6409C29 SHSpec-41 Gradients

     Gradients are vital in all areas of scientology -- and life.  "Gradient"
is a concept that has bypassed many scientologists, as evidenced by the
difficulty that some of them have in pulling withholds.  If you knew gradients
well, you would never have trouble with auditing PCs.  What you are really
having trouble with isn't what you appear to be having trouble with.  The same
applies to a PC or a student.  If you are not getting case gain on a PC, it
could be a mistake in the gradient.  You can't get someone over a trouble that he isn't having.  So if you process his problem and he doesn't get better, you have him over his head on what he can confront and handle.  What he complains of may not be the real problem at all.  Some processes, like, "What could you confront?", handle this automatically.  This doesn't mean that you don't have to follow a gradient in your address to the case.  You should plan it on a gradient.  Processes are all designed with the idea of starting with a little and moving up to a lot.  The classification program is designed the same way.  As the auditor moves up in class, he can handle more difficult PCs and more of the PC's case.

     You can handle just about anything by tackling the first fundamental
thing first and taking on more and more, bit by bit.  In lots of research,
people have never gone to the fundamentals.  They have never asked what they
were looking for or where to approach it, or observed some obvious basics.
For instance, you can examine sound (a gross vibration) with light (a fine
vibration), but you can't examine light with sound.  You can't look at it with
anything but itself.  The only thing that can look at color (light waves) is
you.  (The "color wheel" can't be a circle.  The same color appearing at the
other end of the spectrum must be a matter of harmonics.)  This gets into
"taste".  You are the only "thing" that can evaluate color harmonics.

     When you don't know about gradients, you try to build a castle on top of
a palace on top of a condition that you call the PC's case, without going to
the fundamentals, knowing what you are looking for or where to approach it, or
observing some obvious basics.  This happens because you never walked up the
gradient and never saw the fundamentals of th PC's case.  You only wind up
with a notion of the fantastic complexities of existence.  If one's
observations are nonsense, then one's solutions will be nonsense.  And if you
keep trying to observe the totality of the case without observing one little
thing about it, you will never find the gradient that leads to observation of
the case.  Approach a case with the question, "What is he doing that I can
understand?" You won't be able to remedy the case unless you can find one
thing to handle at a time, on the case.  To remedy a case, find one thing you
can understand about the case and fix it.  Then find another.  As this
proceeds, the case will become simpler.  Don't try to grasp or handle the
whole damned case in two days.

     The PC is always at the top of a self-created gradient of complexity that
he hasn't climbed, and he tries to get the auditor there, too.  So you get
suckered in on it and try to solve the whole case overnight.  Thus you get a
lose.

     Now, take overts:  You ask the PC if he has ever committed a crime that
could send him to jail if it were discovered.  That is flying to the top of
the building, jumping the gradient, and making the auditor feel as though he
can't pull overts.  No.  You pull overts on a gradient.  What gradient would
work?  First you have to take into consideration the fact that you are pulling
the PC's overts on a comm line, which may be pretty tenuous to start with.
The comm line must be sturdy enough to hold the level of charge, or overt,
that we want to have come over on it.  First build up the comm line.  Then
start getting some little overts that come across easily, leading to bigger
and bigger overts, always pulling overts of a magnitude that the PC can
confront.  There are two gradients:

     1.  The PC's willingness to talk to the auditor.

     2.  The level of overt that he is willing to tell.

There are degrees of willingness to talk to the auditor.  You can't expect a
PC who is unwilling to talk to you to tell you some big overt.  Once you have
the comm line in, the PC will be able to tell you as much as he himself can
confront, which will increase, the more he tells you.

     People can generally confront thought more easily than they can confront
masses or things.  So on the PE course, stick to definitions, of things like
"life" or "body", not necessarily even definitions of scientology terms.  You
can blow tons of charge with nothing but definitions.  Don't get into heavy
bank stuff.  Use a light gradient.  Definitions about thoughts are easier for
people to grasp than definitions of masses.  If someone can't see the data
that you are giving him, he can't apply it, and he flies up to the top floor
of the building, adds complexities to the data, and then considers that it is
complex and that there is no fundamental there.  So he invents a bunch of
nonsense with regard to it, misses it entirely, and never gets any result with
it.  So be careful about gradients in training.  The student has to be able to
see and apply what you are talking about.

     What you want to watch for in a PC is glibness, unreal answers, and no
comm lag.  Trying to find a gradient to enter in on with that fellow is
fantastic, because he is already stuck in the top floor, but unreal.  The
gradient had better be a low, slow approach.  You have to find something about
the case that you can grasp, then go ahead.  The time to start looking for
something in the case that you can grasp is when the case gets into some
difficulty, some lack of advance.  Undercut the case on the basis of ability.
If you undercut on the basis of sanity, you may insult the PC.  Find out what
the PC can really do and get him to do it better.  When a PC doesn't advance,
find a lower gradient.  Find something about the PC that you can grasp.

     The next time you feel queasy about pulling a PC's overts, look the
situation over.  Do you have a comm line there to pull the overts on?  When
you do, the next stage is "What could the guy himself confront?" Approach the
PC gradiently with questions like, "What have you done?" and "Why wasn't that
an overt?" You have to keep the comm line in while pulling the overts, by
pulling them gradiently.  You can [err by] asking the PC for more overt than
he himself can confront having done.  As long as you are asking for overts he
can confront, the comm line will stay in and your manner won't even matter.
Asking for things that he can't confront only restimulates him.  It is not a
matter of politeness.

     When we pick up points, in the gradient of living, that the person has
bypassed and gotten stuck on and get him to understand them, we call this
clearing.  At those points, the PC had wrong answers or omissions.  When those
are cleared up, he can confront and live life easily.  Don't be so dedicated
to the gradient that you fail to observe when someone climbs it very fast, as
can happen.

     A complicating factor that hasn't been recognized is people's prior
education or knowledge of some area or activity.  This is generally explained
as "natural talent" or a "knack".

     You can get mistaken ideas about the difficulty of auditing or about your
ability to audit, when the real problem is only that of approaching the case
on the right gradient.  It is trebly important to train students on the right
gradient, so that people can win at it and know that they can do it and keep
on doing it.

