HCOB: Meter Reading

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex
HCO BULLETIN OF 23 NOVEMBER 1961¹

Franchise

METER READING

A survey of auditing has brought up the datum that the gross auditing error in failure to obtain results from Security Checking and Problems Intensives lies wholly in the inability to read an E-Meter.

You may some day get a huge reality on the fact that, in supervising auditing, all failures are gross auditing errors, not fluky case differences.

Auditors one is supervising often demand “an extraordinary solution” because such and such a case isn’t moving. The unwise supervisor will actually furnish “extraordinary solution” after “extraordinary solution” “to handle this different case”. It may be John Jones who “cannot think of any changes in his  life” or it may be Mary Smith who “just doesn’t respond to Security Checking”. And the supervisor burns the midnight oil and gives the auditor some new involved solution. Then as often as not, the auditor comes back the day after and says, “That didn’t work either.” And the supervisor goes a quarter around the bend and again burns the midnight oil …. If this seems familiar to you as a supervisor, know you should have asked, “What didn’t work?” Usually the auditor can’t even recall the solution—it was never used. Or it was applied in some strange fashion.

For today, the reasons for failure all lie under the heading “Gross Auditing Error”.

Such an error would be, the auditor never arrived for the session, the E-Meter was broken throughout, the pc hadn’t eaten or slept for three days, the din from construction next door made it impossible to give commands or hear answers. The auditor didn’t run any known process. That is the order of magnitude of a “GROSS AUDITING ERROR”. It is never, the pc was unhappy, the pc has difficulty remembering, etc. In supervising auditing, always look for the gross auditing error and never give out with an extraordinary solution.

Well, taking my own advice, when I saw some tricky elements in new clearing processes taking far too much time, I didn’t look for “different” pcs, I looked for the gross auditing error. And found it.

The auditors who were having trouble couldn’t read an E-Meter.

Impossible as that may seem, it proved to be true. I put Mary Sue on this at once and Herbie Parkhouse carried through. The errors found in E-Meter reading where there had been trouble, were so huge as to have been missed on any casual inspection.

The errors went like this:

1. The auditor believed the E-Meter could not be read while the needle was swinging around. The auditor was waiting until it stopped every time before asking a question.

2. The auditor believed the needle had to be exactly at “set” on the dial before it could be read.

3. The auditor did not know a rising needle could be read by stopping the rise with a question or making the needle twitch.

4. The auditor had not done the body reaction drills in E-Meter Essentials and was reading only body reactions and ignoring all others.

5. The auditor thought an E-Meter could not be read if it showed breathing or heart beat.

6. The auditor always looked at the pc for a few seconds after asking the question, then looked at the meter, and so missed all but latent (nonsignificant) reads.

7. The auditor sat staring at the meter for twenty seconds after the reading had registered.

8. The auditor thought E-Meters could be fooled so easily, it was more reliable to make up his own mind about what the pc’s item or guilt was.

9. An auditor thought that if the needle rose on a rudiment question, the rudiment was out.

These and many, many more panned out to be:

IF A SECURITY CHECK OR PROBLEMS INTENSIVE WAS PRODUCING NO RESULTS, IT WAS BECAUSE THE AUDITOR COULD NOT READ AN E-METER.

That’s the gross auditing error.

In this bulletin, I am not trying to give you any methods to remedy this. I am just calling it widely to everyone’s attention.

The fact is big enough to merit study by itself.

And to get cases started by no other mechanism than learning to really read an E-Meter or by teaching people to read it.

This one point remedied could change the entire future of Scientology, an organization or an auditor.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder

Hubbard, L. R. (1961, 23 November). Meter Reading. The Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology (1991 ed., Vol. VI, pp. 365-366). Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, Inc.

Notes