      HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE

Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex



     HCO BULLETIN OF 26 OCTOBER 1970

               Issue III



Remimeo

Student Hat

Course Supervisors

 Hat

Auditors Hat





       OBNOSIS AND THE TONE SCALE



The following is extracted from the Advanced Clinical Course 

Preparatory Manual for Advanced Students in Scientology. It was 

published in 1957.



       OBNOSIS AND THE TONE SCALE



Somewhere in your possession, in your desk, or tucked into a 

bookcase, are two large pieces of paper. They are covered closely 

with data invaluable to an auditor. You have pored over them and 

quoted from them many, many times. They are, of course, the Chart of 

Human Evaluation and the Chart of Attitudes. The data in them is a 

large part of an auditor's stock in trade, and every auditor in the 

world is, in some degree, familiar with them.



But how about getting the data off the charts and applying it to 

life, to some real person? It's not hard to do casually, for some 

acute tone. "Joe was on a 1.5 kick last night." Sure, he turned red 

as a beet and threw a book at your head. Simple. Mary breaks into 

sobs, and grabs for the Kleenex. Couple of auditors on the scene 

exchange looks, nod sagely. "Hmm. Grief!" But how about chronic 

tone, with that thin, shiny veneer of social tone slicked over it? 

How sharp and how certain are you about that? Now, take a pc that 

you are familiar with. What, exactly, is his chronic tone? If you 

don't know, you had better read on. If you do, read on, and learn 

more about it.



The title of this article starts with an odd word: obnosis. It's 

been put together from the phrase, "observing the obvious." The art 

of observing the obvious is strenuously neglected in our society at 

this time. Pity. It's the only way you ever see anything; you 

observe the obvious. You look at the isness of something, at what is 

actually there. Fortunately for us, the ability to obnose is not in 

any sense "inborn" or mystical. But it is being taught that way by 

people outside of Scientology.



How do you teach somebody to see what is there? Well, you put up 

something for him to look at, and have him tell you what he sees. 

That is what is done in an ACC class, the earlier in the course, the 

better. A student is asked to stand up in the front of the classroom 

and be looked at by the rest of the students. An Instructor stands 

by, and keeps asking, "What do you see?" The first responses run 

about like this: "Well, I can see he's had a lot of experience." 

"Oh, can you? Can you really see his experience? What do you see 

there?" "Well, I can tell from the wrinkles around his eyes and 

mouth that he's had lots of experience." "All right, but what do you 

see?" "Oh, I get you. I see wrinkles around his eyes and mouth." 

"Good!" The Instructor accepts nothing that isn't plainly visible. A 

student starts to catch on and says, "Well, I can really see he's 

got ears." "All right, but from where you're sitting can you see 

both ears right now as you're looking at him?" "Well, no." "Okay. 

What do you see?" "I see he's got a left ear." "Fine!" No 

conjectures, no tacit assumptions will do. Nor are the students 

permitted to wander in the bank. For example, "He's got good 

posture." "Good posture by comparison with what?" "Well, he's 

standing straighter than most people I've seen." "Are they here 

now?" "Well, no, but I've got pictures of them." "Come on. Good 

posture in relation to what, that you can see right now." "Well, 

he's standing straighter than you are. You're a little slouched." 

"Right this minute?" "Yes." "Very good." You see what the goal of 

this is? It is to get a student to the point where he can look at 

another person, or an object, and see exactly what is there. Not a 

deduction of what might be there from what he does see there. Not 

something the bank says ought to go in company with what is there. 

Just what is there, visible and plain to the eye. It's so simple, it 

hurts.



Along with this practice in observing the obvious about people, the 

students receive a lot of information about particular physical and 

verbal indications of tone level. Things very easy to see and hear, 

by looking at a person's body and listening to his words. "Thetan-

watching" has no part in obnosis. Look at the terminal, the body, 

and listen to what's coming out of it. You don't want to get 

mystical about this and start relying on "Intuition." Just look at 

what's there.



As examples: You can get a good tip on chronic tone from what a 

person does with his eyes. At apathy, he will give the appearance of 

looking fixedly, for minutes on end, at a particular object. Only 

thing is, he doesn't see it. He isn't aware of the object at all. If 

you dropped a bag over his head, the focus of his eyes would 

probably remain the same. Moving up to grief, the person does look 

"downcast." A person in chronic grief tends to focus his eyes down 

in the direction of the floor a good bit. In the lower ranges of 

grief, his attention will be fairly fixed, as in apathy. As he 

starts moving up into the fear band, you get the focus shifting 

around, but still directed downward. At fear itself, the very 

obvious characteristic is that the person can't look at you. 

Terminals are too dangerous to look at. He's supposedly talking to 

you, but he's looking over in left field. Then he glances at your 

feet briefly, then over your head (you get the impression a plane's 

passing over), but now he's looking back over his shoulder. Flick, 

flick, flick. In short, he'll look anywhere but at you. Then, in the 

lower band of anger, he will look away from you, deliberately. You 

know, he looks away from you; it's an overt communication break. A 

little further up the line and he'll look directly at you all right, 

but not very pleasantly. He wants to locate you -- as a target.

Then, at boredom, you get the eyes wandering around again, but not 

frantically as in fear. Also, he won't be avoiding looking at you. 

He'll include you among the things he looks at.



Equipped with data of this sort, and having gained some proficiency 

in looking at the isness of people, the ACC students are sent out 

into the public to talk to strangers and to spot them on the tone 

scale. Usually, but only as a slight crutch in approaching people, 

they are given a series of questions to ask each person, and a 

clipboard for jotting down the answers, notes, etc. They are public-

opinion poll-takers from the Hubbard Research Foundation. The real 

purpose of their talking to people at all is to spot them on the 

tone scale, chronic tone and social tone. They are given questions 

calculated to produce lags and break through social machinery, so 

that the chronic tone juts out. Here are some sample questions, 

actually used: "What's the most obvious thing about me?" "When was 

the last time you had your hair cut?" "Do you think people do as 

much work now as they did fifty years ago?" At first, the students 

merely spot the tone of the person they are interviewing -- and many 

and various are the adventures they have while doing this! Later, as 

they gain some assurance about stopping strangers and plying them 

with questions, these instructions are added: "Interview at least 

fifteen people. With the first five, match their tone, as soon as 

you've spotted it. The next five, you drop below their chronic tone, 

and see what happens. For the last five, put on a higher tone than 

theirs."



What does an ACC student gain from these exercises? A willingness to 

communicate with anyone, for one thing. To begin with, students are 

highly selective about the sort of people they stop. Only old 

ladies. No one who looks angry. Or only people who look clean. 

Finally, they just stop the next person who comes along, even though 

he looks leprous and armed to the teeth. Confrontingness has come 

way up, and he's just somebody else to talk to. They become willing 

to pinpoint a person on the scale, without shilly-shallying. They 

say, "He's a chronic 1. 1. Social tone 3.5, but real phony." That's 

the way it is, and they can see it. They also become quite gifted 

and flexible at assuming tones at will, and putting them across 

convincingly. Very useful in many situations, and lots of fun to do. 

They grow adept at punching through a comm lag in an informal 

situation. At sorting out apparencies from realities. The rise in 

certainty of communication, and in ease and relaxation of manner 

while handling people, in the students who have been run through 

this mill, is something which must be seen or experienced to be 

believed. The one most often repeated request in every ACC Unit is 

"Can't we please have some more obnosis this week? We haven't had 

enough of it yet." (This statement is very funny to the ACC 

Instructors because these same students said at the beginning, "If 

you make me go out there, I'll walk out on the course.") Obnosis is 

quite important, and should be learned as thoroughly as possible by 

all Scientologists.





L. RON HUBBARD

Founder



LRH:nt.dr.gm



