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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which is available to all those who subscribe to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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Rudimentary, my dear Watson
By Phil Spickler
11 Apr 1999

Dear Anyone,

Just before I started this, my life flashed before my eyes.  After 
some minutes, the nausea passed, and so now I can proceed.

Sherlock Holmes might have said, "Rudimentary, my dear Watson," just 
as well as his use of "elementary," since according to several 
thousand dictionaries that I checked through, they both pretty much 
mean "first  principles", "fundamentals", "what should be there at 
the beginning", and as  those of us who have risen to that state of 
immortality and breathe the heady  air that goes with it, namely that 
of auditor, the rudiments became a pretty  good thing to take a look 
at and "get in", so to speak, before going on in an  auditing session 
to those things known as "the major action".

It seems verifiably true that if you try to do things when someone is 
upset, out of sorts, ARC broken if you will, whatever it is you are 
going to do in life or in auditing has a pretty good chance of not 
going very well.   And of course if a chap is sitting in the middle 
of a problem, usually not much change will take place.  And if 
someone has things like overts or withholds or missed withholds in 
some form of restimulation, whether you're around such a person in 
life or you're trying to audit him in a session, you probably won't 
get too very far unless you address these matters.  Thus it's easy to 
see why case supervisors in past eras would write things to the 
auditor that would start with "Fly three" -- that meant  "Bring to 
F/N, VGI's, the aforementioned three rudiments," and then get on with 
something like Grade 4 or whatever action had been dreamed up to help 
this pc to a better state of beingness.

One of the definitions of theta was that it consists of or is made up 
of that which we call ARC, which means that a person or a thetan, if 
there is such a thing, really IS the living embodiment of 
understanding -- in fact, if you want to feel good some morning, 
stand in front of the mirror, if you can bear to do it, and look deep 
into your beautiful pools of mind-essence, your eyes, and simply say 
a few times, just to get the morning off to a good start, "I AM 
UNDERSTANDING".  You could also say "WE are understanding," and that 
will make others happy too.  But since in order for the game of Life 
to be we can't all run around being total understanding, because 
axiomatically speaking that would be the end of everything, therefore 
it would be possible to conclude, if you were playful with logic, 
that Life itself is a bit of an ARC break.  And given the alacrity, 
which is to say the speed, with which thetans or human beings fall 
into ARC breaks, one might say that it's at least a good argument for 
that which I've been talking about.

Now you could say that there are other rudiments besides the Big 
Three, and are so called because they are considered to be 
fundamental to the nature of theta (which is pronounced theeta in 
England, although it's spelled exactly the same way).  For example, 
when theeta feels that its power of locating itself has been 
infringed upon, which is to say it has considerations concerning 
interiorization and exteriorization which lead it to believe that one 
of its fundamental freedoms has been tampered with, we find that 
theta or thetans get pretty bent out of shape and manifest 
superheterodyne types of ARC breaks.  To a slightly lesser but 
awesome degree, folks who have unwittingly become the recipients of 
wrong items and wrong indications that have not gotten cleaned up can 
certainly manifest pretty gigantic out rudiments.

Anyone that's ever had a good Life Repair and has experienced the joy 
of having a lot of their rudiments really in, perhaps for the first 
time in ages, would have said at such a time, "This is pretty 
ecstatic, and I'd like to feel this way all the time."  This, 
however, is usually overheard by the gods of existence, who have 
decreed long before this fellow got to feeling ecstatic that where 
there is ARC there will be ARC breaks.  And that's the way it is, or 
at least the way it seems to be.  The neat thing is, when and if you 
get a good manual to the care and feeding of thetans manifesting in 
or out of bodies, and you learn how to handle the rudiments when they 
do go out  (and they will go out), you're certainly able to keep a 
happy smile on your  own and the faces of others enough of the time 
to make life a pretty pleasant  proposition, even if it is based on 
one big giant misunderstanding.

It is possible, of course, under the heading called "Necessity 
Level," to operate quite effectively in the face of out rudiments, 
either your own or others'.  There is sometimes, even in the heat of 
the game or the joy of the battle, a certain degree of ruthless 
motivation that helps when lightning bolts are flying, at a time when 
if all your rudiments were really in you might be inclined to just 
laugh the whole thing off, and that might not be successful.  In 
keeping with the notion of moderation in all things, which may be a 
good idea, I don't really think one should strive to have their 
rudiments in all the time, 'cause then you miss all the fun of fixing 
them up again -- and sometimes in fixing them up, you find out things 
you hadn't known before and get even bigger cognitions and floating 
needles never before dreamed of!  If you've ever experienced a 
lovers' quarrel in which you had the good fortune to really get it 
straightened out with your sweetheart, it has to be (and I'm sure 
you'll agree) one of the most lovely experiences possible.

One of the things possibly wrong with having been a professional or 
unprofessional auditor for so many years was that I got into the 
position that long-term automobile mechanics get into, which is to 
say, they can't stand to be around an automobile that isn't running 
well because they feel like they have to do something to make it run 
the way it should run.  So for a long time I found myself obsessively 
and compulsively facing powerful urges, whenever I heard people 
manifesting out rudiments, to do something about it.   Every so often 
I even interrupt the IVy list, which to my way of thinking sometimes 
resembles a search engine to help former Scientologists find 
opponents, and by use of the Internet attempt to commit violence upon 
the realities and persons of others.  In the past, having suffered 
from an overzealous Qual personality, I have endeavored to intervene 
overtly or covertly, an obvious indicator that I'm still having 
problems on the third flow when it comes to certain situations.  But 
I am getting better at it, and more willing to tolerate originations 
on this wonderful list which sometimes sound like they are based on 
one or more out rudiments, or they are inspired by intense 
disturbances in the area of Grade 4 or Service Facsimiles, in which 
without embarrassment we have certain folks who originate with the 
obvious intention of making themselves right and someone else wrong. 
Given the lofty and philosophic nature and intentions of IVy the 
magazine, I surely imagined that this would be carried to the IVy 
list, and that no one would want to make themselves look so unhandled 
as to openly and outrageously dramatize one or more Service 
Facsimiles in the direction of people who should be their beloved, if 
somewhat disembodied, buddies.

I had noticed, some years ago, that folks who were solo auditing a 
lot might show up at places like the AO in Los Angeles or at ASHO in 
Los Angeles or at my humble and tiny mission in Palo Alto, 
California, and check themselves into Qual, where it would be 
discovered that they were having trouble as solo auditors keeping the 
ruds flowing or the rudiments in on whoever they called themselves 
while they were in the midst of solo auditing, as well as those other 
things that go "Beep" in the night that we're not supposed to 
evaluate for by labeling, however . . .  But once they got into 
session where they could really get some distance, with another 
embodied auditor in the space, they could pretty quickly get the 
rudiments in wherever they were needed to get in, and cheerfully and 
enthusiastically get back to the business of freely helping others to 
a greater freedom.

Thanks to any and all who have listened to this ramble -- I fear 
there's more to come on this line, but my electron counter is almost 
pointing to empty, and so I say "Au revoir" to all of the 
Understanding that is out there, and here, and everywhere.

Best regards,
Phil