More About 5th American ACC

Your first task is to find the preclear’s mind. If you want to make his postulates effective upon him, you certainly had better get him in a condition whereby he is in the universe where his postulates are effective. —L. Ron Hubbard

With the successful completion of the first four Advanced Clinical Courses, wins were pouring in from the field in an ever-widening stream. A partially deaf preclear regained his hearing after just a few auditing commands. A woman unable to walk from a severely injured foot, with a doctor predicting a six-week recovery, instead sought out an auditor and two days later strode forth for a new hairdo. Then there was the store manageress incapacitated by migraine, chills, fever and a host of other ailments, about to shut up shop when a customer arrived. Forty minutes later, she had reopened and was on the phone lining up business—it just so happened her customer was an ACC graduate.

So when, on March 29, 1954, L. Ron Hubbard arrived at 616 North 3rd Street, Phoenix, to begin delivery of the 5th American Advanced Clinical Course, a select group of auditors waited in anticipation. Their expectations would soon be fully realized. Because if each previous ACC had been marked with yet another milestone advance—exteriorization, livingness, beingness—what was about to unfold was every bit as significant. Specifically, the subject of Universes.

And while Mr. Hubbard’s definition of a universe as “a whole system of created things” was very much on point, he had now crossed the threshold of a new breakthrough, developing and codifying auditing techniques that addressed the preclear’s ability to directly observe all three universes—their own, the other fellow’s, and the physical universe. As he put it:

“A continual fixation and dependence upon only one universe, while ignoring the other two universes, leads to darkness, to despair, to nothingness. There is nothing wrong with the physical universe. One should not cease to observe the physical universe, but one certainly should not concentrate upon it so that he can ‘agree’ with it and its laws only. He has laws of his own. It is better, far better for the individual to concentrate upon his own universe, than to concentrate upon the mest universe. But this, in itself, is not the final answer. A balance is achieved in the three universes and certainty upon those universes.”

As those auditors on the 5th ACC soon discovered, what L. Ron Hubbard was imparting to them represented a major breakthrough in their ability to crack cases. For as he revealed, the creator of a universe is the “god” of that universe, and one who enters another’s universe is subject to its postulates and laws. And that is exactly where most of their preclears were to be found—in the universes of others.

Thus, Mr. Hubbard instructed auditors in an arsenal of techniques whereby preclears could not only regain dominion in their own universe, but win the breadth of understanding and breadth of awareness that comes from certainty on all three universes:

• Advanced Course Procedure—a set of processes tailored to accomplish a primary goal in auditing—getting the preclear to change his mind;
• Standard Operating Procedure 8-D (SOP 8-D)—including a technique to separate interwoven and intertwined universes;
• Viewpoint Straightwire and Be, Do, Have Straightwire—processes to enable a preclear to tolerate any and all viewpoints, in any universe.

Notwithstanding the advanced nature of these procedures, L. Ron Hubbard stressed the fundamentals required to ensure their effectiveness, with lectures that described:

• Basic Definitions of Scientology—complete descriptions of time, space, engrams, facsimiles and the static;
• Auditor Presence—the beingness of an auditor and how to acquire it;
• Self Analysis—an entire lecture, “Evolution and Use of Self Analysis,” on how to audit the processes in the book, as well as the role of the next-to-last list to unfreeze a consistently stuck needle;
• Make and Break of a Case—how to ensure that the auditor’s commands carry more weight than the commands of the pc’s engrams;
• Space—when auditing an arduous case that refuses to get well, the pc’s space has to be solved before his postulates can be addressed.

With the spectacular results from these technical advances, expansion—so as to bring it to others—became a key priority. Thus, despite his rigorous lecture schedule and the white-hot pace of research, Mr. Hubbard drove dissemination into a high roar, with books distributed by the thousands, field activities springing up from Auckland to Boston and word of mouth increasing by the day from the countless stories of lives changed for the better.

And if that was the word on the organizational front, he was also going directly to the broad public. For despite the intensive schedule, and in between lectures, it was during the 5th ACC that Mr. Hubbard delivered a series of 15-minute radio broadcasts on the fundamentals of Scientology. Case in point: his perennial classic, “Is It Possible to Be Happy?” originally aired as one of that memorable series of talks. Today it appears as the first chapter of Scientology: A New Slant on Life—a testament to the enduring effects of L. Ron Hubbard’s technical developments in setting the future course of dissemination.