Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1953, 7 April
Document title: Exteriorization - Demonstration and Explanation
Document type: lecture transcript
Event: London Spring Lectures
Location: London
Document ID: SPRL-15
Description: Hubbard advises on how to conduct public auditing demonstrations, including on the type of case to pick; say's it's the banalities that go over (with the audience.)
In regard to, by the way, stage demonstrations, I possibly ought to say just a phrase or two here about it. It is not an optimum proceeding. It is not something, for instance, which you ought to attempt before a couple of hundred or thirty or three thousand people, unless, unless you use great caution in picking up your preclear.
And if you’re going to demonstrate-if you’re going to demonstrate before three thousand or thirty thousand people, you look around and find yourself a screamer. You find somebody who is completely mad, and you run them into an engram. And then you open them up to high C and blow the heads off of people in the back of the hall, and then they know that Dianetics or Scientology work. Then you have the screamer wheeled off the stage and audited so that they return to present time vaguely.
Otherwise, you give a perfectly good, smooth demonstration on a stage before a large number of people and they’re utterly unimpressed, completely unimpressed. It just makes no difference to them at all.
I audited a girl one time who had been completely mute and dull in the hands of three of the leading psychiatrists-pardon me-four of the leading psychiatrists of Oakland, California. And they were so convinced that all of this was charlatanism or something of the sort, that they gave me a ringer. They gave me this girl that they knew nobody could get a yeep out of. Well, this girl had never seen her father and mother, so I got her picked out of the crowd, threw her back into early childhood and turned her up to high C, and I swear they could hear it two blocks away from the Civic Auditorium, see? The hall was packed the next night; it was a series of lectures. But these people went away citizens. Actually, the auditing was not-was not bad, the auditing was just at a level to interest people.
Are they there to be instructed? No! They’re there to see Christians eaten in the arena. And if you want to do that kind of auditing for lots of people, why, rig it up so that you have somebody who is very bombastic or something of the sort. Be very careful of picking somebody who-who wants to give a show. They just ruin your demonstration because they answer you with a lot of smart cracks or something of the sort. Wise guys or something like that; you be very careful on it.
Otherwise, otherwise don’t give demonstrations. A party of people, for instance, gather around. They want to find out how this works and they want you to do this and they want you to do that. Well, you have techniques which are lead-pipe cinches. But don’t pull such techniques as-that you’ve seen me demonstrating here today. If you want to demonstrate on a crowd of people, you get yourself the smart ones. That is to say, take the person who has been ridiculing you, you see, or something like that, who is really egging things on, and do something to him. With what? Well, anything as mild as ARC Straightwire. You can very easily and very quickly estimate a preclear and with some ARC Straightwire, right in present time, why, you can generally do some interesting things to people like this. But you don’t want much of a show. Don’t try to get very technical about this subject and really don’t try to explain it to people.
Now that’s a big problem. Talk about-talk about what it does very widely, or something of the sort or talk about what it does for children or talk about something interesting in connection with what could happen if the dictators of the world got audited or something of the sort. But just this business of trying to explain the whole subject to them in five minutes as a professional; nobody expects a doctor to tell them how to do a transorbital leukotomy (which I think all medicine knows how to do on this subject). Nobody expects a doctor to tell them how to do this in twelve easy lessons. But you can tell them how a doctor does this; you go and get the books on it and find out how you do a transorbital leukotomy and it makes very interesting material.
But people conversationally, generally want the spectacular and want blood. And as much as you think people want reason and people want to know, it’s not true. If you go into the greatest philosophic tomes in the library and break ‘them out, you will open them up and you will find there carefully marked where the philosopher has said what this person wanted him to say. These people wanted to be agreed with, and so the philosopher is picked on. So you see these heavy underscorings. And here’s Hegel or somebody like that, you know, and he goes on sonorously and synonymously and erroneously in all directions for page after page, they’re saying very, very wise things, and all that sort of thing. And when you finally come down to a simple phrase (I don’t even think Hegel said this, but) “God is good.” And we find somebody has taken a crayon, see, and they’ve underscored this and put big checks out here in the margin.
Or “Some men are wicked.” You know, I mean, this is the kind of stuff. So it’s the banality that goes over.
Hubbard, L. R. (1953, 7 April). Exteriorization – Demonstration and Explanation. London Spring Lectures, (SPRL-15). Lecture conducted from London, UK.