INSTRUCTORS’ CONFERENCE
A lecture given on 6 February 1963

Okay. Now this is what? This is the 6th of...
Female voice: 5th, 6th - 6th of February.
It’s the 6th of February 1963. And this is an Instructors’ Conference, Saint Hill Special Briefing Course. Okay.
Now, you’re into the middle of some of the most rewarding and some of the most dangerous processes which have ever been originated. And the reason I’ve called this conference is I just wanted to tell you that this is not the time for any private theories or anything else. These things go according to a set of very furiously fixed rules. And unless those rules get followed, pcs wind up in the soup.
Now, I don’t want to minimize this with you because for the first time we are really (exclamation point) dealing with a complete reversal of the first statement made in Book Three of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which is that: Any auditing is better than no auditing. Lousy R2-12A auditing is much worse than no auditing. You see? We’re dealing with something here which is violently dangerous, used wrong.
That’s an astonishing thing to tell you. It isn’t something that we particularly want bruited about from the housetops to the public and all that sort of thing. But it is our responsibility to make auditors who don’t goof Because, look, there isn’t anything else cracks these cases. All right, let’s just look it straight in the face.
All right. So you have to go off a high dive-high tower a hundred feet in the air to dive into an eight foot tank that is covered with flaming gasoline and that is the only way to do it, then, you have to learn how to do this. Don’t you see?
Oddly enough in Scientology, there isn’t any other way out: we’re the only way out. You can size this up anyway you want to. So somebody comes along and he doesn’t get results from processing so he goes to Subud. Well, look, that isn’t going to take him anyplace. See? I mean, we’re the only door there. See? There’s a lot of phony doors. The FDA passes them everyday: pills and all this kind of thing. And the psychiatrists with their electric shock machines and all this sort of thing. Man, those are traps.
All right. So I’ve done everything I could possibly ... That’s the status of Routine 2 as of today. And I have done everything I could possibly do now and will continue to look for indicators and that sort of thing; but these indicators are very, very precise; they’re terribly precise; they actually do not admit of any argument. List right way to: well, it’s going to loosen the needle. That’s all. It’s going to give you some TA action.
List wrong way to and in the first few items you’re going to See that TA tighten up and the needle tighten up. First you’ll see the needle and then the TA. There’s practically no TA action on a wrong way to. See? And we don’t take 15 or 20 pages to find out it’s wrong way to, you see, that’s just a goof. And it’s that kind of a goof that puts the pc in mortal danger. It’s that kind of a goof, see.
We specialize in wide R/Ses. Big, wide R/Ses. Third-of-a-dial stuff. Don’t go mucking around with any sixth-of-an-inch wide R/S! You see? Anything smaller than a third of a dial: you’re too deep in the bank. And I don’t care how good it looks as having been a complete list: if it isn’t giving-if you haven’t got that in your RI or didn’t have it in your RI, why, you’re listing too deep. And your pc’s going to pull in a lot of mass; the pc’s going to get in trouble. And so forth.
All right. Your next point here is that the whole house of cards can fall in if you grabbed a first list, RI, and listed the thing and then abandoned it. You got a nice wide R/S, you see, let’s say it was ”parts of existence” and you had a third-of-a-dial R/S. And now you go on and you’re going to complete that list to find out if you get another one and you get a sixth-of-a-dial R/S: you damn well better take the third-of-a-dial R/S you had in the first place and you’d better list it right and you’d better keep it going. You understand? Because you’re not going to get any more R/Ses on the case. The case is going to fold up. There’s where the R/Ses disappear to.
So the rule here is a good, big, wide R/S. But that doesn’t mean something that is taken from representing a rock slamming or a rocket reading item. You can get big R/Ses if you represent or-a rock slamming item.
Now, on a source list you’re liable to get the appearance of the RI anywhere on the list. Your guess is as good as mine. I just had one turn up as item number one. The first item put on the list R/Sed. And it was the item although it was continued. See? There it was. So a source list-this is your first source list, see-that appears anyplace under the sun, moon and stars.
But within reason all other lists, each list taken from an RI, follow a very precise thing: it’s always the last R/S.
Of course you can goof this. You can goof this. You can overlist and overlist and overlist and go 775 items, you see, beyond the last one and sooner or later it’ll go. And there’s another bug shows up that was inherent in something we were doing here. When we told the pc that something R/Sed, we were goofing. Because the pc now represented whatever R/Sed hoping to get his item on the list. You must tell the pc quite something else. Pc says, ”But that R/Sed.” You say, ”Good, then your item probably won’t have anything to do with it.” You sow him with that propaganda, otherwise he will goof your list. The way he goofs your list is he-let’s say you tried and didn’t find the R/S, you didn’t find the RI. See, you listed it down and then you didn’t find the RI. You understand? For some reason or other it didn’t appear. But he now knows two R/Sing items, one of them fixes in his mind and he tries to do a represent of that item in order to complete his list and get an R/S on the list. See? That is a goof.
So we disabuse him of the idea that this is of any use to him whatsoever. Actually, just educationally that we tell him so as an auditor. He’s got ”John Jones” now. Well we just warn him, your item probably won’t have anything to do with ”John Jones.” Let’s-let’s get busy now, we obviously are nowhere near it. Now let’s get some new ideas here. Make him list some more. Otherwise he represents a rock slamming item and you’ll get an increased incidence of R/S and you will get all sorts of goofy looking things. But that - that’s a piece of auditing, that’s an error that has been entered by the auditing. Don’t you see?
Well, the rule in 2-12A is that you come to your last R/S, still TA, and, you go 50 items beyond your last R/S with a still TA. See? Fifty items beyond. If you exceed that rule you’re liable to start tightening the bank. And it’ll start looking like a wrong list. It won’t increase the number of R/Ses. But it’ll start tightening up on the pc; that needle starts going tight, after 50. That’s an interesting datum, isn’t it? In other words, that 50 is a pretty absolute fact.
Once in a blue moon because banks are banks, you’ll have to go more than 50 and suddenly find yourself there. You didn’t have an RI on the list so you go back to it and you list a bit more and you find yourself staring into the teeth of an R/S that appeared from no place. Sometimes if you’re unlucky and got out of bed that morning, didn’t put your shoes on right and that sort of thing, it’ll be item 51. I have seen it happen. It’s the very next item the pc put on the list right after the auditor stopped listing. Very next one. Everybody tearing his hair out by the roots and the pc says, ”a compounded felony,” you know, is the next item he gives. It R/Ses like mad. The auditor tries to list further, goes on; the bank starts beefing up, everything starts going to hell in a balloon, you see. He now tries to put another 50 on top of it, he can’t make it; so he finally goes back and tests a compounded felony and it is the RI and there aren’t two R/Sing items on the list and all is well. Don’t you see? Goofy things like this can be expected to occur.
But in the final analysis, if a list is taken from a proper item, you know, a proper source list and you got the right RI: it goes on around just like clockwork, pang, pang, pang. You start having trouble and these rules start going astray when you’ve got an improper source list or you didn’t get the right RI off the first list or you got the wrong RI on the next list so you start having trouble and these rules start going by the boards: go back one. See? This is the third RI you’re trying for and it occurs as item number 3 on the new list and your lists uniformly here have been about 15 page lists for this particular gruesome package, one of these long listing packages. And all of a sudden on item number 3 on a checkover, of trying to find it and so forth-matter of fact you find ifs on the first page. It’s item number-what the hell! Well, don’t consider that it’s fortuitous, man: you scrub what you just found. See? Because you’re off the wrong RI. Scrub it right then, you see: go back and continue that list a little bit further and you’ll all of a sudden will find you didn’t have the RI. See, ifs the wrong source list or the wrong RI that causes this 2-12A thing to go awry. And every time it goes awry it piles up mass on the pc and gums up the pc. And that’s all you have to be wary of, is, don’t go gumming up the pc. Don’t keep running things that pile in mass.
Who was it? Yesterday, apparently pulled a piece of screaming genius - which is why he’s still here after all these god endless months: because he pulls them. He has an RR (this is 3MX now, but it’s the same rules), he has an RR that appears on page 12 and it’s his last RR and he lists to page 17! Well, where did he think he was going? Were his brakes busted? See? Couldn’t be stopped? Because, oddly enough, this rule of 50, in 3MX becomes 25. In other words, 2-12A's 50 items-you use 50, you see. As soon as you get onto 3MX it’s 25.
Now, all of your errors and difficulties associated in the vicinity of R2-12A come under these headings: complete asinine stupidity, just unbelievable stupidity. Guy is doing it; he doesn’t know what he’s doing and so forth. It-but when you look it over and try to find it, you look for something clever and you’re going to find something that is just incalculably stupid. That’s always nice and gross.
I had one I should have saved from Perth. This is an absolute classic, this is the most marvelous thing you ever saw. And I think I sent it back. Yes, I did. Well, I ought to have kept it. It’s an actual quote found running in a session in Perth. ”Well, now I’m going to read your item to you, (whatever it was) a catfish. Uh-all right.”
Then the pc said, ”Oh, well, yes, catfish. That’s very interesting. Did you get anything out of that?”
The pc brightly, finally says, ”Well, did you get a nice R/S on it?”
”Oh, no, it didn’t R/S.”
Female voice: That happened here.
You see? How the hell do you think yourself around mistakes like this?
The auditor hasn’t got the fantastic essential that you have to have an R/S! He never got that. You see, that’s the stupidity that you run into.
Your next one-your next one is an actual or inadvertent failure to grab this one point: That it is the Routine 2, it is not the auditing that helps the pc. And you’ll get this kind of a cycle going. When an auditor first starts in on this, Christ, he has mid ruds and ”since the last time I audited you-” mid ruds and every page he turns over he gets in the big mid ruds and every time he gets an item he tiger drills it and, he tiger drills endlessly, Big Tiger, the item that he reads before and then he endlessly Big Tigers the other, and he never tells the pc anything but just keeps on auditing, auditing, auditing, auditing. And you find out 90 percent of your session is consumed in all of this motion. Now, is this auditor-this is to be expected, see, I-this we See. We’ve seen this continually so it will go on this way.
All right then, gradually as he gets a grip on the fact that it’s Routine 2, well, you get a diminishment of the auditing and an increase, see, but he goes down to about 50 percent. He gets in his rudiments every-at the bottom of every page, don’t you see, or something like this. And he has a tendency to cut them short here and there, you see. And he doesn’t interrupt the pc from listing just so he can get his rudiments in, you know. He’s learned these facts. Then, by God, he gets smooth enough in his presence as an auditor and holding the pc in-session and so forth so you hear a drill of an item before it is listed. You know? And you listen in vain and you won’t hear any beginning ruds, you won’t hear any end ruds: you’ll hear some Havingness. You know? And the thing has suddenly gone to 98 percent of the session-has become Routine 2. You can expect that evolution.
So don’t try, particularly, to prevent it. But just put out the rather snide propaganda that, when they finally know their business, why, they won’t be doing this. You see? That’s the best way to handle it. Oh, go ahead, put all the rudiments in you think you should. You’ll eventually find out that most of your trouble is coming from your auditing, it isn’t coming from that. So it’s smoothness of presence. It’s also the smoothness that they can put the rudiment in. The rapidity with which they can put these things in and that sort of thing. Get the idea?
It’s the goodness of their TRs. This all keeps the session running and eventually you aren’t occupied in patching up the lousy auditing the guy is doing. He’s auditing very self-consciously so he knows he’s goofing, so he expresses it in getting in mid ruds all the time. You see? He knows he’s made a mistake so his first thing is, ”Well I get-I’d better get in the mid ruds here to get that mistake off.” See? He’s called the item three times, each time differently. See, he’s mispronounced it some different way each of the three . . . ”Well,” he says, ”the best thing to do is get in all of my mid ruds.” You know, just its-you just get this endless confusion. That’s because the guy hasn’t got the technology as a stable datum.
Now, you could expect such an evolution. Now, further, you can expect the diminishment of error, unless the student is permitted to disperse off lists. This is a golden opportunity, an absolute golden opportunity to audit wrong.
A student can audit so wrong that he never learns how to audit right. You see what I mean? It’s such a narrow catwalk that he never does learn how to audit right because he can do so much dispersal on it. See? Oh, he sees the first R/S on the list and he calls it again, immediately, to the pc and he says, ”Well, that’s your reliable item,” and he tries to represent it; but then that gets noplace and it beefs up the bank and, so forth. So he decides he’d better invent something new, to go along with this and, actually, he just goes on a dispersal and he’ll get worse and worse and worse as an auditor; and not only the pcs will get destroyed, but he’ll be destroyed as an auditor. Don’t you see?
So it is of great interest to us in our instruction here to get all these rules packaged up so they don’t drift around in the air someplace. And then never theorize with a student. Just lay these things into him with an ax. Actually, they exist now. See, we’ve got these things. I can go back over all of these things and pull them all together into packages, and that sort of thing. We still, in the addition to what I’ve been giving you here, we know these things; these things, let me put it this way, are known so we can therefore embark on this kind of an action. But when you learn how: deviate. Until so: toe the mark. And, of course, the guy after he learns how and toes the mark, he sees there’s no reason at all to deviate. You see, in his anxiety to get a result he will do something else, or wonderful and strange. Don’t you See? Actually, it runs off very smoothly if it’s done right.
Now your next thing, the next point here I’d like to make with you is: the things that bring in mass or beef up the bank and that sort of thing normally can be counted on as wrong; something is going wrong here. But it’s not necessarily the source. You don’t just keep picking on source and abandoning lists to correct this mechanism.
Well, I’ve just given you one way this can happen. And one of the ways this can happen is the pc is representing an R/Sing item: you’ll get increased incidence of R/S and everything else towards the end of the list; you’ll get a beef-up of bank; he’ll start looking absolutely haggard. And the list is from a perfectly good source. See? Well, it can be from a perfectly good source and listed wrong way to.
Now, one of the ways you detect a bad source is you can’t tell which way to list it. There’s no marked difference. You test it, ”What would it oppose?” And you list a dozen items. And then you test, ”What would oppose it?” and you list a dozen items. And you just can’t tell any difference between them. That’s your best test, by the way, for a wrong source. You can’t tell the difference between these things, well, don’t go beyond that. Say, to hell with it. Let’s look it over-let’s look the case over earlier than this point. In other words, let’s look at this source and see if we didn’t have a wrong source. That’s when you get a wrong source, that’s when the thing won’t list. Don’t go 45 pages to find out it’s wrong way to. And don’t go 45 pages ”both ways to” to find out it can’t be listed. See, the time to find that out is very early.
But watch this mass characteristic. Watch this mass characteristic. You can always expect a little mass to show up because he’s listing. But, boy, when he starts getting dark it’s these areas, these pouches under the eyes, that tell you the whole story. And when he starts getting dark under there something is going wrong. Well, don’t make up your mind what’s going wrong before you see what’s going wrong, because, as I’ve just given you, there can be wild auditing goofs in progress. There can be fantastic quantities of auditing and nothing but total suppress and protest on the part of the-of the pc. Don’t you see? There can be an auditor who never does anything but Q-and-A, for instance; everything the pc says, the auditor does something, See. And it can be something mechanically wrong; it probably is something mechanically wrong. However that’s the one I would pick on. I’d look over and see what the devil is happening here. Look-look-let’s see what is happening here.
And one of the first things, very important thing to check, is in any way at all this pc representing a rock slamming item? That’s about the first thing to check. Because he isn’t answering the auditing command. The way you check that is: Just how is he answering the auditing command? And then you prod him a little bit on the subject of, ”Are you representing any rock slamming item here?” or something. See? ”Has the auditor given you an item and you’re now trying to get that on the list?” See? What’s going on here? And you’ll find out that’s out of gear more often than not.
But when they can’t list and when it won’t run right, believe me, it doesn’t run right. It doesn’t go on this cycle: pc pretty good; pc worse, worse, worse-you know, we’re used to this in old-time auditing and then it gets better and better and better and the pc comes out of it. That’s going through something. Well, R2-12A doesn’t go that way. It doesn’t go that way. It can stay on a nonimprovement, see; it can remain on a plateau. But once it starts over the edge of that plateau and the pc starts getting worse, there is something wrong.
Any darkening of the eye pouch, don’t you see? Catch it early. Don’t list five pages with him getting lower and lower in the chair and mass crushing in further and further in without investigating this thing.
Now, it’s an interesting thing about the abandonment of lists. You abandon too many lists, you’re really going to get the pc upset. But, let me tell you something about list sources. List sources is not anywhere near as critical as you think it is. The sources for a list are not critical. You start in on a raw meat pc, you can make all kinds of errors and get packages. That’s not a critical point. That is a point and it has bearing on it, but it’s not that critical.
Now, if you find out suddenly that this list source that you’re taking comes from a rock slamming item, an old-some old 3GA-get off of that, man, because the pc is going to list into a discolored skin tone and all of this kind of thing is going to happen. But I’m talking now about-let’s say you went into the Scientology list and he found Scientology rock slamming like mad. How the hell are you going to correct a Scientology list? How can you increase and finish the auditing, the-how can you complete a Scientology list with Scientology rock slamming?
Male voice: Never tried it.
Well, you can-you can think of all kinds of dodges by which you hope you’re doing it; but in actual fact you’re not doing anything but representing a rock slamming item. You understand? So, what the hell? Buck into it head-on. So it doesn’t list well. So the pc has a hell of a time. So the lists are all 22 pages long. Do it! Gave you a nice big R/S, third of a dial, what the hell, man.
And you’ll find out that you’ll more often come out right without being so damned gingery about that first list.
Sometimes a case folds up just because, on the first list, there were five R/Ses and the auditor finally grabbed one and then that got abandoned. You have to go back and finish that list. Parts of existence, anything like that. He had-he had sex rock slamming a third of a dial. You tried to complete the list and you came up with a rock slam which was a quarter of an inch wide. You’d be so much better off to take sex, see, and carry it on if it had ever been carried on, than to try to correct or rectify. Don’t you see? If there’s any way you can get a rock slamming item that is an RI from that first list or first approach that the person had in case repair: do it! And expect it to be fluky. It will-it will not quite follow the rules here and there and that sort of thing. So then’s when you have to be smart; there’s where you get your variations. Don’t you see?
 Something was done wrong in the first place and when you go back to correct it you find out that you’ve got to complete what you did. So this puts completing a cycle of action actually senior to avoiding something because it’s wrong. See, completing a cycle of action is a bit senior to correcting the situation. You’ve got something that will list, God help us it lists horribly, but it will list: well, complete it and carry it all around four ways.
But if you’re not going to, and this is a brand-new case, and you see that this thing is just going no place: don’t try to pick an item off of it. Look, you’ve got to make up your mind, you see. If you’re going to pick up an item off of it, you’d better carry it on. But if you’re not going to pick up an item off of it, if he-if you-it’s just going no place, you see-all the rock slams were only about three-eighths of an inch, that sort of thing, just tap the pc cheerily on the back and say, ”That’s fine, now we’re going to take another list.” You see?
But supposing this thing, all the way, had been delivering great big rock slams. Well, you’d better try to get something. Because it may be that you will never counter another rock slam of that magnitude. Cherish those big, rock slamming lists. And do them even if they’re a little bit wrong.
You see, the idea is simply this: Routine 3 has got to be as precise as though it’s laid out with a carpenter’s square. And it is. But what are you handling? You’re handling the goal, man. And that handles all the mechanics of the GPM and everything will run off just like clockwork.
Not Routine 2. Routine 2, you’re on the outskirts of all this and you’re trying to cut yourself a channel through. See? And it’s fluky and it’ll go right on being fluky. And Routine 2-12A follows rules that are quite precise. But the rules only go astray when something is done wrong. See, the rules go astray when the rules aren’t followed. You got the idea? But sometimes because you’re on the outside of the GPM anyhow and tickling its edges, you’ve got to take something just because it is rock slamming like crazy and bear through with it because you can’t get anything else. And you’ll find out that’s superior to leaving it alone. You see? There’s a point of judgment involved in the thing.
But 2-12A because of the very nature of the thing, that it’s only handling lock items on top of RR items, see, but an R/Sing item is only a lock on a-an RR item. Because you’re only handling these locks ... Well, with all the lousy auditing, you see, with all the goofs, with auditors reading the super-significance ... And, by the way, never let an auditor monkey with a significance of anything. Particularly in R3. Because in R3, let’s say the pc’s goal was to be a dog, and the auditor will inevitably take the first RR that he gets, which is barking, and say, ”Obviously, it’s the pc’s terminal.” It never is! Never! It’s always the oppterm. Because this goal has passed into the hands of the enemy. That goal is only resident in oppterms now. Isn’t that an interesting point?
And the next item up the auditor of significance, you see: to eat bones. Oh, goody, goody, goody, goody! See? Goody, goody! That’s fine. That’s a terminal. Don’t even have to test it! Bull! See? So just the rule is significance. Never pay any attention to the significance of an item; just never do. Just neglect it utterly. Just do it by mechanical test.
But expect 2-12A to be random. And grab what you can get or grab what has been listed wide. Take allowances for the pc listing rock slamming items and that sort of thing. You can get something on that list to R/S widely when read again. And there aren’t two things on the list that are ... Grab it, man. I don’t care if it came from item one, see. If you get something there or if something was taken off that list that R/Sed well and then was listed: somehow make that list come out to something. Because that pc will never be right until you have. Go all the way around, in other words. You understand?
Male Voice: Yes.
You can find the R/S, neglect it, list it, bury it, goof it and then get a nice, complete list with a little, tiny R/S that won’t list, that tears the pc to ribbons. You got-get the idea?
So just specialize on that big R/S. Just make sure that it didn’t come from a representing rock slamming item or a Rock reading item. Just go on! You can’t miss. In other words, old 2-10 and 2-12 when they were originally put out are correct. You can just take the mostest read that you found on List One and represent it all the way around and the person will be a much happier auditor. You see that? I mean, it’s simple.
But with great precision, what is the perfect way to do it? Is to complete the List One.
You see that 2-10 and 2-12 were actually not totally invalidated by 2-12A. Just some new indicators and data came along. You can still take 2-12 and get someplace with it.
Now, we got to get results without knocking people in the head. That’s - that’s what we got to do. Now, we got to teach them to get results without knocking people in the head at these original stages. And the liability of the Routine 2 is that it will knock people in the head. But usually knocks people in the head when done goofily. You get to figuring too hard, you think too hard, you try to figure yourself to death on the thing, you try to get yourself into some kind of a weird state, of what the waw and if it woo and then it wrr. No, just settle it all down. ”Did anything R/S here?” ”Oh yeah.” ”And did we ever have an R/S? Was it ever listed?” You know, this kind of thing. Well, did-well, God almighty, get something off that new list. We don’t care if it’s cycled. Get something off of it; find out if it’s terminal or oppterm. Chase this guy around the block into a four-package of it and he’ll be happy as a clam. This is actually how you settle it down.
See, it’s actually a crude settle down. It’s not a very precise settle down. Because it’s not a very precise process. See? Because you’re-you couldn’t be-but if-that it has rules at all and that 2-12A could be evolved is fantastic. Because you’re handling locks on the goal. Always has a liability. Always is slippy. But find a great big R/S and run with it. That’s fine. If you can do it, do it. And you’ll come out right and the pc will be better every time.
Find a great big R/S and do something else and try to be perfect with something else and find something else and try to find something else: you’re going to wind up with a 3/8th of an inch R/S which when you try to do it pulls the whole bank in on the pc.
So we’re trying to get the maximum gain with the least bank pulled in on the pc. And that is the rule you are trying to follow. See? And that rule is accomplished by finding the widest R/S and making a package out of it. We don’t care how we got the R/S as long as it isn’t from a representable rock slamming item. And you’ll find out you’ll have wonderful success with this if you follow it.
Now in 2MX-in the Routine 3MX we got an absolute doll, which is as-which is as different from 2-12 Routine 2 approaches as you ever heard of And it’s an absolute doll. That thing is just a carpenter’s square. It’s just exactly on. The lists are shorter; they run more rapidly. It is very swift. It’s always the last rocket reading item on the list. You know. If you overlist it tightens the bank, that’s by the rule of 25. And the only variety which you’ll find is if you haven’t prepchecked the goal and the goal is slugged up like crazy and it won’t rocket read well but it’s persistent in its rocket reading, you know, it’s tested Tuesday and it got one rocket read out of it and it’s tested Friday and it got one rocket read-oh, to hell with it: list it. See? That kind of thing.