A session is a cycle of action.
Unless it is started, continued and ended properly the preclear is put in continuous session. If it is not given a proper cycle of action it does not result in any control of the preclear.
Rudiments are not something it is nice to do. Rudiments are something that must be done.
A great deal of the value of auditing lies in the mechanics of the session itself. If you wish to demonstrate this for yourself all you have to do is try short sessioning. This consists of starting, continuing for a few minutes, a session, and ending the session. It has good gain qualities for a pc who has poor concentration. It does not matter what is run. What matters is that direct control of thought results in setting an example that thought can be controlled.
A session without proper rudiments is a session without control. A session without control gets no gains of any note.
After working with this for years I believe a nearly foolproof method of handling the rudiments has been developed.
The parts of modern rudiments are as follows:
End rudiments:
(Note the end rudiments are changed in order from HCO Bulletin of February 25, 1960.)
Goals are set at the beginning of the session in order to make the preclear postulate session occurrence. If the pc says nothing about goals or even says nothing will happen, probably nothing will happen of any note in the session. Goals are taken up first in a session before environment, auditor or problems because these may entail auditing if they are not right, and the moment you start to audit the last three then you are running a session without setting goals and may run the entire session of the auditor or the present time problem and muff it because no goal was ever set. The auditor who does not set up goals immediately following the start of a session may wind up without getting a chance to set goals.
There is a lot to know about goals. There have been processes entirely devoted to goals. A great many more processes could be developed about goals. However the value of these tools or processes does not compare to just getting a goal or three set for the session itself. If you run into difficulties about goals there are two processes which can be used, and perhaps other old processes might also be worked on the subject.
The basic reason we give stress to goals is to keep the auditor from making one of the greatest fundamental errors he can make: The auditor is processing in one direction and the pc wants to go in another. This creates a basic disagreement between auditor and pc which prevents auditing from getting anywhere and results squarely in ARC breaks and upsets. Where these are frequent this mistake must be supposed to exist and must be cleared up.
There are only three things a pc can do in a session so far as results are concerned: he can get better, he can stay the same, he can get worse. Therefore there are only three basic types of goals: improvement goal, no-change goal, deterioration goal. All this derives from survive and succumb as the two opposite poles.
The auditor may be seeking improvement while all the pc wants to do is succumb. The auditor may be trying to keep the pc from getting worse and the pc wants only to get better. The auditor (but let’s hope not) may be working unconsciously or otherwise on a particular pc to make him or her worse and the pc is trying to get better. Of course in the last case O/W is indicated for the auditor on this type of pc. Fortunately the last type is rare.
The commonest disagreement on goals comes about on the first mentioned. The auditor wants improvement and the pc wants deterioration. Some auditor trying wildly to make a pc better gets a failure only because he has never closely observed the pc’s goals and hasn’t got this straight with the pc.
If goals go wrong the simplest process to clear the pc on direction is a problem process. This might sound odd, but it is quite true. The fastest goals process is a general problems process. This occurs because the pc in looking over problems falls into realizing what his actual desires are. The quickie version of this process handles solutions in this fashion:
The auditor looks over the preclear and sees that the pc has some obvious disability. He asks the pc if the pc has any disability and steers it into getting the pc to bring this one to light. This would be something like a bad foot or cough. One selects a mass terminal for this disability, such as chest for the cough (whatever the pc says it is), and runs the following command, “What problem would a bad foot be a solution to?” Using this on one or more disabilities and running it a while (until pc is in pt on it) shows the pc at once that at least as far as a foot is concerned he has been trying to succumb.
This is a very ordinary occurrence since factually any chronic psychosomatic is an effort to succumb. Remember that the doors are all locked from within by the pc himself.
If pc is still reluctant and upset about goals or isn’t getting better faster because of the solutions process above, run some consequences in this fashion: “What would you be likely to do if you didn’t have a bad foot?” This makes the pc look at it some more, and some responsibility run on what he has said he might do will clear the thing away.
The general process that uncovers most of this is “Tell me a problem”; when pc has, “What part of that problem could you be responsible for?” When pc has, the auditor says again, “Tell me a problem,” etc, etc, etc, on a repetitive basis.
Now remember that we weren’t trying to make his foot well. That may or may not happen with any rapidity. What we are trying to get the pc to look at is that his goal alignment is not an improvement but a deterioration.
The old process of worse than, minus the invent part, also accomplishes the same end: “Think of something worse than a bad foot.” This on a repetitive basis will turn up all sorts of horrible consequences to not having a bad foot. Of course having a victim with his face kicked in before one and the police sirens sounding is worse than having a bad foot by the pc’s rationale.
Because people hold in and cripple themselves mentally and physically to keep from doing things they know are wrong, goals, more frequently than you would like to find, are in the direction of getting worse. Until you untangle this one as an auditor you may not be able to make any lasting progress with a pc.
Factually a pc in bad condition is more likely to have succumb goals than survive goals.
When handling rudiments, get the pc to set a goal, any goal or even two or three goals he really thinks he can make in the session. But if after two or three sessions it is apparent that he is not achieving his goals as set by him in the session, despite care to handle them by the auditor with processing, it should be suspected that the pc is technically an “opposite vector” case and has private goals quite the reverse to getting better. When one has uncovered this fact as the auditor, without evaluation, he had better get it uncovered to the pc.
There are no auditing failures. There are only errors in auditing. Chief amongst these errors is failure to take up and straighten out the pc’s goals. That is the first amongst the rudiments and last in the end rudiments so it must be pretty important. Don’t discount its value, and handle it with the attention it deserves.
Once upon a time or two I have asked some auditor auditing me what his goals for the session were. It produced some interesting randomity. But a pc is under no orders but the auditor’s and it isn’t something that is needed in the session. Also I have just up and told the pc what I would like to get done in the session and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, and I found that what the pc wanted to get done and what the pc said he or she wanted to get done were more important.
Unless the pc postulates his recovery, it won’t last even if you make him recover in spite of himself or herself. The way to make the pc postulate it is by handling goals as above. The pc is often very startled by what he finds out about his actual intentions.
I have stopped being startled by what pcs do. I find that when they don’t recover very fast they don’t want to and I start working over their goals no matter what else seems to be the matter.
The CCHs work better if rudiments are used, but sometimes that’s impossible due to state of the pc. Take up goals with such a pc at the first available chance however and make your work easier.
Life is a series of attained goals. Auditing requires at least the setting of goals and their attainment.