Training in the Independent Field

Training in the Independent Field

by Joe Howard

Dan Koon (aka Joe Howard) today

John Aaron Williams (Jimmy Rebel) and I have been working for some time now to make it possible for people to do auditor training outside of the formal Church of Scientology, which many feel has become so weighed down with arbitraries and extraneous demands on their time and bank balances as to make it virtually impossible to learn the subject.

For over 12 years I worked in the LRH Technical Research and Compilations Unit in the Senior C/S International Office in the Sea Org. I was in the unit while LRH was on the lines directing the unit and worked there for an additional 10 years after he passed away.

LRH’s viewpoint on training was that training should be fast and auditing should be more drawn out, both receiving and giving. In other words, people should train in order to learn how to audit and while gaining experience as auditors they would become better while continuing to improve their knowledge of and ability to apply the technology.

The Year of Tech Breakthroughs: 1978

In 1978, LRH undertook a review of Academy training. He found that the Academy Levels had become overly long and had become a mish-mash of all kinds of tech not, strictly speaking, related to Academy Level training, which was supposed to be directed towards teaching students to audit the Expanded Lower Grades, ARC Straightwire through Grade 4.

It is understandable how this occurred. After 1968, which had been the previous time a checksheet evolution was done, there were a ton of tech breakthroughs and developments: Word Clearing, Standard Dianetics, Int Rundowns, the C/S Series, Expanded Grades, PTS/SP tech and on and on. Many of the developments related to all auditing in general and so many bulletins wound up appearing on Academy Levels checksheets.

By 1978, a Class IV auditor was trained to do Int Rundowns, C/S 53s, PTS Rundowns, Expanded Green Form 40s and much else. He or she was the equivalent of today’s Class V Graduate with all the Tech Specialist Courses to boot. Auditor training had become overlong. LRH’s solution was to shorten checksheets and concentrate them on specific bodies of tech or rundowns. The basic auditor training lineup would still remain Academy Levels 0-IV but if an auditor found he needed to do an Int Rundown, he could do a quick course that taught only that and get right back to auditing.

So, in overseeing the compilation of the 1978 Academy checksheets, LRH mandated that the number of issues on those checksheets could not exceed the number of issues that appeared on the 1968 checksheets, which had been the last set he reviewed. Many issues not specifically relevant to delivery of Expanded Lower Grades were stripped from the checksheets.

RTRC complied with those directions and checksheets were released in the fall of 1978. I didn’t work on these as I was not in the unit at that time. But I did compile the 1987 checksheets when Academy training was once again updated to incorporate the Tech Films. These checksheets adhered to the LRH datum restricting the number of issues that could appear and also included the appropriate Tech Films for each level and improved the demos, drills and practical assignments over the ’78 compilations.

When John approached me to assist in his project it became clear that the 1987 checksheets should form the basis of what we have today under the heading of Independent Checksheets. Many auditors trained on these checksheets and copies are all over the internet. Another checksheet evolution was done in 1996 as part of the Golden Age of Tech program but those incorporate all the Standard Tech Drills, which are not currently available in the independent field.

The 1987 checksheets are good, standard training checksheets that made auditors who could get results on pcs. They do not require a separate metering course such as the current Professional Metering Course being delivered in the church but instead include the meter drills necessary to audit the tech taught at each level. The Professional Metering Course is loaded with arbitraries and some students have spent years trying to pass the dating drills and final assessment video. Most Expanded Grades processes require only the metering skills necessary to spot an instant read and an F/N, since the vast majority of processes are repetitive processes.

The goal, then, with these checksheets is to provide an auditor training lineup that anyone can follow to learn the mechanisms of the mind and gain the skills needed to apply LRH’s breakthroughs to help others. We intend to make this lineup broadly available and John has plans in place to make quality training affordable at very reasonable costs.

Getting Scientology back on the rails

In an utterly misguided and off-Source effort to attain “perfection,” the church has placed so many obstacles in the way of auditor training that they are choking off the practice of Scientology, which is the entire point of the subject--practice. Application. The runway to application is so long now that many never get off the ground. While other subjects are mainly philosophic studies, Scientology is meant to be an applied philosophy and that is what John has set out to provide. It’s personally gratifying for me to be able to contribute to his efforts.

These checksheets don’t replace any other checksheets being offered by any individual, group or organization. If someone sees something they think is wrong with these checksheets or which could be improved they are free to communicate about it. People are free to use these checksheets in any way they wish or not. In the final analysis, each of us has our own direct line to LRH and it is ultimately up to each one of us what we do with that line.

It’s the hope that people who are not able to or who are no longer willing to study in the church will avail themselves of this LRH data, learn to apply what he has left us and use this knowledge to improve the ability to better conditions, which is the entire mission of Scientology. (IAS, Super Power, Idle Org and Library Campaign Registrars take note.)

Joe Howard

Comments

+3 # Mark Shreffler 2012-10-13 04:50

Perfect. Thank you, Dan, for your amazing contributions to this effort. No better man for the job!

Regards, Shreff