Rehabilitating Power of Choice: Six Levels of Processing

"With Six Levels of Processing is introduced a method of auditing and a new auditing atmosphere which articulates the attitude best calculated to maintain continuing stable gain in a case." —L. Ron Hubbard

Mr. Hubbard’s return to England in late 1955 not only presaged an intensive period of research and auditor training, it confirmed and reinforced London as a city with a unique status in the history of Scientology. For it was here that L. Ron Hubbard had first defined the human spirit as an immortal being possessed of capabilities beyond anything previously predicted and so arrived at the axiomatic truths upon which all subsequent research and, indeed, the whole of Scientology was founded.

In fact, not only Scientologists but the general public were eagerly awaiting his first visit to their shores in almost three years, and his public lectures—delivered at the Lindsey Theatre, London—rapidly sold out. Point of fact: When he started to speak, it was standing room only, with the overflow crowding the aisles.

Yet, Mr. Hubbard’s purpose in coming to England embraced not only his intention to consolidate Scientology organizationally to service a rapidly growing field, but to train British auditors to a high level of proficiency. Thus—the 4th London Advanced Clinical Course. For it was on the 4th London ACC that L. Ron Hubbard released a pivotal advance emerging from his further research into Six Basic Processes—specifically, Six Levels of Processing. Pivotal, that is, in terms of what it meant for auditors, for Six Levels of Processing reached even more cases and at a greater level of undercut:

“Because we’re doing the same things that we’re doing with the Six Basic Steps except we’re just doing it a lot better, that’s all.

“Now, we haven’t changed things too much. But we’re trying to more clearly understand and we’re trying to progress cases faster.”

In fact, so vital was this technology that Mr. Hubbard decided to make it available to all auditors—even those whose schedules would not permit them to attend a six-week ACC. Thus the London Hubbard Professional Course, which he convened on 8 November 1955 at the London organization’s new headquarters in Brunswick House. What those auditors would receive was an intensive study in the application of Six Levels of Processing over the next three days.

First, however, Mr. Hubbard wanted to make sure that auditors were actually auditing. Thus, he instructed them on finding a pc and opening a session. If the point seemed obvious, it most certainly was not:

“How do we find a pc? One time we asked a lady for five hours what she was doing before she finally gave us a straight answer: ‘I’m being audited.’

“Up to that time she was doing anything else. She was trying to review her past, she was trying to find out why her husband jilted her. She was trying to find out this and she gave these fantastic answers as to what she was doing right there in that chair. What she was doing in the chair was being audited and it took her five hours to find it out.”

Hence— Rudiments, a fundamental development that L. Ron Hubbard made the subject of the first lecture of the course. Then, with Rudiments decisively in, he devoted the remaining lectures to detailed instruction on all aspects of the Six Levels, always stressing the goal to rehabilitate the preclear’s Power of Choice and his ability to make decisions:

• First Dynamic —why it is the easiest entrance point to the remaining dynamics;
• Restimulation —what the mechanism is, and how it is remedied in Decisional Processing;
• The Four Tolerances —what they are, and how raising someone’s power of choice raises his tolerance;
• Thought —every time an individual thinks a thought he punches holes in mest ;
• Duplication —“It mustn’t happen again” means no duplication and so no communication, as well as the resolution of this in auditing;
• Communication —the pay of life and the first fundamental consideration in any game;
• Exteriorization —the relationship of the Sixth Level to Route 1 of The Creation of Human Ability and how it is entirely a process for an exteriorized thetan;
• “Waterloo Station” —named after the famous London railway station whose continuous bustling crowds made it an ideal environment for that type of objective process—and how it is flat when the preclear is able to not-know at will.

All of which made Six Levels of Processing, Mr. Hubbard declared, “as hot as a Spanish pistol” and the Hubbard Professional Course lectures a must for auditors. In fact, the technology was of such broad importance that he exported the tapes to Academies across the planet, while his delivery of the London HPC was to inspire two more Professional Course lectures in the coming months.

And, as evidence that the name of L. Ron Hubbard was on the lips of virtually every Briton, it was during this time that a famous national British newspaper approached with a request for an exclusive interview. The result—an article profiling Mr. Hubbard as a “frontiersman” and “pioneer” whose boyhood years had included talks with holy men and mystics in the East and whose findings and teachings represented “a formidable combination.” Described by Mr. Hubbard himself as “a very long and friendly story,” the article informed readers that Scientology “shows you the ability, the executive material, the earning power and the potential for happiness that have been there all the time—submerged.”

Yet of far greater importance was what L. Ron Hubbard accomplished in terms of arming British auditors with the data and skills to resolve any and all types of cases and thus ultimately to free beings. And in that regard, all he did during those months in England was crowned with success. For as Ron wrote to the editor of Ability magazine in Washington, DC:

“We sweepingly made these people into fine auditors. Great Britain is now richer to that degree.”