Standard procedure has been revised to simplify auditing (for accessible cases — not psychotics). The revision became possible when valences were examined and were found in themselves to exert considerable influence on sonic and general perceptic recalls. When a person is in another’s valence he cannot, of course, perceive fully his own perceptics.

A case is started on straight line memory to recover data about incidents which may contain grief, as in deaths, or about engrams of physical pain, as in accidents, illnesses or operations. Actual and hearsay evidence may be recovered which the auditor can use in working the case. A written record of such possible engrams should be kept at hand while auditing. Remembered hearsay information, particularly from relatives, should be granted less validity than the recall of the patient and should never be permitted to invalidate the data of the patient.

1. Reverie is the same thing as being wide awake with one’s eyes closed. It is not a special state of being. None at the Foundation now count. The preclear is simply told to close his eyes, the canceller is installed and the preclear is in reverie. Wide awake he could move to any incident he can reach in reverie. Persons who do not go anywhere when told are invariably stuck somewhere on the track although they appear to be in present time. After telling a person to close his eyes, see if he moves on track.

2. Run pleasure incidents in this fashion: Send preclear back to yesterday when he may have been doing something pleasant. Run the incident just like an engram, over and over, each time coaxing him to pick up more content in the incident until at last he is re-experiencing it with several perceptics. Succeeding or failing, return the preclear then to an even earlier moment of pleasure. Treat this as an engram, running him through it over and over, picking up all available perceptics, coaxing him to see and hear, to feel clothes, or a chair or water if you have sent him swimming. Work pleasure moments for five or ten hours if having difficulty with case. This gives him the knack of returning, gives him a greater sense of reality (very important) and tunes up his sonic and visio. It also helps him to get into his own valence. Pick up moments of triumph for him when he was proud to be himself and see if these can be run.

If he cannot contact pleasure moments, don’t be concerned. He may contact instead the moment which makes it impossible for him to contact pleasure; if he contacts thus an unpleasant incident make him run it immediately as a real engram. Coax him as well, if possible, into his own valence.

Whether his perceptics do or do not turn on with this, proceed to try for painful emotion (grief).

3. Grief engrams (called painful emotion engrams in the Handbook*[Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard.] ) result from losses of position, allies, or things. A grief engram is run like any other engram. Pick it up at the first moment of the awareness of loss, when the person first knew of the death, etc. and run it with all perceptics over and over until the grief is discharged. Be sure to ask what the preclear is thinking also, and to run the words of the articulate thoughts, if any, with all the perceptics, the same way as the other people’s words. If grief does not discharge in tears and if the incident does not de-intensify after several runs, there is an emotional shut-off or the person is out of his own valence. Do not assume there are no tears present if logic indicates that there should have been. Getting grief off a case is very important and all the grief which can be reached should be discharged as rapidly and as thoroughly as possible. Pin all grief down to its source and run it like any other engram. Getting grief discharge or not getting it, go to the successive step of testing the file clerk.

4. The file clerk and somatic strip should be in good working order. The file clerk should furnish flash answers and engrams as requested. The somatic strip should go instantly to engrams as ordered. One cooperates with the file clerk. He commands the somatic strip. Optimum working of these should be demonstrated by the file clerk’s giving up the next engram required to resolve the case and the somatic strip’s going to the first part of that engram. It is done by educating the preclear into the definition and existence of the file clerk and somatic strip. Demon circuits should not be confused with the file clerk. The file clerk is positive and always right. But a “file clerk” who hands out answers on playing cards or teletype tapes, or who gives bouncers when a holder is desired, is actually a demon circuit obstructing the file clerk, and the demon circuit should be cleared away (See Step Three).

The auditor says to the preclear, “The file clerk will now give us the engram necessary to resolve this case. The somatic strip will go to the beginning of this engram. When I count from one to five and snap my fingers the first words of this engram will flash into your mind. One, two, three, four, five (Snap).” If an engram is presented, the auditor may not know it until the first words in it are several times repeated by the preclear. This settles the preclear into the incident which then can be run with due attention to bouncers, holders, etc.

Don’t expect the preclear to wander into the incident by himself or “hear” the first words himself. He needs to be brought into it with requests to the file clerk and orders to the somatic strip. The first words come up usually as a flash answer. The file clerk and somatic strip should work perfectly. If they do not the patient is stuck on the track (even if it appears he is in present time), he is out of his own valence or he has demon circuits interposed between his file clerk and “I.”

Detect a preclear being stuck with an age flash. Ask him his age and snap your fingers in this fashion, “How old are you? (Snap).” His answer may be his present- time age and yet he is stuck on the track, for he may have built in a response to answer such a question. Ask him again, “How old are you? (Snap).” He may still give his present-time age and yet be stuck. Say then, “Give me a number!” He may give you another number than his age number if he is stuck. The last number will be the age at which he is stuck. Ask him then, “Days, weeks, months or years?” Get a flash on one of these. This is the year or day or week or month post-conception (or post-birth) in which he is stuck. If he doesn’t give you a clue as to where he is stuck with this method, ask for yes-no flash answers as follows: “Hospital? (Snap).“ “Doctor? (Snap).” “Mother? (Snap).” Getting yes or no to a series of such questions will identify the people present and the geographic area of the engram. Then put him on straight memory and ask him about this incident. In such a way the engram in which he is stuck is coaxed into view. It is then de-intensified, which is to say, run as an engram until it is incapable of holding the preclear. If the holding engram will not reduce there is another similar to it earlier which can be reached and reduced.

USING REPEATER TECHNIQUE AT RANDOM ON SUCH A CASE ONLY GETS IT STUCK IN MORE ENGRAMS. REPEATER TECHNIQUE MUST BE USED SPARINGLY AND ONLY WHEN THE PRECLEAR IS RETURNED TO AN ENGRAM. IT IS A SECONDARY TECHNIQUE AND SHOULD NEVER BE USED TO OPEN A CASE OR REMEDY A STUCK CASE. REPEATER IS USED ON A BOUNCER FROM CLUES GOTTEN FROM THE FILE CLERK. IT IS USED ON DEMON CIRCUITS ONLY WHEN ONE HAS DATA ABOUT THE COMMAND. (SEE STEP THREE BELOW.) If the file clerk and somatic strip do not work after all this, go to STEP THREE.

5. It sometimes happens in a case which is stuck on the track, full of demons and out of valence, that basic area engrams can be reached and reduced. The moment yawns can be gotten off a case or an engram can be erased in the basic area, the remaining engrams in that case de-intensify slightly. Since unconsciousness is common to all engrams, as soon as it starts to lift: (a) the patient begins to improve and (b) the command power of engrams drops and (c) engrams can be entered more safely when one is looking for demon circuits and valence shifts. If you are unable to contact basic area engrams, review your technique as to how to go about it, try several times, reduce a few late life engrams or locks, try basic area again. If you still fail to contact, go to STEP THREE. Do not just keep using repeater technique. Never use repeater for such general purposes.

1. One should not expect the preclear to simply wander into the basic area. He must be sent. The somatic strip has to be ordered to go there. The engrams around conception and conception itself are the earliest part of basic area. The first missed menstrual period is the latest part of basic area. THIS AREA IS THE MOST VITAL IN THE CASE AND EVERY EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE TO REACH AND REDUCE OR ERASE ENGRAMS IN IT. One can often obtain conception quickly and easily by placing the preclear in a late life moment of sexual pleasure or courtship, settling him in that moment (telling him he does not have to tell about it but must only tell the auditor that he is there: it is run silently and without details), and then, when he is in good contact with the incident, sending him, by command, immediately to his own conception. Conception*The subjective reality of conception cannot be questioned. The objective reality, the validity of the experience, has not been thoroughly checked, as have prenatal engrams in general. is run off as the sperm and then as the ovum with all details it contains. Moments a little earlier as the sperm or ovum have been found engramic, and when conception has pain and will not erase after many, many runs, look earlier. Conception does not always have pain, and if not it should be run a few times to be sure and thereafter neglected. Yawn-off in the conception sequences (sperm and then ovum) takes unconsciousness off the whole case to some slight degree. If engrams in the basic area are erased or reduced, keep right on erasing or reducing more as long as they will present themselves. If they stop presenting themselves, try for grief in the post-birth life and if discharged there, return to basic area and keep reducing or erasing. Command the patient into his own valence in the basic area when he has run the intensity out- of the valences there. If you get him into his own valence (as himself rather than mama or papa or ally) in the basic area you will probably turn on his sonic. Most cases that cannot get into the basic area are held out because of bouncers or denyers in conception or elsewhere in the basic area. “It’s too early to tell yet” (doctor’s comment on pregnancy of mother) commonly denies engrams in the basic area. Some cases fail to get reductions in the basic area because the auditor has not cultivated “dialogue sense” in that he has not realized that when the patient runs out the conversation of one valence (such as mama) she may be talking to somebody else whose conversation (and therefore valence) is also present. The auditor must call for the dialogue of all persons present in the engram and try to figure out for himself what the other people might be saying, feeding these lines to the preclear who may be at a loss.

2. When the auditor gets an erasure early he should keep asking the file clerk for the earliest moment of pain or discomfort which can now be reached and proceed up the case until he has all engrams erased. Sometimes when he gets later painful emotion off a case he can go back and find early engrams which were previously bypassed. If none of these things, go to STEP THREE.

3. A case may be running smoothly and suddenly bog down. The Auditor’s Code may have been broken: somebody may have pulled the break of all breaks of the code by invalidating the data of the preclear. Auditing may have been so inept that the file clerk has given up and refuses to forward more data in view of the fact that the data he did forward was mishandled (not reduced fully or reduced in some weird fashion such as letting the preclear free-associate on it or just give the concept of the engram without running out all perceptics in it). Great care must be taken to rehabilitate the preclear, running out the Auditor’s Code breach like an engram and running out anything it locked upon. The current environment of the preclear, if it contains persons eager to invalidate the data of the preclear or harm him by damning his actions continually, may be so bad that a change for the term required to obtain a release may well be in order. The auditor must re-establish the file clerk’s faith in him by working on unimportant data. After a few sessions wherein the file clerk learns that it is now safe to furnish the auditor with data, the file clerk will begin to give out useful engrams again.

However, a case may bog down because painful emotion has come to view. Grief is then discharged and the erasure continued thereafter from the basic area upwards. If the case is still bogged after this, go to STEP THREE and simply open the case again with all the steps just as though it had never been touched. The computations may have changed. New data will be in view.

1. Demon circuits are discussed in the Handbook. A demon is installed by commands addressed to “You” in engrams. “You’ve got to get a grip on yourself” sets up a demon when it is in an engram. “You’ve got to tell the truth” would still be a demon if appearing in an engram. “You” addresses, within the mind, “I” in such a case. Demons are set up most commonly when they contain thinking or talking commands. Demons which dictate that one control himself are bad offenders because it places a pseudo-auditor within the mind which, distinct from “I,” controls the individual. Dub in is caused by “control yourself’ types of circuits. A patient who can run alone is most likely to have dub-in. The “control yourself’ demon is interposed between “I” and the file clerk. “You’ve got to lie to them” or “You can’t tell anything about it” mask the file clerk very badly. The file clerk is still there. In working technique the file clerk is always obedient. But a demon can mask that obedience. The lie factory installed by “You can’t tell the truth” takes up a part of the analyzer and dictates to “I,” demon or no demon. But in bad dub-in, the preclear is not under the auditor’s control. -He is under demon control. The auditor gets bouncers when he asks for holders; strange mechanisms such as pictures of hands with signs in them relay what is purported to be ‘‘file clerk” information; in short, a nightmare source of information comes up when the file clerk is asked questions.

The source of demons is, of course, the engram. Merely running out the engram runs out the circuit. The task is to find a clue as to the wording of the command, which is to say the engram causing the case to work poorly, to dub in, etc., etc. Using random repeater technique will only snarl the engram bank so that several days have to be allowed to pass to permit the case to resettle. Using repeater technique toward a known engram and using, for repeater, the words of that engram, will reach the first time that engram appears in the bank. One discovers the words, then repeats them to get in contact with an engram. When that is contacted, test it to see if it will reduce. If it will not, there is an earlier engram like it. Try to reach that merely by telling the patient to go earlier, meanwhile repeating the phrase which makes up the circuit. Eventually, going on down from engram to engram, one will be discovered which will release. Run all of it. Never neglect to follow all the way until one is discovered which will release. Otherwise the case is restimulated unduly. It’s a general law that an auditor MUST REDUCE EVERY ENGRAM HE CONTACTS OR THE BASIC ENGRAM ON THAT CHAIN BEFORE STOPPING A SESSION.

Straight line memory is the tool which discovers circuits and valences. The general rule is that anything which the preclear thinks derogatorily or sub-optimum about himself was told to him by somebody or is contained in an engram, without exception. He thinks he should control himself. He has been told to do so. Make him recall who used to tell that to him or somebody else in his presence. Find out who was “self-controlled” around him when he was a child. This works for any aberrated thinking a preclear does. In fact, quantities of locks can be knocked out of a case by straight line memory of the dramatizations of the people around the preclear’s childhood or even later life. This technique is a fast therapy technique which can be employed to make a patient comfortable. An hour of it is worth, when you know the rules and become an expert in it, hundreds of hours of any older process. The aberrated parents, relatives or associates of the preclear were aberrees. When an aberree dramatizes an engram once he can be counted upon to have dramatized it dozens of times. By contagion this engram has gotten into the preclear’s bank, where it remains as engrams or as locks.

In straight line memory we can make the patient remember the locks. He will first recall a generality about them. Then he can be made to discover (still in present time, not in reverie) a specific instance when this happens. When he connects he generally laughs a trifle with relief. ANY worry he has can be found in a dramatization of the people around his early life in the exact words he uses to describe his worry. Trace back who would have said those words. Find a lock where they were said. They will de-intensify as locks just because they have been remembered. Further, the chronic psychosomatic illness he has is usually a counterfeit of an illness suffered by an ally. If he wears glasses, find out who wore glasses in his family. If he has gastric upset, find out who had gastric upset and who complained about it. This locates for the auditor the valence in which the preclear has settled. Now find out who used to tell him that he was like the person in whose valence he now exists. This will be a lock on something. But get it in full recall on straight line memory. This has a tendency to take him out of the valence he is in and get him into his own valence where he can reach his perceptics.

An engram in the prenatal area might be found to contain the statement, “You’re just like your father,” etc. Other valence shifters consist of such phrases as “You’re no different than anybody else” (puts him in everyone’s valence), “I’m beside myself,” “I’ll have to pretend I’m somebody else,” “If that had been you, you would have been killed” (synthetic valence creator). The valence shifters and the demon circuits exist, then, not only as engrams in the early bank but also as locks. Get the preclear to recall a lock by clever questioning.

2. When a lock has been contacted, place the preclear in reverie and get him into the lock, using one or more of its specific phrases as repeater or merely sending him there. Then run the whole dramatization just as though it were an engram. Actually it is a lock, but one thereby finds out the commands which shift valence or create demon circuits. “You’re using too much imagination,” “You have to think about this and I’ll tell you what to think,” “Don’t you dare tell anybody,” “You’re wrong, you’re always wrong,” “That isn’t true. You don’t know what you are talking about,” are common circuits which block the auditor. The control-yourself species of command such as “Control your emotions,” “Get hold of yourself,” “You must control yourself,” etc., etc. lets the preclear run by himself; when they exist in force, the question of “altitude” (auditor has to be powerful enough to control his preclear and get him to cooperate) becomes acute. Any time a preclear demands an auditor with more “altitude control” circuits are present.

The preclear may object to having control circuits reduced on the grounds that controlling oneself is necessary. “I” controls self expertly and naturally and the preclear is out of control within himself only when control circuits, demons, exist in him. The auditor must delete all circuits which interfere with “I” in “I’s” effort to control the organism. Once he has the content of the lock, he can use repeater with its phrases to contact an engram early in the bank, preferably prenatal. Then try to reduce that phrase in the engram. If the auditor cannot reduce it he must find it where it appears earlier. And so on down until he can get one which will release. This takes careful and painstaking work. Care must be taken to reach straight for the exact engrams desired as revealed by an examination of dramatizations as locks.

It is also possible to examine the dramatizations of the preclear himself and, by finding times when his own engrams have been restimulated so that he acted them out, find the engram itself. By putting him in the instant he was dramatizing he can sometimes be made, by recounting the dramatization word for word, to go then instantly to the time the engram itself was laid down.

3. Reduce the earliest engrams containing these commands, after they have been located by careful computation and judicious use of repeater technique.

4. When demon circuits or valence shifters have been contacted and reduced, try for grief and sorrow in the case. Keep trying for basic area engrams. If grief and basic engrams are still out of sight, keep repeating STEP THREE until you have made the case into one which will run easily.

5. Run the case. REDUCE EVERY ENGRAM YOU CONTACT AND WHEN THE ENGRAM WILL NOT REDUCE TRY TO GET THE EARLIER ONE LIKE IT WHICH KEEPS IT FROM REDUCING AND REDUCE THAT. FOLLOW THIS PROCEDURE. NEVER LEAVE A CHAIN OF ENGRAMS IN RESTIMULATION. DISCOVER THE BASIC OF THAT CHAIN AND REDUCE IT.

NOTE: This procedure should not be applied until the auditor is familiar with Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

[This Chart was prepared by a professional course student, from his lecture notes. It is included in this publication because it was widely distributed, printed together with the preceding article by L. Ron Hubbard, and was used during lectures in the Fall of 1950.]

(after this, go to STEP TWO) In starting the case, the following information should be obtained:

1. Name, age, height, weight, foreign language, etc.
2. If hypnotized, psychoanalyzed, shock therapy, etc.
3. Psychosis, neurosis, dramatizations, psychosomatic illnesses, etc.
4. Operations, illnesses, accidents, electric shocks, nitrous oxide.
5. Loss of allies: parents, grandparents, spouse, children, relatives, etc.

(if case won’t open, or bogs down, go on to STEP THREE)

1. Put preclear in reverie, check perceptics and see if moving on track.
2. Run pleasure incidents to tune up perceptics, strengthen sense of reality, and get preclear in own valence.
3. Try for painful emotion discharges.
4. If file clerk and somatic strip indicate a stuck case, try all prescribed methods to free on track; failing, go to Step Three.
5. Try for basic area engrams; failing, go to Step Three.

1. Direct the somatic strip, work with the file clerk, reduce all engrams (or their basics) contacted; compute at all times, detect and de-intensify all denyers, bouncers, callbacks, holders, groupers, etc.
2. Start in basic area and proceed to present time, erasing all engrams on the way; keep at it until you have a release or a clear.
3. If case bogs down, check for poor auditing and detrimental environment and remedy their effect. If case is still bogged down, go to Step Three.

(after this, go back to STEP TWO)

1. Put preclear on straight line memory and look for demon circuit and valence commands in memories of parents, possible allies, etc.
2. Put preclear in reverie and run the dramatizations and other locks necessary to establish the exact demon circuit or valence command.
3. After careful computation use repeater technique to reach and reduce the earliest engrams containing this command.
4. Try for painful emotion discharges on moments of grief, loss, etc.
5. Return to Step Two.