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Curiosity -- Procedures

After talking to Hank Levin* on Skype for a while, in an email exchange he wrote to me: 

"The 'gift' I have for auditing is really just that I'm really curious (snoopy) about people, so I ask relevant questions. Once you have that (and from training many people, I have to say it's rare), you don't really need to rely so much on procedures."  Hank Levin (email  19 Apr 2013 relayed with his permission.)
This kind of rang a bell for me.
Have you read, or heard, the early part of Dennis Stephens' talk "Early Scientology Reminiscences"? (This home page, quick URL to it: http://www.antology.info/index-8.html) Dennis talks of how there were a few people at that time (1952 and a few years on), who really could audit. His wife, for example, made a satisfactory living as a field auditor. I got my first training in 1955, and I and a number of others really could not audit we did not have the 'flair', and Ron, as I understand it, dearly wanted everyone to be a good auditor.

Now what you may not realise is that in those early days, where there were auditors who could handle most cases, very little of what we now have in Scientology was there. Few books were published. For example there are eight volumes of technical papers of Ron's going up to 1976, something like four hundred pages in each. The first volume only went to 1953. Some auditors got good results just with that small amount of "Scientology".

They did not need complex procedures.
A few years later, Ron said the following in a lecture to advanced auditors in Australia, from 1st Melbourne ACC, 26th Nov 1959

I never saw such an incurious lot of people. I'm not trying to restimulate your curiosity but I'm just saying, "Well, I never!" You're not curious enough. You just aren't.
Now, listen to me. Every case is a story. A very long story. A very complicated story with tremendous plot twists. And not one single case you will ever face is an easy case. Just get over thinking they are or that you'll someday find one or that someday by some necromancy I conduct in a laboratory some place, I will push a button, all cases will become easy cases and you simply stand off and chant at them with a small facsimile of an E-Meter in your hand, and they will all go Clear. They aren't! They aren't! That isn't the way cases are. All cases are rough cases.
Now, you as auditors shouldn't be setting any example as a rough case. But, you'll find out that every case has its doglegs, and its zigs, and its zags, and its fantastic complications.
And if you're not interested or watching, and if you don't know what those cases are, you're going to miss! And miss! And miss! And miss! And then you're going to stick yourself on the track by blaming Ron!
Now, auditing is your ability to read and straighten out a pc. How do you suppose anybody could ever fix a radio set without ever looking in the radio set? That would be pretty rough, wouldn't it?
Well, now we could get around this by training a lot of blind mice to run on a certain pattern and then never wiring a radio set up in any other way but that.
Now, minds consist basically of postulates which, of course, are also considerations and agreements, matter, energy, space, time and forms. That's what minds are. That's all they are.
And a thetan is just a thetan. And the thing he does best and worst is create—postulates, considerations, agreements, matter, energy, space, time and forms and the significance and complications thereof. Now, that's all!
But boy, the things he can do with that simple number of factors exceed anything any electronic brain will ever turn out as a number. That's for sure—the complications.

What do you think of that?
My thesis is that Ron wanted every one to be able to audit, and on a long gradient, many years, he gave us more and more procedures.
Of course it would be a good idea to ask why people, generally, are not curious. I'd suggest a reason is often that they are natively curious, but their communication is inhibited, so they are shy of asking. Perhaps handling "fear of asking", fear of being "too inquisitive" might well be looked at in the areas of aspiring auditors.
I tend to look at it this way: If an auditor has wrapped his /her brains round the basics that make up a case (rather than the countless procedures that have arisen over the years), and gets to have a preclear sitting before him/her, s/he will be naturally curious about the preclear's life (from an auditor based viewpoint), find out some apparently illogical things or pointers to such, and ask questions which spontaneously will come to mind.
The need for rote procedures will lessen.
Antony Phillips, Written 11th May 2013.
*Footnote : Hank Levin, in the USA, has developed and manufactured clearing meters of various sorts, including the PC-based Virtual Clarity Meter than can be used over the internet, and the LED-based InnerTrac that simplifies recognition of meter reads. He also trains auditors (of course outside the jurisdiction of the "Church"), and has written several books on the subject, including Clearing: A Guide for Practitioners.  His websites are http://www.clearingtech.net and http://innertrac.com.