The reason the first Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation had trouble was that its board of directors attempted to stop past lives from being run.
When a group seeks to forward only what is currently acceptable it of course stalls all progress.
Further it is dishonest to suppress or fail to reveal scientific discoveries.
Disagreeing with the Law of Gravity could give one some very bad falls.
Pre-Dianetic mental studies customarily threw out anything that did not agree with their pet theories or would be "unpopular" with authorities.
Such was the dishonesty practised in the humanities that the whole field had fallen into brutal hands. Dianetics had to encounter the Dark Age atmosphere which then prevailed, complete with torture and murder of the insane.
The facts are that what the auditor believes has little to do with the preclear's reality. If a practitioner challenges or demands proof of a patient's data the patient becomes ill — that is the bald fact of it. It's part of the Auditor's Code.
As far as past lives are concerned, if you don't run mental image pictures from past lives when they come up on a chain, the preclear will not recover.
A pathetic case of this occurred in early research. A girl crippled by polio was able to throw away her crutches after my first session. And would have become entirely well except that she recalled seeing and hearing Lincoln give his Gettysburg address. Her mother condemned her for such nonsense. The girl's lameness was confirmed and perpetuated by this and by a psychotic father who raved at me for daring to suggest such things. I didn't suggest anything. In auditing the girl she suddenly came up with being at Gettysburg listening to Lincoln.
Seems a bit cruel to condemn a young girl to a lifetime of lameness just to satisfy a fixed idea.
The weird idea is that one only lives but once.
We have several times traced the graves of pcs in a special project and they usually came up correct. One pc was very upset to find his friend has failed to erect the fitting paid for tombstone, substituting a common slab, possibly to pocket the difference.
Some pcs have been so overwhelmed in the past by some great figure that they go into his valence in that life. This often throws discredit on past lives.
I recall one girl who had been every famous figure in history who when we got her in valence turned up to have been only a victim to them. The great generals and politicians of history, it must be sadly remarked, aren't easily distinguished from mass murderers.
But even famous figures are somewhere.
Past lives as a subject is made distasteful, possibly purposely, by some who, by fearing to have been a nobody and seeking status, talk loudly to others about having been Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Brutus all at the same time.
In a society which tries to hide in the current identity or seeks to mortalize everyone and make people only animals the subject of past lives can be a difficult one socially.
The truth in auditing is, IF YOU DON'T RUN THE INCIDENTS GIVEN BY THE PC HE DOESN'T GET WELL.
One spectacular recovery of an insane woman occurred when she ran an incident as a lion who ate her keeper. Freudian work hadn't been able to crack the case. The alienist at the sanitarium kept her in with trying to explain how it was all delusion (the current technique pre-Dianetics). A Dianetic Auditor found and ran it and she became sane at once and stayed so.
It is NOT the auditor's role to handle the philosophic or social aspects of incidents. To chide a pc for having an anti-social engram or a record of a crime or to challenge his data or refuse him his past life will bar his road to recovery and is itself a crime.
It will be found that Man is basically good. Only his aberrations are bad. When you run out his engrams he becomes social and reverts to being good.
Auditing is auditing. Audit what the pc has to audit. Leave the social aspects of the case to others. It's not the auditor's job.