
the terms, is to cost his preclear the benefit of the auditor's best
performance.

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  This is the auditor's code. It has been discovered that the two
most important aspects of the code are the preservation of the
preclear's sense of reality and the trustworthiness of the
auditor. An invalidation of the preclear's data, no matter how
outrageously that data may assault the auditor's own sense of
reality, can be severe and will go so far as to shut off the
preclear's sonic and visio, all in a moment. Most preclears are
uncertain enough in the presence of their own past. They quite
commonly invalidate themselves, a practice from which they
should be discouraged. When the auditor invalidates the preclear's
data the shock to the preclear can be very great. In the matter
of trustworthiness, the auditor must never take advantage of
the preclear, either in using his data or in using a temporary
state of apathy, propitiation, or restimulation in order to possess
himself casually of the preclear or to gain materially.

  Any two people in constant association who will conduct
themselves according to the auditor's code will soon find not only
that they are clear or almost clear as a group of two but also that
their knowledge of, and joy in human relationships have been
immeasurably increased.