Coffee-Shop Auditing

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Introduction: Here’s what the “Coffee-shop auditing” is all about: If you find a great process in a book and it really excites you, try it out on the first person you meet! You’ll have a preclear who’ll benefit from it. And if something goes wrong, the Ron’s Org is there to help you!

Various Ways to apply the Coffee-Shop auditing

You surely remember my last newsletter, “Insanity.” I believe that the worst kind of insanity is to do something good in a fanatical, rigid and stubborn way. I dare say that more suffering has been caused with the intention of doing good and doing the right thing than with the intention of causing harm. A war is probably never fought with evil intentions. Everyone goes to war to fight for “law and order.”

Evil intentions would be too easy to see through.

Ron says very clearly in one lecture that he does not want to make “good people”. He quote, says, that soldiers are “good people.” Ron gave an excellent Lecture about the subject: The Overt-Motivator-Sequence 3 April 1962.

Scientologists are not infrequently “milieu-damaged”. The last thing they want is to squirrel, alter the Tech, or apply it incorrectly. Ron wrote it himself – there is nothing worse. Really?

One of my hats is to prevent Class VIII Tech from being brought all the way down to the bottom of the Bridge. The idea is that under no circumstances should anyone make even the smallest mistake. I know a church where, because of all the prerequisites and regulations, you never actually get around to auditing, and the penalties for any incorrect application are draconian. No, there is no more auditing there.

All of this is done with good intentions.

New laws are always presented as being intended to do some good.

It is all a matter of gradients. From a Class VIII, I do not expect him to squirrel. That goes without saying. But you have my permission to audit your friends, your family, or anyone around you with all kinds of things. You find a great process in a book and get really excited about it—run the process on the next person you come across! You will have a winning PC—and if something goes wrong, that is a good reason to bring him or her into the org!

And finally, an interesting anecdote. When we came to Russia in 1997, almost everyone told us that they had successfully done some kind of book auditing, all sorts of things. They had audited things I had no idea were considered book auditing. For example, I had to ask what they had done with “Black and White.” They did the wildest things. Yes, we had to fix a few cases, but at the end of the day, there were so many people who wanted to become Clear and OT.

Book auditing is a successful and legitimate level. The technologies in the books are intended to be applied.

Much love,

Max Hauri

Coffee-Shop - Book Auditing - Assists

An excerpt from the lecture Modern Auditing Types given by L. Ron Hubbard on 21. April 1959

The first is the Book Auditor's type of auditing. It has a cousin called coffee-shop auditing. Couple of Scientologists or a Scientologist and a friend are sitting down – social gathering or something like that and Scientologist says, "I just thought of something. If you got the idea of putting a wall there a few times, why, this would probably cure the backache which you've been complaining about this evening. So, all right now, you put that wall there and you put that wall there and you put that wall there." And the fellow does it, and the process is never flattened. And if this happens in the middle of an intensive, why, the staff auditor or the professional is very peeved the next time he picks up the pc because he becomes aware of something's intervened. But, nevertheless, this is an auditing type. It is done carelessly, poorly, badly but it does happen. And we're not in the business of simply ignoring all those things we don't like or that are ridiculous – it does happen.

Now that's book auditing. Book Auditor doesn't know his business, doesn't have his drills, doesn't have any of these things but he's trying. And I'll tell you something – it's better than none. And Coffee-Shop Auditing – that's its name – it's had a name here for nine years. It's bad, it gets in people's road, it's very upsetting and so forth, but it sure cured an awful lot of headaches and backaches and made people able to go on with the party, you understand?

And it is done. So, therefore, it has to be recognized as something that happens.

Now, the next type of auditing is called the Assist. And we get into the first, you might say, practical application that looks something like a session. Now, you're going to look at this and you're going to say, "Well then, auditing doesn't require a session." And I'm going to tell you that's sure right. It's only a good professional who makes sure that a session is in progress. You got that?

Auditing is just something that happens. And good auditing, by traditional definition, is something you can get away with or have gotten away with. Auditing is what you get away with. You understand? You'll every once in a while get some kind of a fluky result. It won't be from person to person, you'll suddenly get a fluky result by running something that is a bit offbeat but that you just seemed to think that was necessary at that time to do something about it. And you did get a result. Then you get very surprised when you don't get a result with the same approach on the next pc, but you got away with it, so it was auditing, right? It was auditing and it did do something. If you didn't get away with it why they say, "Well, that's just bad auditing and it's no good," and so forth. They only said it was no good if you didn't get away with it. Got that? That's a guiding rule, I'm not now being sarcastic at all – good auditing is what you can get away with, always.

I’ll give you an example. Pc is dancing around in the middle of the room yelping and so forth, just dropped a coal scuttle on his foot or something like that, and jumping up and down and yelping and swearing and carrying on at a vast rate and his foot's swelling up and so forth. Well, of course, the rudiments [the rudiments – that is, the elements that prevent the pc from being ready for a session: ARC breaks (resentment), Present Time Problems (PTP), Withholds, etc.] demand, in a professional session, you see – the rudiments at once are necessary. Aren't they? Like: Find the auditor and find the pc and find the room and "Do you have a present time problem?" and "What is your goal?" "What is your goal for this session?"

Well, I have been known to say, "Sit down! Touch the floor with your foot."

"Thw-yow-yow-yow-yow."

"That foot, that floor, come on, come on, come on now, come on."

"Thw-yow-yow-yow-yow."

"Come on, let's do it! Do it!"

"Yayayah."

"Do it!"

"Well, all right."

Certainly didn't seem to be very much ARC or anything else but it was tremendously effective. And you found out that the process of the assist, of spotting the environment and so forth also ran out the duress of getting him into session. That was probably the last thing to run out.

So on an assist we kind of do away with some of the niceties. [So we don't handle PTPs (Present-Time Problems) or questions like “Find the auditor, etc.”] The basic rule of an assist is to do it, get it done. Now an assist has been as ridiculous as this: Boy lying unconscious, having been hit by a car. Auditor leans down over him, he can't seem to be able to get in contact with him. Very sure that the kid's passing in his chips, that's going to be the end of that, apparently something like a fractured skull and so forth.

Auditor saying, “All right, go to the beginning or the incident and re-experience it straight through to the end." Kid's unconscious – dying. “All right, thank you. Go to the beginning of the incident, re-experience it right straight through to the end. That's fine. Fine. Thank you." (Letting a little time elapse.) “All right. Go to the beginning of the incident, now just get the moment there of the first instant you were aware of the car. That's right. Get that now? Go right straight through to the end of the incident." And the kid waking up, waking up, waking up, waking up, waking up, sitting up, squaring around and suddenly looking at the auditor, say, "Yes, well I'm doing it. Ahuuuhuh! Well." And being then carted away for some sort of a regular session. That's an assist.

An assist doesn't have many rules connected with it. It is getting a person to handle an immediate condition. Now, that condition doesn't have to be accidental, it doesn't have to be an accident, you see. It doesn't have to be a big emergency but it's just an assist. Come home and find the wife can't do anything about supper, bad headache, bad headache, bad headache, bad headache. Well, give her an assist. Get the idea?

Husband comes home. You want to go to the show. He says, oh, he's so tired, he wahg-wa-duuu-duuu… He's giving a lot of – "to go to the show-I-wa-wa-oogh dog tired, worn out…" Well, you happen to know his – his activity consists of outflowing, outflowing, outflowing, outflowing. See? So you give him an assist. You say, "Well, get the idea of inflowing," you know, any old kind of an assist that remedies the immediate situation. Course, you get him to get the idea of inflowing – inflowing paper, inflowing ink, inflowing anything the fellow's doing. If he's a fellow that delivers coal all day, why, you'd have him inflow coal. Next thing you know, he isn't tired. Just reverse the flow. It isn't necessarily true that it's inflow that fixes him up. It's the reverse flow that fixes him up.

Let's say he's handling complaints. Some department store has been smart enough to hire him to handle their complaints. He's a Scientologist, something like that. So all day long he gets complaints, complaints, complaints, you know, coming in on him, coming in on him, coming in. Ah! Reverse the flow. So you'd say, "Well, get the idea of complaining. Just complain to all those people. Get a big mob of people out there and complain to them." He'd brighten up and go to the show. Got the idea?

Coaches, when they see this happen, ordinarily don't believe it. They have to see it several times before they really are alert to it. Coach – favorite player sitting in – down, out of the game, turned ankle. You go over to the favorite player and say, "What's the matter?"

Fellow says, "I got a – ankle. I'm out today."

You say, "Okay. Touch the ground with that foot. Touch the bench with the foot. Touch your other foot with that foot. Touch that blade of grass with that foot. Touch that helmet over there with that foot." You know? "Stand up and touch the top of the bench. All right. Touch my foot with your foot." You know, just touch, touch, touch, get him to touch something, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. Just using pure principles, see.

All of a sudden the fellow says, "Ow!" he says.

You say, "What's the matter?"

"Oh, a terrible pain."

"Well, that's fine, do it some more."

"Well, I don't know, I shouldn't ought to, I've got a terrible…”

"Touch the helmet with your foot. Yeah, good. Touch the ground with your foot," and so on.

And the guy says, "Yeah. That's pretty good now, that's all right. That's all right. That's all right."

And he goes running up and down limbering up and the coach says, "What happened?"

Comes over and says to the guy, "What's happened?"

"Well," the fellow says, "I don't know. A fellow talked to me and my foot's okay now."

"Well, do you think you could get in the game?"

"Well, yeah."

"Get in there. Get in there." Pure magic.

At a motorcycle race, one time, I took a guy that had just been splattered practically half all over the boards in front of the observers' stand and so forth. He was just shaken up, nothing was broken. I just got him to splatter himself over the boards enough times till he was surfeit. He didn't feel then that he had to splatter himself over the boards. He got on his bike in the next race. Everybody's very amazed when something like this happens.

Well, an assist is a type of auditing – has no real beginning, has no real end. The best thing to do whenever you give anybody an assist is to hand them your card after you've finished because they may want to see you again. And it's the wrong thing to do to walk up to somebody, give him an assist and then disappear into the blue forevermore. They get superstitious about it. Years later they're still telling their grandchildren, "One day God came to see me."

So, it's what you get away with. And assists are normally based on either communication with the injured part or with the environment or location of the scene and location of present time. You know, "Where did you get hurt?" "Where are you now?" "Where did you get hurt?" "Where are you now?" "Point to where you got hurt." "Point to where you are now." You know, that sort of thing, sorting out the locations or Remedy of Havingness in some fashion or another. Those are basic assists and it is a type of auditing.

L. Ron Hubbard