L. RON HUBBARD DIANETIC The Modern Science of Mental Health PUBLICATIONS, INC. Important Note In reading this book, be very certain you never go past a word you do not fully understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood. The confusion or inability to grasp or learn comes AFTER a word that the person did not have defined and understood. Have you ever had the experience of coming to the end of a page and realizing you didn't know what you had read? Well, somewhere earlier on that page you went past a word that you had no definition for or an incorrect definition for. Here's an example. "It was found that when the crepuscule arrived the children were quieter and when it was not present, they were much livelier." You see what happens. You think you don't understand the whole idea, but the inability to understand came entirely from the one word you could not define, crepuscule, which means twilight or darkness. It may not only be the new and unusual words that you will have to look up. Some commonly used words can often be misdefined and so cause confusion. This datum about not going past an undefined word is the most important fact in the whole subject of study. Every subject you have taken up and abandoned had its words which you failed to get defined. Therefore, in studying this book be very, very certain you never go past a word you do not fully understand. If the material becomes confusing or you can't seem to grasp it, there will be a word just earlier that you have not understood. Don't go any further, but go back to BEFORE you got into trouble, find the misunderstood word and get it defined. Definitions As an aid to the reader, words most likely to be misunderstood have been defined in footnotes the first time they occur in the text. Words sometimes have several meanings. The footnote definitions in this book only give the meaning that the word has as it is used in the text. Other definitions for the word can be found in a dictionary. A glossary including all the footnote definitions is at the back of this book. Contents How to Read This Book 1 Book One: The Goal of Man Chapter One The Scope of Dianetics 9 Chapter Two The Clear 16 Chapter Three The Goal of Man 31 Chapter Four The Four Dynamics 51 Chapter Five Summary 57 Book Two: The Single Source of All Inorganic Mental and Organic Psychosomatic Ills Chapter One The Analytical Mind and the Standard Memory Banks 65 Chapter Two The Reactive Mind 73 Chapter Three The Cell and the Organism 101 Chapter Four The "Demons" 120 Chapter Five Psychosomatic Illness 131 Chapter Six Emotion and the Dynamics 158 Chapter Seven Prenatal Experience and Birth 176 Chapter Eight Contagion of Aberration 193 Chapter Nine Keying In the Engram 203 Chapter Ten Preventive Dianetics 219 Book Three: Therapy Chapter One The Mind's Protection 235 Chapter Two Release or Clear 242 Chapter Three The Auditor's Role 247 Chapter Four Diagnosis 255 Chapter Five Returning, the File Clerk and the Time Track 276 Chapter Six The Laws of Returning 293 Chapter Seven Emotion and the Life Force 319 Chapter Eight Some Types of Engrams 367 Chapter Nine Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy-Part 1 386 Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy-Part 2 439 Chapter Ten Dianetics-Past and Future 553 Appendix: Dianetics: The Bridge to Clear 568 About the Author 581 For More Information Glossary Index Bibliography 587 599 640 659 xi How to Read This Book Dianetics is an adventure. It is an exploration into terra incognita,1 the human mind, that vast and hitherto unknown realm half an inch back of our foreheads. The discoveries and developments which made the formulation of Dianetics possible occupied many years of exact research and careful testing. This was exploration, it was also consolidation. The trail is blazed, the routes are sufficiently mapped for you to voyage in safety into your own mind and recover there your full inherent potential, which is not, we now know, low but very, very high. As you progress in therapy, the adventure is yours to know why you did what you did when you did it, to know what caused those dark and unknown fears which came in nightmares as a child, to know where your moments of pain and pleasure lay. There is much which an individual does not know about himself, about his parents, about his "motives." Some of the things you will find may astonish you, for the most important data of your life may be not memory but engrams2 in the 1. terra incognita: an unknown land; a region or subject of which nothing is known. 2. engrain: a mental image picture which is a recording of an experience containing pain, unconsciousness, and a real or fancied threat to survival. It is a recording in the reactive mind of something which actually happened to an individual in the past and which contained pain and unconsciousness, both of which are recorded in the mental image picture called an engram. It must, by definition, have impact or injury as part of its content. These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full unconsciousness. L. RON HUBBARD hidden depths of your mind, not articulate3 but only destructive. You will find many reasons why you "cannot get well" and you will know at length, when you find the dictating lines in the engrams, how amusing those reasons are, especially to you. Dianetics is no solemn adventure. For all that it has to do with suffering and loss, its end is always laughter, so foolish, so misinterpreted were the things which caused the woe. Your first voyage into your own terra incognita will be through the pages of this book. You will find as you read that many things "you always knew were so" are articulated here. You will be gratified to know that you held not opinions but scientific facts in many of your concepts of existence. You will find, too, many data that have long been known by all, and you will possibly consider them far from news and be prone to under-evaluate them: be assured that underevaluation of these facts kept them from being valuable, no matter how long they were known, for a fact is never important without a proper evaluation of it and its precise relationship to other facts. You are following here a vast network of facts which, reaching out, can be seen to embrace the whole field of man in all his works. Fortunately you do not have to concern yourself with following far any one of these lines until you are done. And then these horizons will stretch wide enough to satisfy anyone. Dianetics is a large subject, but that is only because man is himself a large subject. The science of his thought cannot but embrace all his actions. By careful compart-menting and relating of data, the field has been kept narrow enough to be easily followed. Mostly this handbook will tell you, without any specific mention, about 3. articulate: well formulated; clearly presented. How TO READ THIS BOOK yourself and your family and friends, for you will meet them here and know them. This volume has made no effort to use resounding or thunderous phrases, frowning polysyllables4 or professorial detachment. When one is delivering answers which are simple, he need not make the communication any more difficult than is necessary to convey the ideas. "Basic language" has been used, much of the nomenclature5 is colloquial;6 the pedantic7 has not only not been employed, it has also been ignored. This volume communicates to several strata of life and professions; the favorite nomenclatures of none have been observed since such a usage would impede the understanding of others. And so bear with us, psychiatrist, when your structure is not used, for we have no need for structure here; and bear with us, doctor, when we call a cold a cold and not a catarrhal8 disorder of the respiratory tract. For this is, essentially, engineering, and these engineers are liable to say anything. And "scholar," you would not enjoy being burdened with the summation signs and the Lorentz-FitzGerald-Einstein equations,'9 so 4. polysyllables: words having several, especially four or more, syllables. 5. nomenclature: the set of terms used to describe things in a particular subject. 6. colloquial: characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal. 7. pedantic: having unnecessary stress on minor or trivial points of learning; displaying a scholarship lacking in judgment or sense of proportion. 8. catarrhal: having to do with inflammation of a mucous membrane, especially of the nose or throat, causing an increased flow of mucus. 9. Lorentz-FitzGerald-Einstein equations: mathematical equations developed by Hendrik Lorentz and George Francis FitzGer-ald, closely related to the work of Einstein. These formulas, also known as the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, contain the hypothesis that a moving body exhibits a contraction in the direction of motion when its velocity is close to the speed of light. L. RON HUBBARD we shall not burden the less puristic reader with scientifically impossible Hegelian10 grammar which insists that absolutes exist in fact. The plan of the book might be represented as a cone which starts with simplicity and descends into wider application. This book follows, more or less, the actual steps of the development of Dianetics. First there was the dynamic principle of existence," then its meaning, then the source of aberration,12 and finally the application of all as therapy and the techniques of therapy. You won't find any of this very difficult. It was the originator who had the difficulty. You should have seen the 10. Hegelian: of Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [1770-1831], German philosopher) or his philosophy. Hegel put forth a philosophy based on the principle that an idea or event (thesis) generates its opposite (antithesis) leading to the reconciliation of opposites. 11. dynamic principle of existence: survival. The goal of life can be considered to be infinite survival. Man, as a life form, can be demonstrated to obey in all his actions and purposes the one command "Survive!" It is not a new thought that man is surviving. It is a new thought that man is motivated only by survival. 12. aberration: a departure from rational thought or behavior. From the Latin, aberrare, to wander from; Latin, ab, away, errare, to wander. It means basically to err, to make mistakes, or more specifically to have fixed ideas which are not true. The word is also used in its scientific sense. It means departure from a straight line. If a line should go from A to B, then if it is "aberrated" it would go from A to some other point, to some other point, to some other point, to some other point, to some other point and finally arrive at B. Taken in its scientific sense, it would also mean the lack of straightness or to see crookedly as, in example, a man sees a horse but thinks he sees an elephant. Aberrated conduct would be wrong conduct, or conduct not supported by reason. When a person has engrams, these tend to deflect what would be his normal ability to perceive truth and bring about an aberrated view of situations which then would cause an aberrated reaction to them. Aberration is opposed to sanity, which would be its opposite. This is the most fundamental level of aberration: "If the food smells good, go away from it!" This is directly against the survival intention of the organism. How TO READ THIS BOOK first equations and postulates" of Dianetics! As research progressed and as the field developed, Dianetics began to simplify. That is a fair guarantee that one is on a straight trail of science. Only things which are poorly known become more complex the longer one works upon them. It is suggested that you read straight on through. By the time you get into the Appendix, you should have an excellent command of the subject. The book is arranged that way. Every fact related to Dianetic therapy is stated in several ways and is introduced again and again. In this way, the important facts have been pointed up to your attention. When you have finished the book you can come back to the beginning and look through it and study what you think you need to know. Almost all the basic philosophy and certainly all the derivations of the master subject of Dianetics were excluded here, partly because this volume had to stay under half a million words and partly because they belong in a separate text where they can receive full justice. Nevertheless, you have the scope of the science with this volume in addition to therapy itself. You are beginning an adventure. Treat it as an adventure. And may you never be the same again. 13. postulates: things assumed to be true, especially as a basis for reasoning. Book One The Goal of Man CHAPTER ONE The Scope of Dianetics A science of mind is a goal which has engrossed thousands of generations of man. Armies, dynasties' and whole civilizations have perished for the lack of it. Rome went to dust for the want of it. China swims in blood for the need of it. And down in the arsenal is an atom bomb,2 its hopeful nose full-armed in ignorance of it. No quest has been more relentlessly pursued or has been more violent. No primitive tribe, no matter how ignorant, has failed to recognize the problem as a problem, nor has it failed to bring forth at least an attempted formulation. Today one finds the aborigine3 of Australia substituting for a science of mind a "magic healing crystal." The shaman4 of British Guyana5 makes shift6 for actual mental laws with his monotonous song and consecrated7 cigar. The throbbing drum of the 1. dynasties: successions of rulers who are members of the same family. 2. atom bomb: a bomb that uses the energy from the splitting of atoms to cause an explosion of tremendous force, accompanied by a blinding light. 3. aborigine: any of the first or earliest known inhabitants of a region; native. 4. shaman: a priest or witch doctor among certain peoples, claiming to have sole contact with the gods, etc. 5. British Guyana: country in northeastern South America: formerly a British colony, it became independent and a member of the Commonwealth in 1966. 6. makes shift: manages or does the best one can (with whatever means are at hand). 7. consecrated: set apart or declared as holy. L. RON HUBBARD Goldi" medicine man serves in the stead of an adequate technique to alleviate the lack of serenity in patients. The enlightened and golden age9 of Greece yet had but superstition in its principal sanitaria10 for mental ills, the Aesculapian" temple. The most the Roman could do for peace of mind for the sick was to appeal to the penates, the household divinities, or sacrifice to Febris, goddess of fevers. And an English king, centuries after, could have been found in the hands of exorcists who sought to cure his deliriums by driving the demons from him. From the most ancient times to the present, in the crudest primitive tribe or the most magnificently ornamented civilization, man has found himself in a state of awed helplessness when confronted by the phenomena of strange illnesses or aberrations. His desperation, in his efforts to treat the individual, has been but slightly altered during his entire history; and until this twentieth century passed midterm, the percentages of his alleviations, in terms of individual mental derangements,12 compared evenly with the successes of the shamans confronted with the same problems. According to a modern writer, the single advance of psychotherapy was clean quarters for the madman. In terms of brutality in treatment of the insane, the methods of the shaman or 8. Goldi: a people, traditionally hunters and fishermen, who inhabit the valley of the Amur River in southeastern Siberia and northeastern Manchuria (a region and former administrative division of northeast China). 9. golden age: the period in which a nation, etc., is at its highest state of prosperity, or in which some human art or activity is at its most excellent. 10. sanitaria: establishments for treating chronic diseases. 11. Aesculapian: of Aesculapius, the god of medicine and healing in ancient Greek and Roman mythology. 12. derangements: disturbances of the functions of the mind; mental disorders; insanities. 10 THE SCOPE OF DIANETICS Bedlam13 have been far exceeded by the "civilized" techniques of destroying nerve tissues with the violence of shock and surgery-treatments which were not warranted by the results obtained and which would not have been tolerated in the meanest primitive society, since they reduce the victim to mere zombiism,14 destroying most of his personality and ambition and leaving him nothing more than a manageable animal. Far from an indictment of the practices of the "neurosurgeon" and the ice pick which he thrusts and twists into insane minds, they are brought forth only to demonstrate the depths of desperation man can reach when confronted with the seemingly unsolvable problem of deranged minds. In the larger sphere of societies and nations, the lack of such a science of mind was never more evident; for the physical sciences, advancing thoughtlessly far in advance of man's ability to understand man, have armed him with terrible and thorough weapons which await only another outburst of the social insanity of war. These problems are not mild ones; they lie across every man's path; they wait in company with his future. As long as man has recognized that his chief superiority over the animal kingdom was a thinking mind, so long as he understood that his mind alone was his weapon, he has searched and pondered and postulated in efforts to find a solution. Like a jigsaw puzzle spilled by a careless hand, the equations which would lead to a science of the mind and, above that, to a master science of the universe, were stirred round and round. Sometimes two fragments would be united; sometimes, as in the case of the golden 13. Bedlam: an old insane asylum (in full, St. Mary of Bethlehem) in London, infamous for the brutal ill-treatment inflicted upon the insane. 14. zombiism: existence as a person who seems to have no mind or will, taken from the voodoo word for a corpse said to have been animated by some power and made to obey commands. 11 L. RON HUBBARD age of Greece, a whole section would be built. Philosopher, shaman, medicine man, mathematician: each looked at the pieces. Some saw they must all belong to different puzzles. Some thought they all belonged to the same puzzle. Some said there were really six puzzles in it, some said two. And the wars went on and the societies sickened or were dispersed, and learned tomes'5 were written about ever-increasing hordes of madmen. With the methods of Bacon,16 with the mathematics of Newton,17 the physical sciences went on, consolidating and advancing their frontiers. And, like a derelict18 battalion, careless of how many allied ranks it exposed to destruction by the enemy, studies of the mind lagged behind. But after all, there are just so many pieces in any puzzle. Before and after Francis Bacon, Herbert Spencer" and a very few more, many of the small sections had been put together, many honest facts had been observed. To adventure into the thousands of variables of which that puzzle was composed, one had only to know right from wrong, true from false, and use all man and nature as his test tube.20 Of what must a science of mind be composed? 1. An answer to the goal of thought. 15. tomes: large or scholarly books. 16. Bacon: Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher and essayist who insisted that investigation should begin with observable facts rather than with theories. 17. Newton: Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), English mathematician and natural philosopher. One of the greatest geniuses the world has known, he made three scientific discoveries of fundamental importance: first, the method of change in varying quantities, which forms the basis of modern calculus; second, the law of the composition of light; third, the law of gravity. 18. derelict: neglectful of duty; delinquent; negligent. 19. Herbert Spencer: (1820-1903), English philosopher. One of the few modern thinkers to attempt a systematic account of all cosmic phenomena, including mental and social principles. 20. test tube: a tube of thin, transparent glass closed at one end, used in chemical experiments, etc. Used figuratively. 12 THE SCOPE OF DIANETICS 2. A single source of all insanities, psychoses,21 neuroses,22 compulsions,23 repressions24 and social derangements. 3. Invariant scientific evidence as to the basic nature and functional background of the human mind. 4. Techniques, the art of application, by which the discovered single source could be invariably cured; ruling out, of course, the insanities of malformed, deleted or pathologically25 injured brains or nervous systems and, particularly, iatro-genic psychoses (those caused by doctors and involving the destruction of the living brain itself). 5. Methods of prevention of mental derangement. 6. The cause and cure of all psychosomatic26 ills, which number, some say, 70 percent of man's listed ailments. Such a science would exceed the severest terms previously laid down for it in any age, but any computation on the subject should discover that a science of mind ought to be able to be and do just these things. A science of the mind, if it were truly worthy of that name, would have to rank, in experimental precision, with physics and chemistry. There could be no "special cases" to its laws. There could be no recourse27 to 21. psychoses: severe forms of mental disorder; insanities. 22. neuroses: emotional states containing conflicts and emotional data inhibiting the abilities or welfare of the individual. 23. compulsions: irresistible, repeated, irrational impulses to perform some act. 24. repressions: commands that the organism must not do something. 25. pathologically: in a manner caused by or having to do with disease. See also pathology in the glossary. 26. psychosomatic: psycho refers to mind and somatic refers to body; the term psychosomatic means the mind making the body ill or illnesses which have been created physically within the body by derangement of the mind. 27. recourse: a turning or seeking for aid, safety, etc. 13 L. RON HUBBARD authority. The atom bomb bursts whether Einstein28 gives it permission or not. Laws native to nature regulate the bursting of that bomb. Technicians, applying techniques derived from discovered natural laws, can make one or a million atom bombs, all alike. After the body of axioms and technique was organized and working as a science of mind, in rank with the physical sciences, it would be found to have points of agreement with almost every school of thought about thought which had ever existed. This is again a virtue and not a fault. Simple though it is, Dianetics does and is these things: 1. It is an organized science of thought built on definite axioms (statements of natural laws on the order of those of the physical sciences). 2. It contains a therapeutic technique with which can be treated all inorganic mental ills and all organic psychosomatic ills, with assurance of complete cure in unselected cases. 3. It produces a condition of ability and rationality for man well in advance of the current norm, enhancing rather than destroying his vigor and personality. 4. Dianetics gives a complete insight into the full potentialities of the mind, discovering them to be well in excess of past supposition. 5. The basic nature of man is discovered in Dianetics rather than hazarded29 or postulated, since that basic nature can be brought into action in any individual completely. And that basic nature is discovered to be good. 28. Einstein: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist, US citizen from 1940; formulated the theory of the conversion of mass into energy, opening the way for the development of the atomic bomb. 29. hazarded: offered (a statement, conjecture, etc.) with the possibility of facing criticism, disapproval, failure or the like; ventured. 14 THE SCOPE OF DIANETICS 6. The single source of mental derangement is discovered and demonstrated, on a clinical or laboratory basis, by Dianetics. 7. The extent, storage capacity and recallability of the human memory is finally established by Dianetics. 8. The full recording abilities of the mind are discovered by Dianetics with the conclusion that they are quite dissimilar to former suppositions. 9. Dianetics brings forth the nongerm theory of disease, complementing biochemistry30 and Pasteur's31 work on the germ theory to embrace the field. 10. With Dianetics ends the "necessity" of destroying the brain by shock or surgery to effect "trac-tability"32 in mental patients and "adjust" them. 11. A workable explanation of the physiological effects of drugs and endocrine33 substances exists in Dianetics, and many problems posed by endocrinology are answered. 12. Various educational, sociological, political, military and other human studies are enhanced by Dianetics. 13. The field of cytology34 is aided by Dianetics, as well as other fields of research. This, then, is a skeletal sketch of what would be the scope of a science of mind and of what is the scope of Dianetics. 30. biochemistry: the chemistry of living organisms. 31. Pasteur: Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), French chemist and bacteriologist; he proved that decay and putrefaction are caused by bacteria and developed serums and vaccines for such diseases as cholera and rabies. 32. tractability: state of being easy to manage or deal with; docility. 33. endocrine: designating or of any gland producing one or more internal secretions that are introduced directly into the bloodstream and carried to other parts of the body whose functions they regulate or control. 34. cytology: the scientific study of cells. 15 CHAPTER Two The Clear Dianetically, the optimum individual is called the Clear. One will hear much of that word, both as a noun and a verb, in this volume, so it is well to spend time here at the outset setting forth exactly what can be called a Clear, the goal of Dianetic therapy. A Clear can be tested for any and all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions (all aberrations) and can be examined for any autogenetic (self-generated) diseases referred to as psychosomatic ills. These tests confirm the Clear to be entirely without such ills or aberrations. Additional tests of his intelligence indicate it to be high above the current norm. Observation of his activity demonstrates that he pursues existence with vigor and satisfaction. Further, these results can be obtained on a comparative basis. A neurotic' individual, possessed also of psychosomatic ills, can be tested for those aberrations and illnesses, demonstrating that they exist. He can then be given Dianetic therapy to the end of clearing these neuroses and ills. Finally, he can be examined, with the above results. This, in passing, is an experiment which has been performed many times with invariable results. It is a matter of laboratory test that all individuals who have organically complete nervous systems respond in this fashion to Dianetic clearing. Further, the Clear possesses attributes, fundamental and inherent but not always available in an uncleared 1. neurotic: one who is insane or disturbed on some subject (as opposed to a psychotic person, who is just insane in general). 16 THE CLEAR state, which have not been suspected of man and are not included in past discussions of his abilities and behavior. First there is the matter of perceptions. Even so-called normal people do not always see in full color, hear in full tone or sense at the optimum with their organs of smell, taste, tactile2 and organic sensation. These are the main lines of communication to the finite world which most people recognize as reality. It is an interesting commentary that while past observers felt that the facing of reality was an absolute necessity if the aberrated individual wished to be sane, no definition of how this was to be done was set forth. To face reality in the present, one would certainly have to be able to sense it along those channels of communication most commonly used by man in his affairs. Any one of man's perceptions can be aberrated by psychic3 derangements which refuse to permit the received sensations to be realized by the analytical portion of the individual's mind. In other words, while there may be nothing wrong with the mechanisms of color reception, circuits4 can exist in the mind which delete color before the consciousness is permitted to see the object. Colorblindness can be discovered to be relative or in degrees in such a way that colors appear to be less brilliant, dull or, at the maximum, entirely absent. Anyone is acquainted with persons to whom "loud"5 colors are detestable and with persons who find 2. tactile: of or using the sense of touch. 3. psychic: of or pertaining to the human soul or mind; mental (opposed to physical). 4. circuit: a part of an individual's bank (a colloquial name for the reactive mind) that behaves as though it were someone or something separate from him and that either talks to him or goes into action of its own accord, and may even, if severe enough, take control of him while it operates. 5. "loud": (colloquial) too vivid; flashy. 17 L. RON HUBBARD them insufficiently "loud" to notice. This varying degree of colorblindness has not been recognized as a psychic factor but has been nebulously6 assumed to be some sort of a condition of mind when it was noticed at all. There are those persons to whom noises are quite disturbing, to whom, for instance, the insistent whine of a violin is very like having a brace and bit7 applied to the eardrum; and there are those to whom fifty violins, played loudly, would be soothing; and there are those who, in the presence of a violin, express disinterest and boredom; and, again, there are persons to whom the sound of a violin, no matter if it be playing the most intricate melody, is a monotone. These differences of sonic (hearing) perception have, like color and other visual errors, been attributed to inherent nature or organic deficiency or assigned no place at all. In a like manner, from person to person, smells, tactile sensations, organic perceptions, pain and gravity vary widely and wildly. A cursory check around amongst his friends will demonstrate to a man that there exist enormous differences of perception of identical stimuli.8 One smells a turkey in the oven as wonderful, one smells it with indifference, another may not smell it at all. And somebody else may maintain that roasting turkey smells exactly like hair oil-to be extreme. Until we obtain Clears it remains obscure why such differences should exist. For in the largest measure, such wild quality and quantity of perception is due to aberration. Because of pleasurable experiences in the past and inherent sensitivity, there will be some difference 6. nebulously: hazily, vaguely, indistinctly or confusedly. 7. brace and bit: a tool for boring, consisting of a removable drill (bit) in a rotating handle (brace). 8. stimuli: things that rouse a person or thing into activity or energy or that produce a reaction in an organ or tissue of the body. 18 THE CLEAR amongst Clears; and a Clear response should not be assumed automatically to be a standardized, adjusted middle ground, that pallid9 and obnoxious goal of past doctrines. The Clear gets a maximum response compatible with his own desire for the response. Burning cordite10 still smells dangerous to him, but it does not make him ill. Roasting turkey smells good to him if he is hungry and likes turkey, at which time it smells very, very good. Violins play melodies, not monotones, bring no pain and are enjoyed to a fine, full limit if the Clear likes violins as a matter of taste-if he doesn't, he likes kettledrums, saxophones or, indeed, suiting his mood, no music at all. In other words, there are two variables at work. One, the wildest, is the variable caused by aberrations. The other, and quite rational and understandable, is caused by the personality. Thus, the perceptions of an aberree (noncleared individual) vary greatly from those of the cleared (un-aberrated) individual. Now there are the differences of the actual organs of perception and the errors occasioned" by these. Some of these errors, a minimum, are organic: punctured eardrums are not competent sound-recording mechanisms. The majority of perceptic (sense message) errors in the organic sphere are caused by psychosomatic errors. Glasses are seen on noses everywhere around, even on children. The majority of these spectacles are perched on the face in an effort to correct a condition which the body itself is fighting to uncorrect again. Eyesight, when the stage of glasses is entered (not because of 9. pallid: lacking in spirit or vitality; dull. 10. cordite: a smokeless explosive used as a propellant in bullets and shells. 11. occasioned: given occasion or cause for; brought about. 19 L. RON HUBBARD glasses), is deteriorating on the psychosomatic principle. And this observation is about as irresponsible as a statement that when apples fall out of trees they usually obey gravity. One of the incidental things which happen to a Clear is that his eyesight, if it had been bad as an aberree, generally improves markedly, and with some slight attention will recover optimum perception in time. (Far from an optician's argument against Dianetics, this assures rather good business, for Clears have been known, at treatment's end, to have to buy, in rapid succession, five pairs of glasses to compensate adjusting eyesight; and many aberrees, cleared late in life, settle down ocularly12 at a maximum a little under optimum.) The eyesight was reduced in the aberree on an organic basis by his aberrations so that the perceptic organ itself was reduced from optimum operating function. With the removal of aberrations, repeated tests have proven that the body makes a valiant effort to reconstruct back to optimum. Hearing, in addition to other perceptics, varies organically over a wide range. Calcium deposits, for instance, can make the ears "ring" incessantly. The removal of aberrations permits the body to readjust toward its reachable optimum; the calcium deposit disappears, and the ears stop ringing. But far and beyond this very specific case, there are great differences in hearing on the organic basis. Organically, as well as aberrationally, hearing can become remarkably extended or closely inhibited so that one person may hear footsteps a block away as a normal activity and another would not hear a bass drum thundering on the porch. That the various perceptions differ widely from individual to individual on an aberrational and psychosomatic basis is the least of the discoveries outlined 12. ocularly: of or relating to the sense of sight. 20 THE CLEAR here. Ability to recall is far more fantastic in its variation from person to person. An entirely new recall process which was inherent in the mind but which had not been noticed came to light in the process of observing Clears and aberrees. This recall process is possible in only a small proportion of aberrees in its fullest sense. It is standard, however, in a Clear. Naturally, no intimation13 is made here that the scholars of past ages have been unobservant. We are dealing here with an entirely new and hitherto nonexistent object of inspection, the Clear. What a Clear can do easily, quite a few people have, from time to time, been partially able to do in the past. An inherent, not a taught, ability of the remembering mechanisms of the mind can be termed, as a technical word of Dianetics, returning. It is used in its dictionary sense, with the addition of the fact that the mind has it as a normal remembering function, as follows: The person can "send" a portion of his mind to a past period on either a mental or combined mental and physical basis and can reexperience incidents which have taken place in his past in the same fashion and with the same sensations as before. Once upon a time, an art known as hypnotism used what was called "regression" on hypnotized subjects, the hypnotist sending the subject back, in one of two ways, to incidents in his past. This was done with trance techniques, drugs and considerable technology. The hypnotic subject could be sent back to a moment "entirely" so that he gave every appearance of being the age to which he was returned with only the apparent faculties and recollections he had at that moment: this was called revivification (reliving). Regression was a technique by which part of the individual's self remained in the present and 13. intimation: hint; indirect suggestion. 21 L. RON HUBBARD part went back to the past. These abilities of the mind were supposed native only in hypnotism and were used only in hypnotic technique. The art is very old, tracing back some thousands of years and existing today in Asia as it has existed, apparently, from the dawn of time. Returning is substituted for regression here because it is not a comparable thing and because regression, as a word, has some bad meanings which would interrupt its use. Reliving is substituted for revivification in Dia-netics because, in Dianetics, the principles of hypnotism can be found explained and hypnotism is not used in Dianetic therapy, as will be explained later. The mind, then, has another ability to remember. Part of the mind can "return" even when a person is wide awake and reexperience past incidents in full. If you want to test this, try it on several people until one is discovered who does it easily. Wide awake, he can "return" to moments in his past. Until asked to do so, he probably will not know he has such an ability. If he had it, he probably thought everybody could do it (the type of supposition which has kept so much of this data from coming to light before). He can go back to a time when he was swimming and swim with full recall of hearing, sight, taste, smell, organic sensation, tactile, etc. A "learned" gentleman once spent some hours demonstrating to a gathering that the recall of a smell as a sensation, for instance, was quite impossible since "neurology14 had proven that the olfactory15 nerves were not connected to the thalamus."16 Two people in the gathering discovered this ability to return and despite this evidence, the learned gentleman continued the 14. neurology: the science of the nerves and the nervous system, especially the diseases affecting them. 15. olfactory: of or relating to the sense of smell. 16. thalamus: the interior region of the brain where sensory nerves originate. 22 THE CLEAR dispute that olfactory recall was impossible. A check amongst the gathering on this faculty," independent of returning, brought forth the fact that one-half of those present remembered smell by smelling it again. Returning is the full performance of imagery recall. The entire memory is able to make the organ areas resense the stimuli in a past incident. Partial recall is common, not common enough to be normal, but certainly common enough to have merited considerable study. For it, again, is a wide variable. Perception of the present would be one method of facing reality. But if one cannot face the reality of the past, then, in some part, he is not facing some portion of reality. And if it is agreed that facing reality is desirable, then one would have to face yesterday's reality as well if he were to be considered entirely "sane" by contemporary definition. To "face yesterday" requires a certain condition of recall to be available. One would have to be able to remember. But how many ways are there of remembering? First there is the return. That is new. It gives the advantage of examining the moving pictures and other sense perceptions recorded at the time of the event with all senses present. He can also return to his past conclusions and imaginings. It is of considerable aid in learning, in research, in ordinary living, to be able to be again at the place where the data desired was first inspected. Then there are the more usual recalls. Optimum recall is by the return method of single or multiple senses, the individual himself remaining in present time.18 In other 17. faculty: an ability, natural or acquired, for a particular kind of action. 18. present time: the time which is now and becomes the past as rapidly as it is observed. It is a term loosely applied to the environment existing in now. 23 L. RON HUBBARD words, some people, when they think of a rose, see one, smell one, feel one. They see in full color, vividly-with the "mind's eye" to use an old colloquialism. They smell it vividly. And they can feel it even to the thorns. They are thinking about roses by actually recalling a rose. These people, thinking about a ship, would see a specific ship, feel the motion of her if they thought of being aboard her, smell the pine tar19 or even less savory odors and hear whatever sounds there were about her. They would see the ship in full color-motion and hear it in full tone-audio. These faculties vary widely in the aberree. Some, when told to think of a rose, can merely visualize one. Some can smell one but not see it. Some see it without color or in very pale color. When told to think of a ship some aberrees only see a flat, colorless, still picture, such as a painting of a ship or the photograph of one. Some perceive a vessel in motion without color but with sound. Some hear the sound of a ship but fail to see any picture whatever. Some merely think of a ship as a concept that ships exist and that they know about them, and fail to see, feel, hear, smell or otherwise sense anything on a recall basis. Some past observers have called this "imagery" but the term is so inapplicable to sound and touch, organic sensation and pain that recall is used uniformly as the technical Dianetic term. The value of recall in this business of living has occupied such scant attention that the entire concept has never been formulated previously. It is therefore detailed at some length here, as above. It is quite simple to test recalls. If one will ask his fellows what their abilities are, he will gain a remarkable 19. pine tar: a thick, dark liquid obtained by destructive distillation (decomposition by heat in the absence of air) of pine wood, used in ointments, tar paints, etc. 24 THE CLEAR idea of how widely varied this ability is from individual to individual. Some have this recall, some have that, some have none but operate on concepts of recall only. And remember, if you make a test on those around you, that any perception is filed in the memory and therefore has a recall which is to include pain, temperature, rhythm, taste and weight with the above-mentioned sight, sound, tactile and smell. The Dianetic names for these recalls are visio (sight), sonic (sound), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), rhythmic, kinesthetic (weight and motion), somatic (pain), thermal (temperature) and organic (internal sensations and, by new definition, emotion). Then there is another set of mental activities which can be sum mated under the headings of imagination and creative imagination. Here again is abundant material for testing. Imagination is the recombination of things one has sensed, thought or intellectually computed into existence, which do not necessarily have existence. This is the mind's method of envisioning desirable goals or forecasting futures. Imagination is extremely valuable as a part of essential solutions in any mental problem and in everyday existence. That it is recombination in no sense deprives it of its vast and wonderful complexity. A Clear uses imagination in its entirety. There is an imagination impression for sight, smell, taste, sound-in short, for each one of the possible perceptions. These are manufactured impressions on the basis of models in the memory banks combined by conceptual ideas and construction. New physical structures, tomorrow in terms of today, next year in terms of last year, pleasure to be gained, deeds to be done, accidents to avoid: all these are imaginational functions. The Clear has full color-visio, tone-sonic, tactile, olfactory, rhythmic, kinesthetic, thermal and organic 25 L. RON HUBBARD imagination in kind.20 Asked to envision himself riding in a gilded coach-and-four,2' he "sees" the equipage,22 moving, in full color, he "hears" all the noises which should be present, he "smells" the smells he thinks should be there and he "feels" the upholstery, the motion and the presence in the coach of himself. In addition to standard imagination there is creative imagination. This is a very wide undimensional23 ability, quite variable from individual to individual, possessed in enormous quantity by some. It is included here, not as a portion of the operation of the mind treated as a usual part of Dianetics, but to isolate it as an existing entity. In a Clear who possessed creative imagination, even if inhibited as an aberree, it is present and demonstrable. It is inherent. It can be aberrated only by prohibition of its general practice, which is to say, by aberrating the persistence in its application or encysting24 the whole mind. But creative imagination, that possession by which works of art are done, states built and man enriched, can be envisioned as a special function, independent in operation and in no way dependent for its existence upon an aberrated condition in the individual, since the examination of its activity in and use by a Clear possessing it adequately demonstrates its inherent character. It is rarely absent in any individual. Finally, there is the last but most important activity of the mind. Man is to be regarded as a sentient25 being. 20. in kind: in proper or good condition. 21. coach-and-four: a coach pulled by four horses. 22. equipage: a carriage drawn by horses and attended by servants. 23. undimensional: without measurable extent or limit. 24. encysting: enclosing in or as if in a cyst or sac. 25. sentient: of, having or capable of feeling or perception; conscious. 26 CLEAR His sentience depends upon his ability to resolve problems by perceiving or creating and understanding situations. This rationality is the primary, high-echelon function of that part of the mind which makes him a man, not just another animal. Remembering, perceiving, imagining, he has the signal26 ability of resolving conclusions and of using conclusions resolved to resolve further conclusions. This is rational man. Rationality, as divorced from aberration, can be studied in a cleared person only. The aberrations of the aberree give him the appearance of irrationality. Though such irrationality may be given the gentler names of "eccentricity"27 or "human error" or even "personal idiosyncrasy,"28 it is, nevertheless, irrationality. The personality does not depend upon how irrationally a man may act. It is not a personality trait, for instance, to drive while drunk and kill a child on a crosswalk-or even to risk killing a child by driving while drunk. Irrationality is simply that-the inability to get right answers from data. Now, it is a curious thing that although "everybody knows" (and what a horrible amount of misinformation that statement lets circulate) it is "human to err," the sentient portion of the mind, which computes the answers to problems and which makes man man, is utterly incapable of error. This was a startling discovery when it was made, but it need not have been. It could have been deduced some time before. For it is quite simple and easy to understand. The actual computing ability of man is never in error even in a very severely aberrated person. Observing 26. signal: not average or ordinary; remarkable; notable. 27. eccentricity: unusual or odd behavior, or a peculiar habit. 28. idiosyncrasy: a characteristic, habit, mannerism or the like that is peculiar to an individual. 27 L. RON HUBBARD the activity of such an aberrated person, one might thoughtlessly suppose that that person's computations were wrong. But that would be an observer error. Any person, aberrated or Clear, computes perfectly on the data stored and perceived. Take any common calculating machine (and the mind is an exceptionally magnificent instrument far, far superior to any machine it will invent for ages to come) and put a problem on it for solution. Multiply seven times one. It will answer, properly, seven. Now multiply six times one but continue to hold down the seven. Six times one is six but the answer you will get is forty-two. Continue to hold down seven and put other problems on the machine. They are wrong, not as problems, but as answers. Now fix seven so that it stays down no matter what keys are touched and try to give the machine away. Nobody will want it because, obviously, the machine is crazy. It says ten times ten is seven hundred. But is the calculating portion of the machine really wrong or is it merely being fed the wrong data? In the same way, the human mind, being called upon to resolve problems of a magnitude and with enough variables to confound any mere calculating machine a thousand times an hour, is prey to incorrect data. Incorrect data gets into the machine. The machine gives wrong answers. Incorrect data enters the human memory banks, the person reacts in an "abnormal manner." Essentially, then, the problem of resolving aberration is the problem of finding a "held-down seven." But of that, much, much more later. Right now we have accomplished our immediate ends. These are the various abilities and activities of the human mind in its constant task of resolving and putting into solution a multitude of problems. It perceives, it recalls or returns, it imagines, it conceives and then resolves. Served by its extensions-the perceptics and 28 THE CLEAR the memory banks and the imaginations-the mind brings forth answers which are invariably accurate, the solutions modified only by observation, education and viewpoint. And the basic purposes of that mind and the basic nature of man, as discoverable in the Clear, are constructive and good, uniformly constructive and uniformly good, modified only by observation, education and viewpoint. Man is good. Take away his basic aberrations and with them go the evil of which the scholastic29 and the moralist were so fond. The only detachable portion of him is the "evil" portion. And when it is detached, his personality and vigor intensify. And he is glad to see the "evil" portion go because it was physical pain. Later there are experiments and proofs for these things and they can be measured with the precision so dear to the heart of the physical scientist. The Clear, then, is not an "adjusted" person, driven to activity by his repressions now thoroughly encysted. He is an unrepressed person, operating on self-determinism.30 And his abilities to perceive, recall, return, imagine, create and compute are outlined as we have seen. The Clear is the goal in Dianetic therapy, a goal which some patience and a little study and work can bring about. Any person can be cleared unless he has been so unfortunate as to have had a large portion of his brain removed or to have been born with a grossly malformed nervous structure. 29. scholastic: one who narrowly adheres to traditional teachings, doctrines or methods. 30. self-determinism: the state wherein the individual can or cannot be controlled by his environment according to his own choice. He is confident in his interpersonal relationships. He reasons but does not need to react. 29 L. RON HUBBARD We have seen the goal of Dianetics here. Let us now inspect the goal of man. Editor's Note: Live demonstrations of Dianetics procedure and public lectures given by L. Ron Hubbard have been reproduced on cassette, providing real examples of the practice and results of these techniques. See page 590. 30 CHAPTER THREE The Goal of Man The goal of man, the lowest common denominator of all his activities, the dynamic principle of his existence, has long been sought. Should such an answer be discovered, it is inevitable that from it many answers would flow. It would explain all phenomena of behavior; it would lead toward a solution of man's major problems; and, most of all, it should be workable. Consider all knowledge to fall above or below a line of demarcation. Everything above this line is not necessary to the solution of man's aberrations and general shortcomings and is inexactly known. Such a field of thought could be considered to embrace such things as metaphysics1 and mysticism.2 Below this line of demarcation could be considered to lie the finite universe. All things in the finite universe, whether known or as yet unknown, can be sensed, experienced or measured. The known data in the finite universe can be classified as scientific truth when it has been sensed, experienced and measured. All factors necessary to the resolution of a science of the mind were found within the finite universe and were discovered, sensed, measured and experienced and became scientific truth. The finite universe contains time, space, energy and life. No other factors were found necessary in the equation. Time, space, energy and Me have a single denominator 1. metaphysics: a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence and of truth and knowledge. 2. mysticism: the beliefs or practices of those who claim to have experiences based on intuition, meditation, etc., of a spiritual nature, by which they learn truths not known by ordinary people. 31 L. RON HUBBARD in common. As an analogy3 it could be considered that time, space, energy and life began at some point of origin and were commanded to continue to some nearly infinite destination. They were told nothing but what to do. They obey a single order and that order is "Survive!" The Dynamic Principle of Existence Is Survival The goal of life can be considered to be infinite survival. Man, as a life form, can be demonstrated to obey in all his actions and purposes the one command: "Survive!" It is not a new thought that man is surviving. It is a new thought that man is motivated only by survival. That his single goal is survival does not mean that he is the optimum survival mechanism which life has attained or will develop. The goal of the dinosaur was also survival and the dinosaur isn't extant anymore. Obedience to this command, "Survive!" does not mean that every attempt to obey is uniformly successful. Changing environment, mutation and many other things militate4 against any one organism attaining infallible survival techniques or form. Life forms change and die as new life forms develop just as surely as one life organism, lacking immortality in itself, creates other life organisms, then dies as itself. An excellent method, should one wish to cause life to survive over a very long period, would be to establish means by which it could assume many forms, and death itself would be necessary in order to facilitate the survival of the life force itself, since only death and decay could clear away older forms when new changes in the environment necessitated new forms. Life, as a force, existing over a nearly infinite period, would need 3. analogy: explanation of something by comparing it point by point with something similar. 4. militate: are directed (against)', operate or work (against or, rarely, for): said of facts, evidence, actions, etc. 32 THE GOAL OF MAN a cyclic aspect in its unit organisms and forms. What would be the optimum survival characteristics of various life forms? They would have to have various fundamental characteristics, differing from one species to the next just as one environment differs from the next. This is important, since it has been but poorly considered in the past that a set of survival characteristics in one species would not be survival characteristics in another. The methods of survival can be summed under the headings of food, protection (defensive and offensive) and procreation.5 There are no existing life forms which lack solutions to these problems. Every life form errs, one way or another, by holding a characteristic too long or developing characteristics which may lead to its extinction. But the developments which bring about successfulness of form are far more striking than their errors. The naturalist and biologist are continually resolving the characteristics of this or that life form by discovering that need rather than whim governs such developments. The hinges of the clamshell, the awesome face on the wings of the butterfly, have survival value. Once survival was isolated as the only dynamic* of * In order to establish nomenclature in Dianetics which would not be too complex for the purpose, words normally considered as adjectives or verbs have occasionally been pressed into service as nouns. This has been done on the valid principle that existing terminology, meaning so many different things, could not be used by Dianetics without making it necessary to explain away an old meaning to bring forth a new. To remove the step of explaining the old meaning and saying then that one doesn't mean that, thus entangling our communications inextricably, and to obviate the ancient custom of compounding ponderous and thundering syllables from the Greek and Roman tongues, this principle and some others have been adopted for nomenclature. Dynamic is here used as a noun and will so continue to be used throughout this volume. Somatic, perceptic and some others will be noted, defined when used. - LRH 5. procreation: bringing living things into existence by the natural process of reproduction. 33 L. RON HUBBARD a life form which would explain all its activities, it was necessary to study further the action of survival. And it was discovered that when one considered pain and pleasure, he had at hand all the necessary ingredients with which to formulate the action life takes in its effort to survive. As will be seen in the accompanying graph, a spectrum of life has been conceived to span from the zero of death or extinction toward the infinity of potential immortality. This spectrum was considered to contain an infinity of lines, extending ladderlike toward the potential of immortality. Each line as the ladder mounted was spaced a little wider than the last, in a geometric progression.6 The thrust of survival is away from death and toward immortality. The ultimate pain could be conceived as existing just before death and the ultimate pleasure could be conceived as immortality. Immortality could be said to have an attractive type of force and death a repelling force in the consideration of the unit organism or the species. But as survival rises higher and higher toward immortality, wider and wider spaces are encountered until the gaps are finitely impossible to bridge. The urge is away from death, which has a repelling force, and toward immortality, which has an attracting force; the attracting force is pleasure, the repelling force is pain. j For the individual, the length of the arrow could be j considered to be at a high potential within the fourth zone. Here the survival potential would be excellent and the individual would enjoy existence. I From left to right could be graphed the years. f ------------------------------- i 6. geometric progression: a sequence of terms, such as 1, 3, 9, j 27, 81, etc., each of which is a constant multiple of the immediately preceding term. 34 D n POTENTIAL !;I 1 H ^ I ~^ > H n 1 f. D >H ^ u ----- • > C •< 3W1 C J / (A O) C C 7 a 0! i. / 5 < ^ <• E .s / CD a>_ c ^ (A / O ^/ 'I X 1 \ 1 X \ \ F 7^ 1 y- •Jt \ X / 1 1 JC \ ( / Z3 / / 1 X Q. • \ < ^ 3- y. V r i £ m w' 1 1 0 GO X r g^ c / • 9" ^ Jf S ?, / 3 Si -y | N N N N N o o o o o 1 Z Z Z Z Z i m m m fn rn 1 O ->> IO CO •** Tl O o -- 33 VJ > s ? ° m fc (/> L. RON HUBBARD The urge toward pleasure is dynamic. Pleasure is the reward, and the seeking of the reward-survival goals -would be a pleasurable act. And to ensure that survival is accomplished under the mandate "Survive!" it seems to have been provided that reduction from a high potential would bring pain. Pain is provided to repel the individual from death, pleasure is provided to call him toward optimum life. The search for and the attainment of pleasure is not less valid in survival than the avoidance of pain. In fact, on some observed evidence, pleasure seems to have a much greater value in the cosmic scheme than pain. Now, it would be well to define what is meant by pleasure, aside from its connection with immortality. The dictionary states that pleasure is "gratification; agreeable emotions, mental or physical; transient enjoyment; opposed to pain." Pleasure can be found in so many things and activities that a catalog of all the things and activities man has, does and may consider pleasurable alone could round out the definition. And what do we mean by pain? The dictionary states: "physical or mental suffering; penalty." These two definitions, in passing, are demonstrative of an intuitive type of thought which runs through the language. Once one has a thing which leads to the resolution of hitherto unsolved problems, even the dictionaries are found to have "always known it." If we wished to make this graph for a life-form cycle, it would be identical except that the value of the years would be increased to measure eons. For there is no difference, it seems, except magnitude, in the scope of the individual and the scope of the species. This inference could be drawn even without such remarkable evidence as the fact that a human being, growing from 36 THE GOAL OF MAN zygote7 to adult, evolutes8 through all the forms which the whole species is supposed to have evolved through. Now, there is more in this graph than has been remarked as yet. The physical and mental state of the individual varies from hour to hour, day to day, year to year. Therefore, the level of survival would form either a daily curve or the curve of a life on a measure of hourly or yearly position in the zones. And there would be two curves made possible by this, the physical curve and the mental curve. When we get toward the back of the book, the relationships between these two curves will be found vital and it will also be seen that, ordinarily, a sag in the mental curve will precede a sag in the physical curve. The zones, then, can apply to two things: the physical being and the mental being. Therefore, these four zones can be called zones of the states of being. If a person is happy mentally, the survival level can be placed in zone 4. If the person is extremely ill physically, he might be plotted, on estimation of his illness, in zone 1 or close to death. Very unprecise, but nevertheless descriptive, names have been assigned to these zones. Zone 3 is one of general happiness and well-being. Zone 2 is a level of bearable existence. Zone 1 is one of anger. Zone 0 is the zone of apathy. These zones can be used as a Tone Scale9 by which a state of mind can be graded. Just above death, which is 0, would be the lowest mental apathy or lowest level of physical life, 0.1. A tone 1, 7. zygote: the first cell of a new individual. 8. evolutes: evolves; develops. 9. Tone Scale: a scale which shows the emotional tones of a person. These, ranged from the highest to the lowest, are, in part, serenity (the highest level), enthusiasm (as we proceed downward), conservatism, boredom, antagonism, anger, covert hostility, fear, grief, apathy. 37 L. RON HUBBARD where the body is fighting physical pain or illness or where the being is fighting in anger, could be graded from 1.0, which would be resentment or hostility, through tone 1.5, which would be a screaming rage, to a 1.9, which would be merely a quarrelsome inclination. From tone 2.0 to tone 3.0 there would be an increasing interest in existence, and so forth. It so happens that the state of physical being or mental being does not long remain static. Therefore, there are various fluctuations. In the course of a single day an aberree may run from 0.5 to 3.5, up and down, as a mental being. An accident or illness could cause a similar fluctuation in a day. These are, then, figures which can be assigned to four things: the mental state on an acute10 basis and the mental state on a general, average basis, and the physical being on an acute basis and the physical being on a general basis. In Dianetics, we do not much employ the physical Tone Scale. The mental Tone Scale, however, is of vast and vital importance! These values of happiness, bearable existence, anger and apathy are not arbitrary" values. They are deduced from observation of the behavior of emotional states. A Clear is usually found varying around tone 4, plus or minus, in an average day. He is a general tone 4, which is one of the inherent conditions of being Clear. A norm in current society, at a wild guess, is probably around a general tone 2.8. In this descriptive graph, which is two-dimensional, the vital data for the solution of the problem of the life dynamic are workably combined. The horizontal lines are in terms of geometric progression beginning with 10. acute: brief and severe. 11. arbitrary: based on one's preference, notion, whim, etc.; capricious. 38 GOAL OF MAN the zero line immediately above death. There are ten lines for each zone and each zone denotes a mental or physical state of being, as noted. Geometric progression, so used, leaves ever-increasing spaces between the lines. The width of this space is the survival potential existing at the moment the top point of the survival dynamic arrow is within that space. The further away from death the top point of the survival dynamic arrow is, the better chance the individual has of survival. Geometric progression reaches up toward the impossible of infinity and cannot, of course, reach infinity. The organism is surviving through time from left to right. Survival optimum-immortality-lies in terms of time to the right. Potential only is measured vertically. The survival dynamic actually resides within the organism as inherited from the species. The organism is part of the species as a railroad tie might be said to be part of a railroad as seen by an observer on a train, the observer being always in now-although this analogy is not perhaps the best. Within itself the organism possesses a repulsive force toward pain sources. The source of the pain is not a driving force any more than the thorn bush which tears the hand was a driving force; the organism repulses the potential pain of a thorn. At the same time the organism has at work a force which attracts it to the sources of pleasure. Pleasure does not magnetize the organism into drawing near. It is the organism which possesses the attraction force. It is inherent. The repulsion of pain sources adds to the attraction for pleasure sources to operate as a combined thrust away from death and toward immortality. The thrust away from death is no more powerful than the thrust toward immortality. In other words, in terms of the survival 39 L. RON HUBBARD dynamic, pleasure has as much validity as pain. It should not be read here that survival is always a matter of keeping an eye on the future. Contemplation of pleasure, pure enjoyment, contemplation of past pleasures: all combine into harmonies which, while they operate automatically as a rise toward the survival potential, by their action within the organism physically, do not demand the future as an active portion of the mental computation in such contemplation. A pleasure which reacts to injure the body physically, as in the case of debauchery,12 discovers at work a ratio between the physical effect (which is depressed toward pain) and the mental effect of experienced pleasure. There is a consequent lowering of the survival dynamic. Averaging out, the future possibility of strain because of the act, added to the state of being at the moment the debauchery was experienced, again depresses the survival dynamic. Because of this, various kinds of debauchery have been in indifferent odor'3 with man throughout his history. This is the equation of "immoral pleasures." And any action which has brought about survival suppression or which can bring it about, when pursued as a pleasure, has been denounced at some time or another in man's history. Immorality is originally hung as a label upon some act or class of actions because they depress the level of the survival dynamic. Future enforcement of moral stigma14 may depend largely upon prejudice and aberration and there is, consequently, a continuous quarrel over what is moral and what is immoral. Because certain things practiced as pleasures are 12. debauchery: indulgence in harmful or immoral pleasures. 13. odor: repute; esteem. 14. stigma: a mark of shame, a stain on a person's good reputation. 40 THE GOAL OF MAN actually pains-and how easy it will be to trace out why when you've finished this volume-and because of the moral equation as above, pleasure itself, in any aberrated society, can become decried.15 A certain kind of thinking, of which more later, permits poor differentiation between one object and another. Confusing a dishonest politician with all politicians would be an example of this. In ancient times, the Roman was fond of his pleasures and some of the things he called pleasure were a trifle strenuous on other species, such as Christians. When the Christian overthrew the pagan16 state, the ancient order of Rome was in a villain's role. Anything, therefore, which was Roman was villainous. This went to such remarkable lengths that the Roman love of bathing made bathing so immoral that Europe went unwashed for some fifteen hundred years. The Roman had become a pain source so general that everything Roman was evil and it stayed evil long after Roman paganism perished. Immorality, in such a fashion, tends to become an involved subject. In this case it became so involved that pleasure itself was stigmatized. When half the survival potential is struck from the list of lawful things, there is a considerable reduction in survival indeed. Considering this graph on a racial scale, the reduction of survival potential by one-half would forecast that direful17 things lay in wait for the race. Actually, because man is after all man, no set of laws, however enforced, can completely wipe away the attraction of pleasure. But in this case enough was removed and banned to occasion precisely what 15. decried: spoken out against strongly and openly; denounced. 16. pagan: non-Christian; refers to those peoples who worshipped many gods, such as the Greeks and the Romans. 17. direful: dreadful; awful; terrible. 41 L. RON HUBBARD happened: the Dark Ages18 and the recession of society. Society brightened only in those periods such as the Renaissance,19 in which pleasure became less unlawful. When a race or an individual drops into the second zone, as marked on the chart, and the general tone ranges from the first zone barely into the third, a condition of insanity ensues. Insanity is irrationality. It is also a state in which nonsurvival has been so closely approached continually that the race or the organism engages in all manner of wild solutions. In further interpretation of this descriptic20 graph there is the matter of the survival suppressor. This, it will be seen, is a thrust downward out of potential immortality at the race or organism represented as the survival dynamic. The survival suppressor is the combined and variable threats to the survival of the race or organism. These threats come from other species, from time, from other energies. These are also engaged in the contest of survival to potential immortality in terms of their own species or identities. Thus there is a conflict involved. Every other form of life or energy could be plotted in a descriptic as the survival dynamic. If we were to use a duck's survival dynamic in a descriptic graph, we would see the duck seeking a high survival level and man would be a part of the duck's suppressor. 18. Dark Ages: the Middle Ages, especially the earlier part from about A.D. 476 to about the end of the 10th century: so called from the idea that this period in Europe was characterized by intellectual stagnation, widespread ignorance and poverty, and cultural decline. 19. Renaissance: the great revival of art, literature and learning in Europe in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, based on classical (Greek and Roman) sources. It began in Italy and spread gradually to other countries and marked the transition from the medieval world (from about A.D. 500 to 1450) to the modern. 20. descriptic: representing or delineating by a picture or figure. 42 THE GOAL OF MAN The balance and nature of things do not permit the infinity of the goal of immortality to be reached. In fluctuating balance and in almost unlimited complexity, life and energies ebb and flood, out of the nebulous, into forms and, through decay, into the nebulous once more.* Many equations could be drawn concerning this, but it is outside the sphere of our present interest. In terms of the zones of the descriptic, it is of relative concern what the extent of the force of the suppressor is against the survival dynamic. The dynamic is inherent in individuals, groups and races, evolved to resist the suppressor through the eons. In the case of man, he carries with him another level of offensive and defensive techniques, his cultures. His primary technology of survival is mental activity governing physical action in the sentient echelon. But every life form has its own technology, formed to resolve the problems of food, protection and procreation. The degree of workability of the technology any life form develops (armor or brains, f leetness of foot or deceptive form) is a direct index of the survival potential, the relative immortality, of that form. There have been vast upsets in the past; man, when he developed into the world's most dangerous animal (he can and does kill or enslave any life form, doesn't he?), overloaded the suppressor on many other life forms and they dwindled in number or vanished. * The Veda;1' also Lucretius'22 Nature of Things. -LRH 21. Veda: the most ancient sacred writings of the Hindus. 22. Lucretius: (987-55 B.C.) Roman poet who was the author of the unfinished On the Nature of Things, a didactic (instructional) poem in six books, setting forth in outline a complete science of the universe. The purpose of the work was to prove, by investigating the nature of the world in which man lives, that all things- including man-operate according to their own laws and are not in any way influenced by supernatural powers. 43 L. RON HUBBARD A great climatic change, such as the one which packed so many mammoths in Siberian23 ice, may overload the suppressor on a life form. A long drought in the American Southwest in not too ancient times wiped out the better part of an Indian civilization. A cataclysm24 such as an explosion of the core of the Earth, if that were possible, or the atom bomb or the sudden cessation of burning on the sun would wipe out all life forms on Earth. And a life form can even overload the suppressor on itself. A dinosaur destroys all his food and so destroys the dinosaur. A bubonic plague25 bacillus26 attacks its hosts with such thorough appetite that the whole generation of Pasteurella pestis27 vanishes. Such things are not intended by the suicide to be suicide; the life form has run up against an equation which has an unknown variable, and the unknown variable unfortunately contained enough value to overload the suppressor. This is the "didn't know the gun was loaded" equation. And if the bubonic plague bacillus overloads its own suppressor in an area and then ceases to trouble its food and shelter-the animals-then the animals consider themselves benefited. Reckless and clever and well-nigh28 indestructible, man has led a course which is a far cry29 from "tooth 23. Siberian: of Siberia, a part of the Soviet Union in north Asia, extending from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific. 24. cataclysm: any great upheaval that causes sudden and violent changes, as an earthquake, war, etc. 25. bubonic plague: a very dangerous contagious disease, accompanied by fever, chills and swelling of the lymphatic glands. It is carried to humans by fleas from rats or squirrels. 26. bacillus: loosely, any of the bacteria, especially those causing a disease. 27. Pasteurella pestis: organism causing bubonic plague. 28. well-nigh: very nearly; almost. 29. a far cry: only remotely related; very different. 44 THE GOAL OF MAN and claw" in every sphere. And so have the redwood tree and the shark. Just as a life form, man, like every life form, is "symbiotic."30 Life is a group effort. Lichens" and plankton32 and algae33 may do very well on sunlight and minerals alone, but they are the building blocks. Above such existence, as the forms grow more complex, a tremendous interdependence exists. It is very well for a forester to believe that certain trees willfully kill all other varieties of trees around them and then conclude a specious34 "attitude" of trees. Let him look again. What made the soil? What provides the means of keeping the oxygen balance? What makes it possible for rain to fall in other areas? These willful and murderous trees. And squirrels plant trees. And man plants trees. And trees shelter trees of another kind. And animals fertilize trees. And trees shelter animals. And trees hold the soil so less well-rooted plants can grow. Look anywhere and everywhere and we see life as an assist for life. The multitude of the complexities of life as affinities35 for life is not dramatic. But they are the steady, practical, important reason life can continue to exist at all. 30. symbiotic: having to do with the living together of similar or dissimilar organisms for mutual benefit. 31. lichens: any of a large group of plants that look somewhat like moss and grow in patches on trees, rocks, etc. 32. plankton: the small animal and plant organisms that float or drift in water, especially at or near the surface. Plankton serves as an important source of food for larger animals, such as fish. 33. algae: a group of plants, either one-celled or many-celled, often growing in colonies. Algae contain chlorophyll (the green coloring matter of plants) and other pigments, but have no true root, stem or leaf. They are found in water or damp places and include seaweed, pond scum, etc. 34. specious: seeming to be good, sound, correct, logical, etc., without really being so; plausible but not genuine. 35. affinities: the attractions which exist between two human beings, or between human beings and other life organisms. 45 L. RON HUBBARD A redwood tree may be first out for redwood trees and although it does an excellent job of seeming to exist as redwood alone, a closer glance will show it has dependencies and is depended upon. Therefore, the dynamic of any life form can be seen to be assisted by many other dynamics and combines with them against the suppressive factors. None survive alone. Necessity has been declared to be a very wonderful thing. But necessity is a word which has been taken rather loosely for granted. Opportunism36 seems to have been read largely into necessity. What is necessity? Besides being the "mother of invention," is it a dramatic, sudden thing which excuses wars and murders, which touches a man only when he is about to starve? Or is necessity a much gentler and less dramatic quantity? "Everything," according to Leucippus,37 "is driven by necessity." This is a keynote of much theorizing down through the ages. Driven: that is the key to the error. Driven, things are driven. Necessity drives. Pain drives. Necessity and pain, pain and necessity. Recalling the dramatic and overlooking the important, man has conceived himself, from time to time, to be an object of chase by necessity and pain. These were two anthropomorphic (manlike) things which, in full costume, stuck spears at him. It can be said to be a wrong concept merely because it does not work to produce more answers. Whatever there is of necessity is within him. Nothing is driving him except his original impetus to survive. And he carries that within himself or his group. Within 36. opportunism: the policy or practice, as in politics, business or one's personal affairs, of adapting actions, decisions, etc., to expediency or effectiveness regardless of the sacrifice of ethical principles. 37. Leucippus: Greek philosopher of the 5th century B.C. 46 THE GOAL OF MAN him is the force with which he fends off pain. Within him is the force with which he attracts pleasure. It chances to be a scientific fact that man is a self-determined organism to the outermost limit that any form of life can be, for he still depends upon other forms of life and his general environment. But he is self-determined. This is a matter which will be covered later. But right here it is necessary to indicate that he is not inherently a determined organism in the sense that he is driven on this wonderful stimulus-response basis which looks so neat in certain textbooks, and works so completely unworkably in the world of man. The happy little illustrations about rats do not serve when we are talking about man. The more complex the organism, the less reliably the stimulus-response equation works. And when one reaches that highest complexity, man, he has reached a fine degree of variability in terms of stimulus-response. The more sentient, the more rational an organism, the more that organism is self-determined. Self-determinism, like all things, is relative. Compared to a rat, however, man is very self-determined indeed. This is only a scientific fact because it can easily be proven. The more sentient the man, the less he is a "pushbutton" instrument. Aberrated and reduced, he can, of course, in a limited degree, be made to perform like a marionette; but then it is understood that the more aberrated a person is, the closer he approaches the intelligence quotient of an animal. Given this self-determinism, it is interesting to observe what a man does with it. While he can never escape the "didn't know it was loaded" equation in terms of cataclysm or the unexpected gain of some other life form, he operates in a high zone level of survival potential. But here he is, self-determined, rational, his primary weapon-his mind-in excellent 47 L. RON HUBBARD working order. What are his necessity instincts? Necessity, according to that very sentient if rapidly subject-changing article, the dictionary, is "the state of being necessary; that which is unavoidable; compulsion." It also adds that necessity is "extreme poverty," but we don't want that. We are talking about survival. The compulsion mentioned can be reevaluated in terms of the survival dynamic. That is interior in the organism and the race. And what is "necessary" to survival? We have seen and can prove clinically that there are two factors at work. The necessity of avoiding pain is a factor because degree by degree, little things, not much in themselves, can amount to large pains which, compounded in that rapid geometric progression, bring on death. Pain is the sadness of being bawled out38 for poor work, because that may lead to being fired, which may lead to starvation, which may lead to death. Run any equation into which pain has entered and it can be seen that it reduces down to possible nonsurvival. And if this were all there were to surviving and if necessity were a vicious little gnome39 with a pitchfork, it seems rather obvious that there would be scant reason to go on living. But there is the other part of the equation: pleasure. That is a more stable part than pain, Stoics40 to the contrary, as clinical tests in Dianetics prove. There is therefore a necessity for pleasure, for working, as happiness can be defined, toward known goals over not unknowable obstacles. And the necessity for 38. bawled out: (slang) scolded angrily. 39. gnome: (folklore) any of a race of small, misshapen, dwarf-like beings, supposed to dwell in the earth and guard its treasures. 40. Stoics: people who maintain or affect the mental attitude advocated by the Stoics, a Greek school of philosophy, founded by Zeno about 308 B.C. , holding that human beings should be free from passion and calmly accept all occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will. 48 THE GOAL OF MAN pleasure is such that a great deal of pain can be borne to attain it. Pleasure is the positive commodity. It is enjoyment of work, contemplation of deeds well done; it is a good book or a good friend; it is taking all the skin off one's knees climbing the Matterhorn;41 it is hearing the kid first say "Daddy"; it is a brawl on the Bund42 at Shanghai or the whistle of amour43 from a doorway; it's adventure and hope and enthusiasm and "someday I'll learn to paint"; it's eating a good meal or kissing a pretty girl or playing a stiff game of bluff on the stock exchange. It's what man does that he enjoys doing; it's what man does that he enjoys contemplating; it's what man does that he enjoys remembering; and it may be just the talk of things he knows he'll never do. Man will endure a lot of pain to obtain a little pleasure. Out in the laboratory of the world, it takes very little time to confirm that. And how does necessity fit this picture? There is a necessity for pleasure, a necessity as live and quivering and vital as the human heart itself. He who said that a man who had two loaves of bread should sell one to buy white hyacinth,44 spoke sooth.45 The creative, the constructive, the beautiful, the harmonious, the adventurous, yes, and even escape from the maw46 of oblivion: these things are pleasure and these things are necessity. There was a man once who had walked a thousand miles just to see an orange tree and another who was a 41. Matterhorn: a mountain on the border of Switzerland and Italy. 42. Bund: a street running along the waterfront in Shanghai (a seaport in eastern China). 43. amour: (French) love. 44. hyacinth: a plant of the lily family, widely cultivated for its cylindrical cluster of fragrant flowers in a variety of colors. 45. sooth: truth. 46. maw: anything thought of as consuming, devouring, etc., without end. 49 L. RON HUBBARD mass of scars and poor-set bones who was eager just to get a chance to "fan47 another bronc." It is very well to dwell in some Olympian48 height and write a book of penalties and very well to read to find what writers said that other writers said, but it is not very practical. The pain-drive theory49 does not work. If some of these basics of Dianetics were only poetry about the idyllic50 state of man, they might be justified in that, but it happens that out in the laboratory of the world, they work. Man, in affinity with man, survives, and that survival is pleasure. 47. fan: (Western US, chiefly cowboy use) slap the flanks (of a horse or other animal) repeatedly with a hat to get it to move or move faster. 48. Olympian: of, resembling, characteristic of or suitable to the gods of Olympus (mountain in northeastern Greece); majestic or aloof. 49. pain-drive theory: the theory that pain, deprivation or other unpleasant consequence imposed on or experienced by an organism responding incorrectly under specific conditions establishes, through avoidance, the desired learning or behavior. 50. idyllic: pleasing and simple; pastoral (characteristic of rural life, idealized as peaceful, simple and natural) or picturesque. 50 CHAPTER FOUR The Four Dynamics In the original equations of Dianetics, when the research was young, it was believed that survival could be envisioned in personal terms alone and still answer all conditions. A theory is only as good as it works. And it works as well as it explains observed data and predicts new material which will be found, in fact, to exist. Survival in personal terms was computed until the whole activity of man could be theoretically explained in terms of self alone. The logic looked fairly valid. But then it was applied to the world. Something was wrong: it did not solve problems. In fact, the theory of survival in personal terms alone was so unworkable that it left a majority of behavior phenomena unexplained. But it could be computed and it still looked good. Then it was that a nearly intuitive idea occurred. Man's understanding developed in ratio to his recognition of his brotherhood with the universe. That was high-flown but it yielded results. Was man himself a brotherhood of man? He had evolved and become strong as a gregarious' being, an animal that hunted in packs. It seemed possible that all his activities could be computed in terms of the survival of the group. That computation was made. It looked good. Man survived, it was postulated, solely in terms of the survival of his group. It looked good but it left a majority of observed phenomena unexplained. 1. gregarious: living in herds or flocks. 51 L. RON HUBBARD It was attempted, then, to explain man's behavior in terms of mankind alone; which is to say, it was assumed that mankind survived for mankind in a highly altruistic2 way. This was straight down the sylvan3 path of Jean Jacques Rousseau.4 It could be computed that man lived alone for the survival of all mankind. But when addressed to the laboratory-the world-it did not work. Finally, it was recalled that some had thought that man's entire activity and all his behavior could be explained by assuming that he lived for sex alone. This was not an original assumption. But some original computations were made upon it and it is true that, by a few quick twists of the equation, his survival activity can be made to resolve on only the sexual basis. But when this was applied to observed data, again it failed to explain every phenomenon. An examination was made of what had been attempted. It had been assumed that man survived only for himself as an individual; it had been computed that he survived only for the group, the pack, for society; it had been postulated that he survived only for mankind; and finally, it had been theorized that he lived only for sex. None worked alone. A new computation was made on the survival dynamic. Exactly for what was man surviving? All four of these factors-self, sex, group and mankind-were entered into a new equation. And now it was found, a theory was in hand which worked. It explained all observed phenomena and it predicted new phenomena 2. altruistic: having unselfish concern for the welfare of others. 3. sylvan: of or characteristic of the woods or forests. Used figuratively, as Rousseau's philosophy of the "natural man." 4. Jean Jacques Rousseau: (1712-1778) Swiss-born French philosopher, author, political theorist and composer, who argued that nature is good and civilization bad. 52 THE FOUR DYNAMICS which were discovered to exist. It was a scientific equation, therefore! From the survival dynamic, in this fashion, were evolved the four dynamics. By survival dynamic was meant the basic command Survive! which underlay all activity. By dynamic was meant one of the four purpose divisions of the entire dynamic principle. The four dynamics were not new forces; they were subdivisions of the primary force. Dynamic one is the urge toward ultimate survival on the part of the individual and for himself. It includes his immediate symbiotes,* the extension of culture for his own benefit and name immortality. Dynamic two is the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival via the sex act, the creation of and the rearing of children. It includes their symbiotes, the extension of culture for them and their future provision. Dynamic three is the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival for the group. It includes the symbiotes of the group and the extension of its culture. Dynamic four includes the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival for all mankind. It includes the symbiotes of mankind and the extension of its culture. Life, the atom and the universe and energy itself are included under the symbiotic classification. It will be seen immediately that these four dynamics are actually a spectrum without sharp division lines. The survival dynamic can be seen to sweep out from the individual to embrace the entire species and its symbiotes. None of these dynamics is necessarily stronger than any of the others. Each is strong. They are the four * The Dianetic meaning of symbiote is extended beyond the dictionary definition to mean "any or all life or energy forms which are mutually dependent for survival." The atom depends on the universe, the universe on the atom. -LRH 53 L. RON HUBBARD roads a man takes to survival. And the four roads are actually one road. And the one road is actually a spectrum of thousands of roads contained within the four. They are all in terms of past, present and future in that the present may be a sum of the past and the future may be the product of the past and present. All the purposes of man can be considered to lie within this spectrum and all behavior becomes explained. That man is selfish is a valid statement when one means an aberrated man. That man is antisocial is an equally valid statement if one adds the modifier, aberration. And other such statements resolve equally. Now, it happens that these four dynamics can be seen to compete, one with another, in their operation within an individual or a society. There is a rational reason for this. The phrase "social competition" is a compound of aberrated behavior and sentient difficulties. Any man, group or race may be in contest with any race, group or man and even in contest with sex on an entirely rational level. The equation of the optimum solution would be that a problem has been well resolved which portends* the maximum good for the maximum number of dynamics. That is to say that any solution, modified by the time available to put the solution into effect, should be creative or constructive for the greatest possible number of dynamics. The optimum solution for any problem would be a solution which achieved the maximum benefit in all the dynamics. This means that a man, determining upon some project, would fare best if he benefited everything concerned in the four dynamics as his project touched them. He would then have to benefit himself as well for the solution to be optimum. In other words, the 5. portends: is an indication of; signifies. 54 THE FOUR DYNAMICS benefiting of the group and mankind dynamics but the blocking of the sex dynamic and the self dynamic would be much poorer than the best solution. The survival conduct pattern is built upon this equation of the optimum solution. It is the basic equation of all rational behavior and is the equation on which a Clear functions. It is inherent in man. In other words, the best solution to any problem is that which will bring the greatest good to the greatest number of beings, including self, progeny,6 family associates, political and racial groups, and at length to all mankind. The greatest good may require, as well, some destruction, but the solution deteriorates in a ratio to the destructiveness employed. Self-sacrifice and selfishness are alike reductive of the optimum action equation and alike have been suspected and should be. This is entirely a matter of does it work? Even on an unaberrated basis there are times when one or another of these dynamics have to be dropped from the computation of some activity or other and indeed, few problems are so entirely intense that they must take into account all the dynamics. But when a problem achieves such intensity, and time is not an important factor, serious errors can follow the omission of one or another of the dynamics from the factors considered. In the case of a Napoleon7 "saving France" at the expense of the remainder of mankind in Europe, the equation of the optimum solution was so far neglected that all the revolutionary gains of the French people 6. progeny: children, descendants or offspring collectively. 7. Napoleon: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), French military leader and emperor of France (1804-1815). He led a brilliant campaign of French domination in Europe but ended in ruin, spending the last years of his life as a prisoner on a lonely British island. 55 L. RON HUBBARD were lost. In the case of Caesar8 "saving Rome," the equation was so poorly done that the survival of Rome was impeded. But there are special cases when the equation of the optimum solution becomes so involved with time that certain dynamics must be neglected to permit other dynamics to persist. The case of a sailor giving his own life to save his ship answers the group dynamic. Such an action is a valid solution to a problem. But it violates the optimum solution because it did not answer for dynamic one: self. Many examples of various kinds could be cited where one or another of the dynamics must, of necessity, receive priority, all on an entirely rational basis. On an aberrated basis, the equation is still valid but complicated by irrationalities which have no part of the situation. Many solutions are bad merely because of false educational data or no data at all. But these are still solutions. In the case of aberrated solutions, the dynamics are actually and actively impeded, as will later be outlined in full. 8. Caesar: Julius Caesar (1007-44 B.C.), Roman general and statesman. As part of his military conquests, he invaded Britain in 55 and 54 B.C. Became Roman dictator in 49 B.C. 56 CHAPTER FIVE Summary The dynamic principle of existence is survival. This survival can be graduated into four zones, each one progressively portending a better opportunity of reaching the potential of immortality. Zone 0 borders from death and includes apathy; zone 1 borders from apathy and includes violent effort; zone 2 borders from violence into mediocre, but not entirely satisfactory, success; zone 3 borders from the mediocre to the excellent chance. These zones are each occasioned by the ratio of the suppressor to the survival dynamic. In apathy, zone 0, the suppressor appears too great to be overcome. In the area of violence, zone 1, the suppressor more or less overbalances the survival dynamic, requiring enormous effort which, when expended without result, drops the organism into the zero zone. In the area of mediocrity, zone 2, the suppressor and the survival dynamic are more or less evenly balanced. In the area of zone 3, the survival dynamic has overcome the suppressor and, the chances of survival being excellent, is the area of high response to problems. These four zones might be classed as the zone of no hope, the zone of violent action, the area of balance and the area of high hope. Clinical experiment is the basis of these zones since they follow a progress of mental or physical being as it rises from the death area into high existence. The four dynamics are subdivisions of the survival dynamic and are, in mankind, the thrust toward potential survival in terms of entities. They embrace all the purposes, activities and behavior of mankind. They 57 L. RON HUBBARD could be said to be a survival conduct pattern. The first of these, but not necessarily the most important nor yet the one which will receive priority in various efforts, is the individual dynamic, Dynamic one, which includes the personal survival of the individual as a living person and the survival of his personal symbiotes. Dynamic two is the thrust toward potential immortality through children and includes all sexual activity as well as the symbiotes of the children. Dynamic three is survival in terms of the group, which term may include such things as a club, a military company, a city, a state, a nation; this would include the symbiotes of the group. Dynamic four is the thrust toward potential immortality of mankind as a species and the symbiotes of mankind. Embraced within these classifications are any part of existence, any form of matter and, indeed, the universe. Any problem or situation discoverable within the activities or purposes of mankind is embraced within these dynamics. The equation of the optimum solution is inherent within the organism and, modified by education or viewpoint and modified further by time, is the operating method of unaberrated individuals, groups or mankind. The equation of the optimum solution is always present even in severely aberrated individuals and is used as modified by their education, viewpoint and available time. The aberration does not remove activity from the dynamics of survival. Aberrated conduct is irrational survival conduct and is fully intended to lead to survival. That the intent is not the act does not eradicate the intent. These Are the Fundamental Axioms of Dianetics: The dynamic principle of existence-Survive! 58 SUMMARY Survival, considered as the single and sole purpose, subdivides into four dynamics. Dynamic one is the urge of the individual toward survival for the individual and his symbiotes. (By symbiote is meant all entities and energies which aid survival.) Dynamic two is the urge of the individual toward survival through procreation; it includes both the sex act and the raising of progeny, the care of children and their symbiotes. Dynamic three is the urge of the individual toward survival for the group or the group for the group and includes the symbiotes of that group. Dynamic four is the urge of the individual toward survival for mankind or the urge toward survival of mankind for mankind as well as the group for mankind, etc., and includes the symbiotes of mankind. The absolute goal of survival is immortality or infinite survival. This is sought by the individual in terms of himself as an organism, as a spirit or as a name or as his children, as a group of which he is a member or as mankind and the progeny and symbiotes of others as well as his own. The reward of survival activity is pleasure. The ultimate penalty of destructive activity is death or complete nonsurvival, and is pain. Successes raise the survival potential toward infinite survival. Failures lower the survival potential toward death. The human mind is engaged upon perceiving and retaining data, composing or computing conclusions 59 L. RON HUBBARD and posing and resolving problems related to organisms along all four dynamics; and the purpose of perception, retention, concluding and resolving problems is to direct its own organism and symbiotes and other organisms and symbiotes along the four dynamics toward survival. Intelligence is the ability to perceive, pose and resolve problems. The dynamic is the tenacity to life and vigor and persistence in survival. Both the dynamic and intelligence are necessary to persist and accomplish and neither is a constant quantity from individual to individual, group to group. The dynamics are inhibited by engrams, which lie across them and disperse life force. Intelligence is inhibited by engrams which feed false or improperly graded data into the analyzer.1 Happiness is the overcoming of not unknown obstacles toward a known goal and, transiently, the contemplation of or indulgence in pleasure. The analytical mind is that portion of the mind which perceives and retains experience data to compose and resolve problems and direct the organism along the four dynamics. It thinks in differences and similarities. The reactive mind is that portion of the mind which files and retains physical pain and painful emotion and seeks to direct the organism solely on a stimulus-response basis. It thinks only in identities. The somatic mind is that mind which, directed by the analytical or reactive mind, places solutions into effect on the physical level. 1. analyzer: see analytical mind in the glossary. 60 SUMMARY A training pattern is that stimulus-response mechanism resolved by the analytical mind to care for routine activity or emergency activity. It is held in the somatic mind and can be changed at will by the analytical mind. Habit is that stimulus-response reaction dictated by the reactive mind from the content of engrams and put into effect by the somatic mind. It can be changed only by those things which change engrams. Aberrations, under which is included all deranged or irrational behavior, are caused by engrams. They are stimulus-response, pro- and contrasurvival. Psychosomatic ills are caused by engrams. The engram is the single source of aberrations and psychosomatic ills. Moments of "unconsciousness," when the analytical mind is attenuated2 in greater or lesser degree, are the only moments when engrams can be received. The engram is a moment of "unconsciousness" containing physical pain or painful emotion and all perceptions, and is not available to the analytical mind as experience. Emotion is three things: engramic response to situations, endocrine metering of the body to meet situations on an analytical level, and the inhibition or the furtherance of life force. The potential value of an individual or a group may be expressed by the equation PV = ID" where I is Intelligence and D is Dynamic. 2. attenuated: weakened or reduced in force, intensity, effect, quantity or value. 61 L. RON HUBBARD The worth of an individual is computed in terms of the alignment, on any dynamic, of his potential value with optimum survival along that dynamic. A high PV may, by reversed vector,3 result in a negative worth as in some severely aberrated persons, A high PV on any dynamic assures a high worth only in the unaberrated person. 3. vector: a physical quantity with both magnitude and direction, such as a force or velocity. 62 Book Two The Single Source of All Inorganic Mental and Organic Psychosomatic Ills CHAPTER ONE The Analytical Mind and the Standard Memory Banks This chapter begins the search for human error and tells where it is not. The human mind can be considered to have three major divisions. First, there is the analytical mind; second, there is the reactive mind; and third, there is the somatic mind. Consider the analytical mind as a computing machine. This is analogy because the analytical mind, while it behaves like a computing machine, is yet more fantastically capable than any computing machine ever constructed and infinitely more elaborate. It could be called the "computational mind" or the "egsusheyftef." But for our purposes, the analytical mind, as a descriptive name, will do. This mind may live in the prefrontal lobes'-there is some hint of that-but this is a problem of structure, and nobody really knows about structure. So we shall call this computational part of the mind the "analytical mind" because it analyzes data. The monitor can be considered part of the analytical mind. The monitor could be called the center of awareness of the person. It, inexactly speaking, is the person. It has been approximated by various names for thousands of years, each one reducing down to "I." The monitor is in control of the analytical mind. It is not in control because it has been told to be but only because it is, inherently. It is not a demon who lives in the skull nor a little man who vocalizes one's thoughts. It is "I." 1. prefrontal lobes: portion of the brain directly behind the forehead. 65 L. RON HUBBARD No matter how many aberrations a person may have, "I" is always "I." No matter how "clear" a person becomes, "I" is still "I." "I" may be submerged now and then in an aberree, but it is always present. The analytical mind shows various evidences of being an organ, but as we know in this age so little of structure, the full structural knowledge of the analytical mind must come after we know what it does. And in Dianetics we know precisely that for the first time. It is known and can be proven with ease that the analytical mind, be it one organ of the body or several, behaves as you would expect any good computing machine to behave. What would you want in a computing machine? The action of the analytical mind-or analyzer-is everything anyone could want from the best computer available. It can and does do all the tricks of a computer. And over and above that, it directs the building of computers. And it is as thoroughly right as any computer ever was. The analytical mind is not just a good computer, it is a perfect computer. It never makes a mistake. It cannot err in any way so long as a human being is reasonably intact (unless something has carried away a piece of his mental equipment). The analytical mind is incapable of error, and it is so certain that it is incapable of error that it works out everything on the basis that it cannot make an error. If a person says, "I cannot add," he either means that he has never been taught to add or that he has an aberration about adding. It does not mean that there is anything wrong with the analytical mind. While the whole being is, in an aberrated state, grossly capable of error, still the analytical mind is not. For a computer is just as good as the data on which it operates and no better. Aberration, then, arises from the nature of the data offered to the analytical mind as a problem to be computed. 66 THE ANALYTICAL MIND AND THE STANDARD MEMORY BANKS The analytical mind has its standard memory banks. Just where these are located structurally is again no concern of ours at this time. To operate, the analytical mind has to have percepts2 (data), memory (data) and imagination (data). There are another data storage bank and another part of the human mind which contain aberrations and are the source of insanities. These will be fully covered later and should not be confused with either the analytical mind or the standard memory banks. Whether the data contained in the standard memory banks is evaluated correctly or not, it is all there. The various senses receive information and this information files straight into the standard memory banks. It does not go through the analyzer first. It is filed and the analyzer then has it from the standard banks. There are several of these standard banks and they may be duplicated in themselves so that there are several of each kind of bank. Nature seems generous in such things. There is a bank, or set of banks, for each perception. These can be considered racks of data filed in a cross-index system which would make an intelligence officer3 purple with envy. Any single percept is filed as a concept. The sight of a moving car, for instance, is filed in the visio-bank in color and motion, at the time seen; cross-indexed to the area in which seen; cross-indexed to all data about cars; cross-indexed to thoughts about cars; and so forth and so forth, with the additional filing of conclusions (thought stream) of the moment and thought streams of the past with all their conclusions. The sound of that car is similarly filed from the ears straight into the audio-bank, and 2. percepts: recognizable sensations or impressions received by the mind through the senses. 3. intelligence officer: a military officer responsible for collecting and processing data on hostile forces, weather and terrain. 67 L. RON HUBBARD cross-indexed multitudinously as before. The other sensations of that moment are also filed in their own banks. Now, it may be that the whole filing is done in one bank. It would be simpler that way. But this is not a matter of structure but mental performance. Eventually somebody will discover just how they are filed. Right now the function of filing is all that interests us. Every percept-sight, sound, smell, feeling, taste, organic sensation, pain, rhythm, kinesthesia (weight and muscular motion) and emotion-is each properly and neatly filed in the standard banks in full. It does not matter how many aberrations a physically intact person has or whether he thinks he can or cannot contain this data or recall it; the file is there and is complete. This file begins at a very early period, of which more later. It then runs consecutively, whether the individual is asleep or awake, except in moments of "unconsciousness,"* for an entire lifetime. It apparently has an infinite capacity. The numbers of these concepts (concept means "that which is retained after something has been perceived") would stagger an astronomer's computer. The existence and profusion of memories retained were discovered and studied in a large number of cases, and they can be examined in anyone by certain processes. Everything in this bank is correct insofar as the single action of perception is concerned. There may be organic errors in the organs of perception, such as blindness or deafness (when physical, not aberrational), which would leave blanks in the banks; and there may * Unconsciousness throughout this work means a greater or lesser reduction of awareness on the part of "I"-an attenuation of working power of the analytical mind. -LRH 68 THE ANALYTICAL MIND AND THE STANDARD MEMORY BANKS be organic impairment, such as partial organic deafness, which would leave partial blanks. But these things are not errors in the standard memory banks; they are simply absence of data. Like the computer, the standard memory banks are perfect, recording faithfully and reliably. Now, part of the standard banks is audio-semantic,4 which is to say, the recordings of words heard. And part of the banks is visio-semantic, which is to say, the recordings of words read. These are special parts of the sound and sight files. A blind man who has to read with his fingers develops a tactile-semantic file. The content of the speech files is exactly as heard without alteration. Another interesting part of the standard memory banks is that they apparently file the original and hand forward exact copies to the analyzer. They will hand out as many exact copies as are demanded without diminishing the actual file original. And they hand out these copies each in kind with color-motion sight, tone-audio, etc. The amount of material which is retained in the average standard memory banks would fill several libraries. But the method of retention is invariable. And the potentiality of recall is perfect. The primary source of error in "rational" computation comes under the headings of insufficient data and erroneous data. The individual, daily facing new situations, is not always in possession of all the material he requires to make a decision. And he may have been told something on "good authority" which was not true and yet which did not find counterevidence in the banks. Between the standard banks, which are perfect and reliable, and the computer-the analytical mind-which 4. semantic: of, pertaining to or arising from the different meanings of words or other symbols. 69 L. RON HUBBARD is perfect and reliable, there is no irrational concourse.5 The answer is always as right as it can be made to be in the light of data at hand, and that is all anyone can ask of a computing device or a recording device. The analytical mind goes even further in its efforts to be right than one would suppose. It constantly checks and weighs new experience in the light of old experience, forms new conclusions in the light of old conclusions, changes old conclusions, and generally is very busy being right. The analytical mind might be considered to have been given a sacred post of trust by the cells to safeguard the colony, and it does everything within its power to carry out that mission. It has correct data, as correct as possible; and it does correct computations on them, as correct as they can be made. When one considers the enormous number of factors which one handles, for instance, in the action of driving a car ten blocks, he can appreciate how very, very busy on how very many levels that analytical mind can be. Now, before we introduce the villain of this piece, the reactive mind, it is necessary to understand something about the relation of the analytical mind to the organism itself. The analytical mind, charged with full responsibility, is far from without authority to carry out its actions and desires. Through the mechanisms of the life function regulator (which handles all the mechanical functions of living), the analytical mind can affect any function of the body it desires to affect. In excellent working order-which is to say, when the organism is not aberrated-the analytical mind can influence the heartbeat, the endocrines (such things as 5. concourse: concurrence in action or causation, cooperation; combined action. 70 THE ANALYTICAL MIND AND THE STANDARD MEMORY BANKS calcium and sugar in the blood, adrenaline," etc.), selective blood flow (stopping it in the limbs or starting it at will), urine, excreta,7 etc. All glandular, rhythm and fluid functions of the body can be at the command of the analytical mind. This is not to say that in a cleared person they always are. That would be very uncomfortable and bothersome. But it does say that the analytical mind can effect changes at desire when it skills itself to do so. This is a matter of laboratory proof, very easy to do. People have long been intuitive about the "full power of the mind." Well, the full power of the mind would be the analytical mind working with the standard memory banks, the life function regulator and one other thing. The last and most important thing is, of course, the organism. It is in the charge of the analytical mind. And the analytical mind controls it in other ways than life function. All muscles and the remainder of the organism can be under the full command of the analytical mind. In order to keep it and its circuits free of bric-a-brac and minor activities, the analytical mind is provided with a learned training pattern regulator. Into this, by education, it can place the stimulus-response patterns necessary for the performance of tasks like talking, walking, piano playing, etc. These learned patterns are not unchangeable. Because they are selected by the analytical mind after thought and effort, there is seldom any need to change them; if new situations arise, a new pattern is trained into the muscles. None of these are "conditionings"; they are simply training patterns 6. adrenaline: a hormone secreted by the adrenal gland, that stimulates the heart, increases muscular strength, etc. 7. excreta: waste matter excreted from the body, as sweat or urine. 71 L. RON HUBBARD which the organism can use without attention of any magnitude from the analyzer. An uncountable number of such patterns can be laid into the organism by this method. And they are not the source of any trouble since they file by time and situation, and a very little thought will serve to annul old ones in favor of new ones. All muscles, voluntary and "involuntary," can be at the command of the analytical mind. Here, then, is the composite of a sentient being. There is no chance for error beyond the errors incident to insufficient data and erroneous but accepted data (and the last will be used by the analyzer just once if that once proves the data to be wrong). Here is the realm of pleasure, emotion, creation and construction and even destruction, if the computation on the optimum solution says something has to be destroyed. The dynamics underlie the activities of the analytical mind. The urge toward survival explains all its actions. That we can understand the fundamental simplicity of the functional mechanism does not, however, mean that a man operating this way alone is cold or calculating or intent on "tooth and claw." The nearer man approaches this optimum, in an individual or in a whole society, the quicker and warmer is that society, the more honest may be its moods and actions. Sanity depends upon rationality. Here is optimum rationality and therefore optimum sanity. And here also are all the things man likes to think man should be like or, for that matter, what he has represented his better gods to be like. This is the Clear. This is sanity. This is happiness. This is survival. Where is the error? 72 CHAPTER Two The Reactive Mind It is fairly well accepted in these times that life in all forms evolved from the basic building blocks: the virus1 and the cell. Its only relevance to Dianetics is that such a proposition works-and actually that is all we ask of Dianetics. There is no point to writing here a vast tome on biology and evolution. We can add some chapters to those things, but Charles Darwin did his job well and the fundamental principles of evolution can be found in his and other works. The proposition on which Dianetics was originally entered was evolution. It was postulated that the cells themselves had the urge to survive and that that urge was common to life. It was further postulated that organisms-individuals-were constructed of cells and were in fact aggregations2 of colonies of cells. As went the building block, so went the organism. In the finite realms and for any of our purposes, man could be considered to be a colonial aggregation of cells and it could be assumed that his purpose was identical with the purpose of his building blocks. The cell is a unit of life which is seeking to survive and only to survive. Man is a structure of cells which are seeking to survive and only to survive. Man's mind is the command post of operation and is 1. virus: a microscopic agent that can reproduce only within the cells of living hosts-mainly bacteria, plants and animals. 2. aggregations: groups or masses of distinct things or individuals. 73 L. RON HUBBARD constructed to resolve problems and pose problems related to survival and only to survival. The action of survival, if optimum, would lead to survival. The optimum survival conduct pattern was formulated and then studied for exceptions, and there were no exceptions found. The survival conduct pattern was discovered to be far from sterile and barren but was full of rich and most pleasant activity. None of these postulates outlawed any concept concerning the human soul or divine or creative imagination. It was understood perfectly that this was a study in the finite universe only and that spheres and realms of thought and action might very well exist above this finite sphere. But it was also discovered that none of these factors were needed to resolve the entire problem of aberration and irrational conduct. The human mind was discovered to have been most grossly maligned,3 for it was found to be possessed of capabilities far in excess of any heretofore imagined, much less tested. Basic human character was found to have been pilloried4 because man had not been able to distinguish between irrational conduct derived from poor data and irrational conduct derived from another far more vicious source. If there ever was a devil, he designed the reactive mind. This functional mechanism managed to bury itself from view so thoroughly that only inductive5 philosophy, 3. maligned: spoken evil of; defamed; slandered. 4. pilloried: held up to public ridicule or scorn. 5. inductive: of or using induction, logical reasoning that a general law exists because particular cases that seem to be examples of it exist. 74 THE REACTIVE MIND traveling from effect back to cause, served to uncover it. The detective work which was invested in the location of this archcriminal of the human psyche occupied many years. Its identity can now be certified by any technician in any clinic or in any group of men. Two hundred and seventy-three individuals have been examined and treated, representing all the various types of inorganic mental illness and the many varieties of psychosomatic ills. In each one this reactive mind was found operating, its principles unvaried. This is a long series of cases and will soon become longer. The reactive mind is possessed by everyone. No human being examined anywhere was discovered to be without one or without aberrative content in his engram bank, the reservoir of data which serves the reactive mind. What does this mind do? It shuts off hearing recall. It places vocal circuits in the mind. It makes people tone-deaf. It makes people stutter. It does anything and everything that can be found in any list of mental ills: psychoses, neuroses, compulsions, repressions . . . What can it do? It can give a man arthritis,6 bursi-tis,7 asthma,8 allergies, sinusitis,9 coronary10 trouble, high blood pressure and so on, down the whole catalog of psychosomatic ills, adding a few more which were never specifically classified as psychosomatic, such as the common cold. And it is the only thing in the human being which 6. arthritis: a condition causing inflammation, pain and stiffness in the joints. 1. bursitis: inflammation of a bursa, a pouch between joints or between muscles or skin, etc., and bones, for lessening friction. 8. asthma: a generally chronic disorder characterized by wheezing, coughing, difficulty in breathing and a suffocating feeling. 9. sinusitis: inflammation of one or more sinus cavities in the skull. 10. coronary: of or pertaining to the human heart, with respect to health. 75 L. RON HUBBARD can produce these effects. It is the thing which uniformly brings them about. This is the mind which made Socrates" think he had a "demon" that gave him answers. This is the mind that made Caligula'2 appoint his horse to a government post. This is the mind which made Caesar cut the right hands from thousands of Gauls,13 which made Napoleon reduce the height of Frenchmen one inch. This is the mind which keeps war a thing of alarm, which makes politics irrational, which makes superior officers snarl, which makes children cry in fear of the dark. This is the mind which makes a man suppress his hopes, which holds his apathies, which gives him irresolution when he should act and kills him before he has begun to live. If there ever was a devil, he invented it. Discharge the content of this mind's bank and the arthritis vanishes, myopia14 gets better, heart illness decreases, asthma disappears, stomachs function properly and the whole catalog of ills goes away and stays away. Discharge the reactive engram bank and the schizophrenic15 faces reality at last, the manic-depressive16 11. Socrates: (ca. 469-399 B.C.) Greek philosopher and teacher who believed in a "demon" whose voice warned him whenever he was about to make a wrong decision. 12. Caligula: (A.D. 12-41) Roman emperor (A.D. 37-41). His reign was marked by extreme cruelty and tyranny. 13. Gauls: any of the Celtic-speaking people of Gaul, ancient region in western Europe consisting of what is now mainly France and Belgium. 14. myopia: inability to see clearly what is far away-nearsighted-ness. 15. schizophrenic: (psychiatry) person suffering from schizophrenia, a mental illness in which an individual is being two people madly inside of himself. It is a psychiatry classification derived from the Latin schizo, meaning "split," and the Greek phren, meaning "mind." 16. manic-depressive: (psychiatry) having a mental disorder marked by alternating extremes of excitement and depression. 76 THE REACTIVE MIND sets forth to accomplish things, the neurotic stops clinging to books which tell him how much he needs his neuroses and begins to live, the woman stops snapping at her children, and the dipsomaniac17 can drink when he likes and stop. These are scientific facts. They compare invariably with observed experience. The reactive mind is the entire source of aberration. It can be proved and has been repeatedly proven that there is no other, for when that engram bank is discharged, all undesirable symptoms vanish and a man begins to operate on his optimum pattern. If one were looking for something like demons in a human mind-such as those one observes in some inmates of madhouses-he could find them easily enough. Only they are not demons. They are bypass circuits from the engram bank. What prayers and exhortations have been used against these bypass circuits! If one did not believe in demons, if one supposed that man were good after all (as a postulate, of course), how would the evil get into him? What would be the source of these insane rages? What would be the source of his slips of the tongue?'8 How would he come to know irrational fear? Why is it that one does not like his boss although his boss has always been pleasant? Why is it that suicides smash their bodies to bits? Why does man behave destructively, irrationally, fighting wars, killing, ruining whole sections of mankind? What is the source of all neuroses, psychoses, insanities? 17. dipsomaniac: a person suffering from an uncontrollable craving for alcohol. 18. slips of the tongue: mistakes in speaking, as inadvertent remarks. 77 L. RON HUBBARD Let us return to a brief examination of the analytical mind. Let us examine its memory banks. Here we find all the sense concepts on file. Or so it appears at first glance. Let us take another look, a look at the time factor. There is a time sense about these analytical mind banks. It is very accurate, as though the organism were equipped with a fine watch. But there is something wrong here about time-it has gaps in it! There are moments when nothing seems to be filed in these standard banks. These are gaps which take place during moments of "unconsciousness"-that state of being caused by anesthesia, drugs, injury or shock. This is the only data missing from a standard bank. If in hypnotic trance you examine a patient's memory of an operation, these incidents are the only periods in the banks you will not find. You can find these if you care to look and don't care what happens to your patient-of which more later. But the point is that there is something missing which has always been considered by one and all in any age never to have been recorded. One and all in every age have never been able to put a finger on insanity either. Are these two data in agreement and do they have relationship? They definitely do. There are two things which appear to be-but are not-recorded in the standard banks: painful emotion and physical pain. How would you go about the building of a sensitive machine upon which the life and death affairs of an organism depended, which was to be the chief tool of an individual? Would you leave its delicate circuits prey to every overload, or would you install a fuse19 system? 19. fuse: a wire or strip of easily melted metal, usually set in a plug, placed in a circuit as a safeguard: if the current becomes too strong, the metal melts, thus breaking the circuit. 78 THE REACTIVE MIND If a delicate instrument is in circuit with a power line, it is protected by several sets of fuses. Any computer would be so safeguarded. It happens that there is some small evidence to support the electrical theory of the nervous system. In pain there are very heavy overcharges in the nerves. It may well have been-and elsewhere some Dianetic computations have been made about this-that the brain is the absorber for overcharges of power resulting from injury, the power itself being generated by the injured cells in the area of injury. That is theory and has no place here save to serve as an example. We are dealing now only with scientific fact. The action of the analytical mind during a moment of intense pain is suspended. In fact, the analytical mind behaves just as though it were an organ to which vital supply is shut off whenever shock is present. As an example, a man struck in the side by a car is knocked "unconscious" and, on regaining "consciousness," has no record of the period when he was "knocked out." This would be a nonsurvival circumstance. It means that there would be no volition on the part of anyone who was injured, and this is the time when the organism most requires volition. So this is nonsurvival if the whole mind cuts out whenever pain appears. Would an organism with more than a billion years of biological engineering behind it leave a problem like this unsolved? Indeed, the organism solved the problem. Maybe the problem is very difficult, biologically, and maybe the solution is not very good, but large provision has been made for those moments when the organism is "unconscious." The answer to the problem of making the organism react in moments of "unconsciousness" or near "unconsciousness" is also the answer to insanity and psychosomatic illnesses and all the strange mental quirks to 79 L. RON HUBBARD which people are liable and which gave rise to that fable "it is human to err." Clinical tests prove these statements to be scientific facts: 1. The mind records on some level continuously during the entire life of the organism. 2. All recordings of the lifetime are available. 3. "Unconsciousness," in which the mind is oblivious of its surroundings, is possible only in death and does not exist as total amnesia in life. 4. All mental and physical derangements of a psychic nature come about from moments of "unconsciousness." 5. Such moments can be reached and drained of charge20 with the result of returning the mind to optimum operating condition. "Unconsciousness" is the single source of aberration. There is no such action as "mental conditioning" except on a conscious training level (where it exists only with the consent of the person). If you care to make the experiment you can take a man, render him "unconscious," hurt him and give him information. By Dianetic technique, no matter what information you gave him, it can be recovered. This experiment should not be carelessly conducted because you might also render him insane. A pale shade of this operation can be obtained by hypnosis, either by its usual techniques or drugs. By installing "positive suggestions" in a subject, he can be made to act like an insane person. This test is not a new one. It has been well known that compulsions or repressions can be so introduced into the psyche. The ancient 20. charge: harmful energy or force accumulated and stored in the reactive mind, resulting from the conflicts and unpleasant experiences that a person has had. 80 THE REACTIVE MIND Greek was quite familiar with it and used it to produce various delusions. There is what is known as a "posthypnotic suggestion." An understanding of this can assist an understanding of the basic mechanism of insanity. The actions under both circumstances are not identical, but they are similar enough in their essence. A man is placed in a hypnotic trance by standard hypnotic technique or some hypnotic drug. The operator then may say to him, "When you awaken there is something you must do. Whenever I touch my tie you will remove your coat. When I let go my tie, you will put on your coat. Now you will forget that I have told you to do this." The subject is then awakened. He is not consciously aware of the command. If told he had been given an order while "asleep," he would resist the idea or shrug, but he would not know. The operator then touches his tie. The subject may make some remark about its being too warm and so take his coat off. The operator then releases his tie. The subject may remark that he is now cold and will put his coat back on. The operator then touches his tie. The subject may say that his coat has been to the tailor's and with much conversation finally explain why he is taking it off, perhaps to see if the back seam had been sewn properly. The operator then releases his tie and the subject says he is satisfied with the tailor and so replaces his coat. The operator may touch his tie many times and each time receive action on the part of the subject. At last, the subject may become aware, from the expressions on people's faces, that something is wrong. He will not know what is wrong. He will not even know that the touching of the tie is the signal which makes him take off his coat. He will begin to grow uncomfortable. He may find fault with the operator's appearance 81 L. RON HUBBARD and begin to criticize his clothing. He still does not know the tie is a signal. He will still react and remain in ignorance that there is some strange reason he must take off his coat-all he knows is that he is uncomfortable with his coat on whenever the tie is touched, uncomfortable with his coat off every time the tie is released. These various actions are very important to an understanding of the reactive mind. Hypnotism is a laboratory tool. It is not used to any extent in Dianetic therapy, but it has served as a means of examining minds and getting their reactions. Hypnotism is a wild variable. A few people can be hypnotized, many cannot be. Hypnotic suggestions will sometimes "take" and sometimes they won't. Sometimes they make persons well and sometimes they make them ill-the same suggestion reacting differently in different people. An engineer knows how to make use of a wild variable. There is something which makes it unpredictable. Finding out the basic reason hypnotism was a variable helped to discover the source of insanity. And understanding the mechanism of the posthypnotic suggestion can aid an understanding of aberration. No matter how foolish a suggestion is given to a subject under hypnosis, he will carry it out one way or another. He can be told to remove his shoes or call someone at ten the following day or to eat peas for breakfast and he will. These are direct orders and he will comply with them. He can be told that his hats do not fit him and he will believe that they do not. Any suggestion will operate within his mind unbeknownst to his higher levels of awareness. Very complex suggestions can be given. One such would be to the effect that he was unable to utter the word /. He would omit it from his conversation, using remarkable makeshifts without being "aware" that he was having to avoid the word. Or he could be told that 82 REACTIVE MIND he must never look at his hands and he will not. These are repressions. Given to the subject when drugged or in a hypnotic sleep, these suggestions operate when he is awake. And they will continue to operate until released by the hypnotic operator. He can be told that he has an urge to sneeze every time he hears the word rug and that he will sneeze when it is spoken. He can be told that he must jump two feet in the air every time he sees a cat and he will jump. And he will do these things after he has been awakened. These are compulsions. He can be told that he will think very sexual thoughts about a certain girl but that when he thinks them he will feel his nose itch. He can be told that he has a continual urge to lie down and sleep and that every time he lies down he will feel that he cannot sleep. He will experience these things. These are neuroses. In further experiments he can be told, when he is in his hypnotic "sleep," that he is the president of the country and that the secret service agents are trying to murder him. Or he can be told that he is being fed poison in every restaurant in which he attempts to eat. These are psychoses. He can be informed that he is really another person and that he owns a yacht and answers to the name of "Sir Reginald." Or he can be told that he is a thief, that he has a prison record and that the police are looking for him. These would be schizophrenic and paranoid-schizophrenic(tm) insanities, respectively. 21. paranoid-schizophrenic: (psychiatry) of or concerning a mental condition resembling paranoia (form of psychosis in which a person imagines that he is being persecuted or that he is very great or important) but also characterized by autistic (concerning a state of mind characterized by daydreaming, hallucinations and disregard of external reality) behavior and gradual deterioration of the personality. 83 L. RON HUBBARD The operator can inform the subject that the subject is the most wonderful person on Earth and that everybody thinks so. Or that the subject is the object of adoration of all women. This would be a manz'c-type insanity. He can be convinced, while hypnotized, that when he wakes he will feel so terrible that he will hope for nothing but death. This would be the depressive-type insanity. He can be told that all he can think about is how sick he is and that every malady of which he reads becomes his. This would make him react like a hypochondriac.n Thus we could go down the catalog of mental ills and by concocting positive suggestions to create the state of mind, we could bring about, in the awakened subject, a semblance to every insanity. Understood that these are semblances. They are similar to insanity in that the subject would act like an insane person. He would not be an insane person. The moment the suggestion is relieved-the subject being informed that it was a suggestion-the aberration (and all these insanities, etc., are grouped under the heading of aberration) theoretically vanishes.* * An injunction here. These are tests. They have been made on people who could be hypnotized and people who could not be but who were drugged. They brought forth valuable data for Dianetics. They can be duplicated only when you know Dianetics, unless you want to actually drive somebody insane by accident. For these suggestions do not always vanish. Hypnotism is a wild variable. It is dangerous and belongs in the parlor in the same way you would want an atom bomb there. -LRH 22. hypochondriac: a person who continually shows unnecessary anxiety about his health. 84 THE REACTIVE MIND The duplication of aberrations of all classes and kinds in subjects who have been hypnotized or drugged has demonstrated that there is some portion of the mind which is not in contact with the consciousness but which contains data. It was the search for this portion of the mind which led to the resolution of the problem of insanity, psychosomatic ills and other aberrations. It was not approached through hypnotism, and hypnotism is just another tool, a tool which is of only occasional use in the practice of Dianetics and is, indeed, not needed at all. Here we have an individual who is acting sanely, who is given a positive suggestion and who then temporarily acts insanely. His sanity is restored by the release of the suggestion into his consciousness, at which moment it loses its force upon him. But this is only a semblance of the mechanism involved. The actual insanity, one not laid now by some hypnotist, does not need to emerge into the consciousness to be released. There is this difference and others between hypnotism and the actual source of aberration; but hypnotism is a demonstration of its working parts. Review the first example of the positive suggestion. The subject was "unconscious," which is to say, he was not in possession of complete awareness or self-determinism. He was given something he must do and the something was hidden from his consciousness. The operator gave him a signal. When the signal occurred, the subject performed an act. The subject gave reasons for the act which were not the real reasons for it. The subject found fault with the operator and the operator's clothing but did not see that it was the tie which signaled the action. The suggestion was released and the subject no longer felt a compulsion to perform the act. These are the parts of aberration. Once one knows exactly what parts of what are aberrations, the whole 85 L. RON HUBBARD problem is very simple. It seems incredible at first glance that the source could have remained so thoroughly hidden for so many thousands of years of research. But at second glance, it becomes a wonder that the source was ever discovered. For it is hidden cunningly and well. "Unconsciousness" of the nonhypnotic variety is a little more rugged. It takes more than a few passes of the hand to cause "unconsciousness" of the insanity-producing variety. The shock of accidents, the anesthetics used for operations, the pain of injuries and the deliriums of illness are the principal sources of what we call "unconsciousness." The mechanism, in our analogue23 of the mind, is very simple. In comes a destructive wave of physical pain or a pervading poison such as ether24 and out go some or all of the fuses of the analytical mind. When it goes out, so go what we know as the standard memory banks. The periods of "unconsciousness" are blanks in the standard memory banks. These missing periods make up what Dianetics calls the reactive mind bank. The times when the analytical mind is in full operation plus the times when the reactive mind is in operation are a continuous line of consecutive recording for the entire period of life. During the periods when the analytical mind is cut out of circuit in full or in part, the reactive mind cuts in, in full or in part. In other words, if the analytical mind is unfused so that it is half out of circuit, the reactive mind is half in circuit. No such sharp percentages 23. analogue: thing or part that is similar or comparable in certain respects. 24. ether: a drug used to produce anesthesia, as before surgery. 86 THE REACTIVE MIND are actually possible, but this is to give an approximation. When the individual is "unconscious" in full or in part, the reactive mind is cut in, in full or in part. When he is fully conscious, his analytical mind is fully in command of the organism. When his consciousness is reduced, the reactive mind is cut into the circuit just that much. The moments which contain "unconsciousness" in the individual are contrasurvival moments, by and large. Therefore it is vital that something take over so that the individual can go through motions to save the whole organism. The fighter who fights half out on his feet, the burned man who drags himself out of the fire-these are cases when the reactive mind is valuable. The reactive mind is very rugged. It would have to be in order to stand up to the pain waves which knock out other sentience in the body. It is not very refined. But it is most awesomely accurate. It possesses a low order of computing ability, an order which is submoron, but one would expect a low order of ability from a mind which stays in circuit when the body is being crushed or fried. The reactive bank does not store memories as we think of them. It stores engrams.* These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full "unconsciousness." They are just as accurate as any other recording in the body. But they have their own force. They are like phonograph records or motion pictures, if these contained all perceptions of sight, sound, smell, taste, organic sensation, etc. * The word engram, in Dianetics is used in its severely accurate sense as a "definite and permanent trace left by a stimulus on the protoplasm of a tissue." It is considered as a unit group of stimuli impinged solely on the cellular being. - LRH 87 L. RON HUBBARD The difference between an engram and a memory, however, is quite distinct. An engram can be permanently fused into any and all body circuits and behaves like an entity. In all laboratory tests on these engrams they were found to possess "inexhaustible" sources of power to command the body. No matter how many times one was reactivated in an individual, it was still powerful. Indeed, it became even more able to exert its power in proportion to its reactivation. The only thing which could even begin to shake these engrams was the technique which developed into Dianetic therapy, which will be covered in full in the third section of this volume. This is an example of an engram: A woman is knocked down by a blow. She is rendered "unconscious." She is kicked and told she is a faker, that she is no good, that she is always changing her mind. A chair is overturned in the process. A faucet is running in the kitchen. A car is passing in the street outside. The engram contains a running record of all these perceptions: sight, sound, tactile, taste, smell, organic sensation, kinetic sense, joint position, thirst record, etc. The engram would consist of the whole statement made to her when she was "unconscious": the voice tones and emotion in the voice, the sound and feel of the original and later blows, the tactile of the floor, the feel and sound of the chair overturning, the organic sensation of the blow, perhaps the taste of blood in her mouth or any other taste present there, the smell of the person attacking her and the smells in the room, the sound of the passing car's motor and tires, etc. These would all be considered something on the order of a "positive suggestion." But there is something else here which is new, something which is not in the standard banks except by context: pain and painful emotion. THE REACTIVE MIND These things are what make the difference between the standard banks and the reactive engram banks: physical pain and painful emotion. Physical pain and painful emotion are the difference between an engram, which is the cause of aberration-all aberration-and a memory.* We all have heard that bad experience is helpful to living and that without bad experience, man never learns. This may be very, very true. But it doesn't embrace the engram. That isn't experience. That is commanded action. Perhaps before man had a large vocabulary, these engrams were of some use to him. They were survival in ways which will be developed later. But when man acquired a fine, homonymic (words that sound the same but mean different things) language, and indeed, when he acquired any language, these engrams were much more a liability than a help. And now, with man well evolved, these engrams do not protect him at all but make him mad, inefficient and ill. The proof of any assertion lies in its applicability. When these engrams are deleted from the reactive mind bank, rationality and efficiency are enormously heightened, health is greatly increased and the individual computes rationally on the survival conduct pattern, which is to say, he enjoys himself and the society of those around him and is constructive and creative. He is destructive only when something actually threatens the sphere of his dynamics. These engrams, then, are entirely negative in value * In Dianetics, a memory is considered to be any concept of perceptions stored in the standard memory banks which is potentially recallable by the "I." A scene beheld by the eyes and perceived by the other senses becomes a record in the standard memory banks and later may be recalled by "I" for reference. -LRH 89 L. RON HUBBARD in this stage of man's development. When he was nearer the level of his animal cousins (who have, all of them, reactive minds of this same kind), he might have had use for the data. But language and his changed existence make any engram a distinct liability, and no engram has any constructive value. The reactive mind was provided to secure survival. It still pretends to act in that fashion. But its wild errors now lead only in the other direction. There are actually three kinds of engrams, all of them aberrative: First is the contrasurvival engrain. This contains physical pain, painful emotion, all other perceptions and menace to the organism. A child knocked out by a rapist and abused receives this type of engram. The contrasurvival engram contains apparent or actual antagonism to the organism. The second engram type is the prosurvival engram. A child who has been abused is ill. He is told, while he is partially or wholly "unconscious," that he will be taken care of, that he is dearly loved, etc. This engram is not taken as contrasurvival but prosurvival. It seems to be in favor of survival. Of the two this last is the most aberrative since it is reinforced by the law of affinity which is always more powerful than fear. Hypnotism preys on this characteristic of the reactive mind, being a sympathetic address to an artificially unconscious subject. Hypnotism is as limited as it is because it does not contain, as a factor, physical pain and painful emotion: things which keep an engram out of sight and moored25 below the level of "consciousness." The third is the painful emotion engram which is similar to the other engrams. It is caused by the shock of sudden loss, such as the death of a loved one. The reactive mind bank is composed exclusively of 25. moored: fixed firmly; secured. 90 THE. REACTIVE MIND these engrams. The reactive mind thinks exclusively with these engrams. And it "thinks" with them in a way which would make Korzybski26 swear, for it thinks in terms of full identification, which is to say identities, one thing identical to another. If the analytical mind did a computation on apples and worms, it could be stated, probably, as follows: some apples have worms in them, others don't; when biting an apple one occasionally finds a worm unless the apple has been sprayed properly; worms in apples leave holes. The reactive mind, however, doing a computation on apples and worms as contained in its engram bank, would calculate as follows: apples are worms are bites are holes in apples are holes in anything are apples and always are worms are apples are bites, etc. The analytical mind's computations might embrace the most staggering summations of calculus,27 the shifty turns of symbolic logic,28 the computations requisite to bridge-building or dressmaking. Any mathematical equation ever seen came from the analytical mind and might be used by the analytical mind in resolving the most routine problems. But not the reactive mind! That's so beautifully, 26. Korzybski: Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), American scientist and writer; developed the subject of general semantics, a methodology that attempts to improve human behavior through a critical use of words and symbols. 27. calculus: (mathematics) a method of calculation in higher mathematics; a way of making calculations about quantities which are continually changing, such as the speed of a falling stone or the slope of a curved line. Calculus measures little bits of things in order to find out what the whole thing will do. That is the whole theory of calculus. 28. symbolic logic: a modern type of formal logic using special mathematical symbols to stand for propositions and for the relationships among propositions. 91 L. RON HUBBARD wonderfully simple that it can be stated, in operation, to have just one equation: A = A = A = A = A. Start any computation with the reactive mind. Start it with the data it contains, of course. Any datum is just the same to it as any other datum in the same experience. An analytical computation done on the woman being kicked, as mentioned, would be that women get themselves into situations sometimes when they get kicked and hurt and men have been known to kick and hurt women. A reactive mind computation about this engram, as an engram, would be: the pain of the kick equals the pain of the blow equals the overturning chair equals the passing car equals the faucet equals the fact that she is a faker equals the fact that she is no good equals the fact that she changes her mind equals the voice tones of the man equals the emotion equals a faker equals a faucet running equals the pain of the kick equals organic sensation in the area of the kick equals the overturning chair equals changing one's mind equals . . . But why continue? Every single perception in this engram equals every other perception in this engram. What? That's crazy? Precisely! Let us further examine our posthypnotic positive suggestion of the touched tie and the removed coat. In this we have the visible factors of how the reactive mind operates. This posthypnotic suggestion needs only an emotional charge and physical pain to make it a dangerous engram. Actually it is an engram of a sort. It is laid in by sympathy between the operator and subject, which would make it a sympathy engram-prosurvival. Now, we know that the operator had only to touch his tie to make the awakened subject remove his coat. The subject did not know what it was which caused him 92 THE REACTIVE MIND to remove his coat and found all manner of explanation for the action, none of which was the right one. The engram, the posthypnotic suggestion in this case, was actually placed in the reactive mind bank. It was below the level of consciousness, it was compulsion springing from below the level of consciousness. And it worked upon the muscles to make the subject remove his coat. It was data fused into the circuits of the body below the command level of the analytical mind and operated not only upon the body but also upon the analytical mind itself. If this subject took off his coat every time he saw somebody touch a necktie, society would account him slightly mad. And yet there was no power of consent about this. If he had attempted to thwart the operator by refusing to remove the coat, the subject would have experienced great discomfort of one sort or another. Let us now take an example of the reactive mind's processes in a lower echelon of life: A fish swims into the shallows where the water is brackish,29 yellow and tastes of iron. He has just taken a mouthful of shrimp when a bigger fish rushes at him and knocks against his tail. The small fish manages to get away but he has been physically hurt. Having negligible analytical powers, the small fish depends upon reaction for much of his choice of activity. Now he heals his tail and goes on about his affairs. But one day he is attacked by a larger fish and gets his tail bumped. This time he is not seriously hurt, merely bumped. But something has happened. Something within him considers that in his choice of action he is now being careless. Here is a second injury in the same area. 29. brackish: somewhat salty, as the water of some marshes near the sea. 93 L. RON HUBBARD The computation on the fish reactive level was: shallows equals brackish equals yellow equals iron taste equals pain in tail equals shrimp in mouth, and any one of these equals any other. The bump in the tail on the second occasion keyed in10 the engram. It demonstrated to the organism that something like the first accident (identity thought) could happen again. Therefore beware! The small fish, after this, swims into brackish water. This makes him slightly "nervous." But he goes on swimming and finds himself in yellow and brackish water. And still he does not turn back. He begins to get a small pain in his tail. But he keeps on swimming. Suddenly he gets a taste of iron and the pain in his tail turns on heavily. And away he goes like a flash. No fish was after him. There were shrimp to be had there. But away he went anyway. Dangerous place! And if he had not turned away, he would have really gotten himself a pain in the tail. The mechanism is survival activity of a sort. In a fish it may serve a purpose. But in a man, who takes off a coat every time somebody touches a tie, the survival mechanism has long outlived its time. But it is there! Let us further investigate our young man and the coat. The signal for the coat removal was very precise. The operator touched his tie. This is equivalent to any or all of the perceptions the fish received and which made the fish turn back. The touch of the tie could have been a dozen things. Any one of the dozen might have signaled the removal of the coat. 30. key in: make active. A key-in is a moment when the environment around the awake but fatigued or distressed individual is itself similar to the dormant (inactive) engram. At that moment the engram becomes active. 94 THE REACTIVE MIND In the case of the woman who was knocked out and kicked, any perception in the engram she received has some quality of restimulation.^ Running water from a faucet might not have affected her greatly. But water running from a faucet plus a passing car might have begun some slight reactivation of the engram, a vague discomfort in the areas where she was struck and kicked, not enough yet to cause her real pain, but there all the same. To the running water and the passing car we add the sharp falling of a chair and she experiences a shock of mild proportion. Add now the smell and voice of the man who kicked her and the pain begins to grow. The mechanism is telling her that she is in dangerous quarters, that she should leave. But she is not a fish, she is a highly sentient being, to our knowledge the most complex mental structure so far evolved on Earth-organism of the species, man. There are many other factors in the problem than this one engram. She stays. The pains in the areas where she was abused become a predisposition32 to illness or are chronic illness in themselves, minor, it is true, in the case of this one incident, but illness just the same. Her affinity with the man who beat her may be so high that the analytical level, being assisted by a normally high general tone, may counter against these pains. But if that level is low, without much to assist it, then the pains can become major. The fish that was so struck and received an engram did not disavow33 shrimp. Shrimp might have made him 31. restimulation: the reactivation of a past memory due to similar circumstances in the present approximating circumstances of the past. 32. predisposition: a state of mind or body that renders a person liable to act or behave in a certain way or to be subject to certain diseases. 33. disavow: deny any knowledge or approval of, or responsibility for; disclaim; disown. 95 L. RON HUBBARD a little less enthusiastic afterwards, but the survival potential of shrimp eating made shrimp equal far more pleasure than it did pain. A pleasant and hopeful life in general-and never think we intimate that the woman stays for food alone, whatever the wits34 say about women-has a high survival potential, and that can overcome a very great deal of pain. As the survival potential diminishes, however, the level of pain (zone 0 and zone 1) is more closely approached and such an engram could begin to be reactivated severely. There is another factor here, however, besides pain-in fact, several more factors. If the young man with the detachable coat had been given one of the neurotic positive suggestions as listed a few pages back, he would have reacted to it on signal. The engram this woman has received contains a neurotic positive suggestion quite in addition to the general restimulators,35 such as the faucet and the car and the overturning chair. She has been told that she is a faker, that she is no good and that she is always changing her mind. When the engram is restimulated in one of the great many ways possible, she has a "feeling" that she is no good, a faker and she will change her mind. There are several cases to hand which peculiarly illustrate the sadness of this. One case in particular which was cleared had been beaten severely many times and told a similar thing each time, all derogatory. The content inferred that she was very loose morally and 34. wits: persons characterized by the ability to make lively, clever remarks in a sharp, amusing way. 35. restimulators: approximations of the reactive mind's content or some part thereof continually perceived in the environment of the organism. 96 THE REACTIVE MIND would cohabit36 with anyone. She was brought in as a case by her father-she had since been divorced-who complained that she was very loose morally and had cohabited with several men in as many weeks. She herself admitted that she was, she could not see how it could be and it worried her, but she just "could not seem to help it." Examination of the engrams in her reactive mind bank brought forth a long series of beatings with this content. Because this was a matter of research, not treatment-although that was given-her former husband was contacted. An examination, independent of her knowledge, demonstrated his rage dramatization37 to contain these very words. He had beaten his wife into being a morally loose woman because he was afraid of morally loose women. All cases examined in all this research were checked, the patient's engrams against the engrams in the donor. The contents of the incidents were verified wherever possible and were found uniformly to agree. Every safeguard was made to prevent any other method of communication between donor and patient. Everything found in the "unconscious" periods of every patient, when checked against other sources, was found to be exact. The analogy between hypnotism and aberration bears out well. Hypnotism plants by positive suggestion one or another form of insanity. It is usually a temporary planting, but sometimes the hypnotic suggestion will not 36. cohabit: live together in a sexual relationship when not legally married. 37. dramatization: the duplication of an engramic content, entire or in part, by an aberree in his present time environment. Aberrated conduct is entirely dramatization. The degree of dramatization is in direct ratio to the degree of restimulation of the engrams causing it. When dramatizing, the individual is like an actor playing his dictated part and going through a whole series of irrational actions. 97 L. RON HUBBARD "lift" or remove in a way desirable to the hypnotist. The danger of running experiments with hypnosis on uncleared patients is found in another mechanism of the reactive mind. When an engram such as our example above exists, the woman obviously was "unconscious" at the time she received the engram. She had no standard bank memory (record) of the incident beyond the knowledge that she had been knocked out by the man. The engram was not, then, an experience as we understand the word. It could work from below to aberrate her thinking processes, it could give her strange pains-which she attributed to something else-in the areas injured. But it was not known to her. The key-in was necessary to activate the engram. But what, precisely, could key it in? At some later time when she was tired the man threatened to strike her again and called her names. This was conscious level experience. It was found to be "mentally painful" by her. And it was "mentally painful" only because there was real, live, physical pain unseen under it which had been "keyed in" by the conscious experience. The second experience was a lock.(tm) It was a memory but it had a new kind of action in the standard banks. It had too much power and it gained that power from a past physical blow. The reactive mind is not too careful about its time clock. It can't tell one year old from ninety, in fact, when a key-in begins. The actual en-gram moved up under the standard bank. She thinks she is worried about what he said in the lock experience. She is actually worried about the 38. lock: an analytical moment in which the perceptics of the engram are approximated, thus restimulating the engram or bringing it into action, the present time perceptics being erroneously interpreted by the reactive mind to mean that the same condition which produced physical pain once before is now again at hand. 98 THE REACTIVE MIND engram. In this way memories become "painful." But pain doesn't store in the standard banks. There is no place in that bank for pain. None. There is a place for the concept of pain and these concepts of what is painful are good enough to keep the sentient organism called man away from all the pain he believes is actually dangerous. In a Clear there are no pain-inducing memories because there is no physical pain record left to ruin the machinery from the reactive mind bank. The young man with the detachable coat did not know what was worrying him or what made him do what he did. The person with an engram does not know what is worrying him. He thinks it is the lock, and the lock may be a very long way removed from anything resembling the engram. The lock may have similar perceptic content. But it may be on another subject entirely. It is not very complicated to understand what these engrams do. They are simply moments of physical pain strong enough to throw part or all the analytical machinery out of circuit; they are antagonism to the survival of the organism or pretended sympathy to the organism's survival. That is the entire definition. Great or little "unconsciousness," physical pain, perceptic content and contrasurvival or prosurvival data. They are handled by the reactive mind, which thinks exclusively in identities of everything equals everything. And they enforce their commands upon the organism by wielding the whip of physical pain. If the organism does not do exactly as they say (and believe any Clear, that's impossible!), the physical pain turns on. They steer a person like a keeper steers a tiger-and they can make a tiger out of a man in the process without much trouble, and give him mange39 into the bargain. 39. mange: a skin disease affecting hairy animals, caused by a parasite and characterized by intense itching, scabs and loss of hair. 99 L. RON HUBBARD If man had not invented language, or, as will be demonstrated, if his languages were a little less homo-nymic and more specific with their personal pronouns, engrams would still be survival data and the mechanism would work. But man has outgrown their use. He chose between language and potential madness and for the vast benefits of the former he received the curse of the latter. The engram is the single and sole source of aberration and psychosomatic illness. An enormous quantity of data has been sifted. Not one single exception has been found. In "normal people," in the neurotic and insane, the removal of these engrams wholly or in part, without other therapy, has uniformly brought about a state greatly superior to the current norm. No need was found for any theory or therapy other than those given in this book for the treatment of all psychic or psychosomatic ills. 100 CHAPTER THREE The Cell and the Organism The reason the engram so long remained hidden as the single source of aberration and psychosomatic ills is the wide and almost infinitely complex manifestations which can derive from simple engrams. Several theories could be postulated as to why the human mind evolved exactly as it did, but these are theories, and Dianetics is not concerned with structure. A comment or two as a stimulation to future workers in that field might be made, however, wholly as a postulate, that there is a definite connection between any electriclike energy in the body and the energy effusion' of cells undergoing injury. A theory could be constructed along the lines that injured cells, further injuring their neighbors by a discharge of electriclike energy, forced the development of a special cell which would act as a conduit to "bleed off" this painful charge. The conduits of cells might have become neurons2 and the charge might have been better distributed so through the body with less likelihood of local incapacitation at the point of the injury impact. These conduits-neurons-might have been started in formation by impacts at the extremity of the body toward the direction of locomotion. This would make the skull the greatest mass of neurons. Man, walking upright, might have had another new point of impact, the forehead, and so gained his prefrontal lobes. And maybe not. That is 1. effusion: a pouring forth. 2. neurons: the main units that make up the nerves. They consist of cell bodies with threadlike parts that carry signals to and from the cells. 101 L. RON HUBBARD just theory, with only a few data to support it which have a scientific value. And it has not been subjected to experiment of any kind whatever. This much, however, has to be advanced as theory on structure. The cell is one of the basic building blocks of the body. Cells, the better to survive, seem to have become colonies which, in turn, had the primary interest, survival. And the colonies developed or recruited into aggregations which in turn were organisms, also with the sole purpose of survival. And the organisms developed minds to coordinate the muscles and resolve the problems of survival. Again, this is still theory, and even if it was the track of reasoning which led toward Dianetics, it can be completely wrong. It works. It can be pulled away from Dianetics and Dianetics will remain a science and go on working. The concept of the electronic brain was not vital but only useful to Dianetics and it could be swept away as well-Dianetics would still stand. A science is a changing affair as far as its internal theory goes. In Dianetics we have our wedge into an enormous scope of research. As Dianetics stands, it works and it works every time and without exception. The reasons why it works will undoubtedly be mulled over and changed here and there to its betterment-if they aren't, an abiding faith in this generation of scientists and the future generations will not have been justified. Why we talk about cells will become apparent as we progress. The reason we know that past concepts of structure are not correct is because they don't work as function. All our facts are functional and these facts are scientific facts, supported wholly and completely by laboratory evidence. Function precedes structure. James Clerk Maxwell's3 mathematics were postulated 3. James Clerk Maxwell: (1831-1879) Scottish physicist, responsible for the theory that electricity and light are the same in their fundamental nature. 102 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM and electricity was widely and beneficially used long before anyone had any real idea about the structure of the atom. Function always comes before structure. The astounding lack of progress in the field of the human mind during the past thousands of years is partly attributable to its "organ of thought" lying within a field, medicine, which was and long may be an art, not a science. Basic philosophy to explain life will have to come before that art makes much further progress. What the capabilities of the cell are, for instance, have been but poorly studied. Some work has been carried on in recent years to find out more, but basic philosophy was absent. The cell was being observed, not predicted. The studies of cells in man have been largely done from dead tissue. An unknown quality is missing from dead tissue, the important quality-life. In Dianetics, on the level of laboratory observation, we discover much to our astonishment that cells are evidently sentient in some currently inexplicable way. Unless we postulate a human soul entering the sperm and ovum at conception, there are things which no other postulate will embrace than that these cells are in some way sentient. Entering a new field with postulates which work in all directions-and the basic philosophy of survival is a pilot which leads us on and on into further and further realms, explaining and predicting phenomena on every hand-it is inevitable that data will turn up which does not agree with past theory. When that data is as scientific as the observation that when an apple is dropped under usual conditions on Earth it falls, one cannot help but accept it. Abandoning past theories may do damage to treasured beliefs and one's nostalgic love of the old school tie,4 but a fact is a fact. 4. school tie: a necktie striped in the colors of a specific English public school, especially as worn by a graduate to indicate his educational background. 103 L. RON HUBBARD The cells as thought units evidently have an influence, as cells, upon the body as a thought unit and an organism. We do not have to untangle this structural problem to resolve our functional postulates. The cells evidently retain engrams of painful events. After all, they are the things which get injured. And they evidently retain a whip hand5 of punishment for every time the analyzer fails them. The story of the engram seems to be a story of a battle between the troops and the general, every time the general gets some of the troops killed off. The less fortunate this general is in protecting these troops, the more power the troops assume. The cells evidently pushed the brain on an upward evolution toward higher sentience. Pain reverses the process as though the cells were sorry they had put so much power in the hands of a central commander. The reactive mind may very well be the combined cellular intelligence. One need not assume that it is, but it is a handy structural theory in the lack of any real work done in this field of structure. The reactive en-gram bank may be material stored in the cells themselves. It does not matter whether this is credible or incredible just now. Something has to be said about it to give one a mental hold on what happens during moments of "unconsciousness." The scientific fact, observed and tested, is that the organism, in the presence of physical pain, lets the analyzer get knocked out of circuit so that there is a limited quantity or no quantity at all of personal awareness as a unit organism. It does this either to protect the analyzer or to withdraw its power in the belief that an engram is best in an emergency-with which the analyzer, by the way, on observed experience, does not agree. 5. whip hand: the position of advantage or control. 104 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM Every percept present, including physical pain, is recorded during these nonanalytical moments. Whenever pain is present-physical pain, that is-the analyzer gets shut down to a small or large extent. If the duration of the pain is only an instant, there is still an instant there of analytical reduction. This can be proven very easily-just try to recall the last time you were seriously hurt and see if there isn't at least a momentary blank period. Going to sleep under anesthetic and waking up some time later is a more complicated sort of shutdown in that it includes physical pain but is initially caused by a poison (and all anesthetics are poisons, technically). Then there is the condition of suffocating, as in drowning, and this is a shut-down period to greater or lesser extent. And there is the condition caused by blood, for one cause or another, leaving the area or areas which contain analytical power-wherever they are-and this again causes a greater or lesser degree of analytical shutdown: such incidents include shock (in which the blood tends to lake in the center of the body), the loss of blood by surgery or injury or anemia,6 and the closing of the arteries leading through the throat. Natural sleep causes a reduction of analytical activity but is actually not very deep or serious; by Dianetic therapy any experience occurring during sleep can be recovered with ease. It can now be seen that there are many ways in which analytical power can be shut down. And it can be seen that there is greater or lesser reduction. When one burns one's finger with a cigarette, there is a small instant of pain and a small amount of reduction. When one undergoes an operation, the duration may be in terms of hours and the amount of shutdown may be 6. anemia: a deficiency in the oxygen-carrying material of the blood resulting in a paleness, generalized weakness, etc. _>- 105 L. RON HUBBARD extreme. The duration and the amount of reduction are two different things, related but quite dissimilar. This is not so very important but it is mentioned. We have seen, reading in Dianetics this far, that the principle of the spectrum has been quite useful to us. And it can be seen that the amount of reduction in analytical power can be described in the same way that survival potential can be described. There can be a very little bit and there can be a very great deal. Going back and taking a look at the survival potential range, one can see that there would be death at the bottom and immortality at the top. There is "infinite" survival. Whether or not there can be infinite analytical power is a matter of mysticism. But that there is a definite relationship between individual tone and the amount of analytical shutdown is a scientific fact. Put it this way: with the individual well and happy and enthusiastic, analytical power can be considered to be high (zones 3 and 4). With the individual under the wheels of a truck, "unconscious" and in agony, the analytical power may be considered to be ranging in zone 0. There is a ratio between potential survival and analytical power. As one goes down, so does the other. There is more data to be concluded from this than one would think at first glance. It is a very important ratio. All the percepts are included in an engram. Two of these percepts are physical pain and painful emotion. A third is organic sensation, which is to say, the condition of the organism during the moment of the engram. And how was the organism when the engram was received? Greater or lesser "unconsciousness" was present. This meant that there was an organic sensation of reduced analytical power, since analytical power derives, evidently, from an organ or organs in the body. If an engram is reactivated by a restimulator or restimulators-that is to say, if the individual with an engram receives something 106 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM in his environment similar to the perceptions in the engram-the engram puts everything it contains, its percepts such as faucets and words, into greater or lesser operation. There can be greater or lesser restimulation. An engram can be put into force just a little bit by restimu-lators in the environment of the individual or, with many restimulators present and the body in an already reduced state, the engram can go into a full-force display (which is covered later). But whether the en-gram is slightly restimulated or greatly restimulated, everything in it goes into effect one way or another. There is just one common denominator of all en-grams, just one thing which every engram has and which is possessed by every other engram. Each contains the datum that the analyzer is more or less shut down. There is a shut-down datum in every engram. Therefore, every time an engram is restimulated, even though physical pain has not been received by the body, some analytical power turns off; the organ or organs which are the analyzer are fused out of circuit in some degree. This is highly important to an understanding of the mechanics of aberration. It is a scientific fact, susceptible of proof, and it never varies. This always happens: when an engram is received, the analyzer is shut down by the physical pain and emotion; when the engram is restimulated, the analyzer shuts down as part of the commands of the engram. Actually, this is a very mechanical thing. Engram is restimulated, part of the analytical power is shut down. This is as inevitable as turning on and off an electric light. Pull the cord and the light goes off. The reduction of the analyzer is not that sharp-there are grades of light-but it is just as mechanical. Put a man under ether, hurt him in the chest. He has 107 L. RON HUBBARD received an engram because his analytical power was turned off first by ether and then by a chest pain. While he was there on the operating table, the reactive mind recorded the click of instruments, everything said, all sounds and smells. Let us suppose that a nurse was holding one of his feet because he was kicking. This is a complete engram. The engram will be keyed in by something in the future, a similar incident. After this, in greater or lesser degree, whenever he hears clicks like instrument clicks he gets nervous. If he pays attention to what is happening in his body at that minute, he may find that his foot feels slightly as if it were being held. But he is not likely to give any attention to his foot because if he had any attention to give, the chest pain would be found present in some degree. But his analytical ability has been turned off slightly. As the foot felt it was being held, so does the analyzer have the conception of being shut down by ether and pain. The restimulator (the clicking) tended to bring the whole engram slightly into being and part of the engram command is a reduced analytical power. This is "push button" in its precision. If one knew another's main restimulators (words, voice tones, music, whatever they are-things which are filed in the reactive mind bank as parts of engrams), one could turn another's analytical power almost completely off, actually render him unconscious. We all know people who make us feel stupid. There can be two causes for that but both of them are from engrams and one of them is the fact that, no matter what engram is brought into restimulation, part of the analytical power is turned off. Engrams can, if environment is uniform, be held in chronic restimulation! This means a chronic, partial shutdown of analytical power. The recovery of intelligence by 108 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM a Clear and the rise of that intelligence to such fantastic heights results in part from the relief of word commands in engrams that he is stupid and in a larger part from the relief of this chronic shut-down condition. This is not theory. This is scientific fact. It is strictly test tube. The engram contains the percept of a shut-down analyzer; when it is restimulated the engram puts that datum back into force in some degree. Engrams, then, being received in "unconsciousness" cause a partial "unconsciousness" to exist every time they are restimulated. The person who has an engram (any aberree) need not receive new physical pain to have a new moment of partial "unconsciousness" take place. Feeling "dopey"7 or "sleepy" or "dull" results in part from a partially shut-down analyzer. Being "nervous" or in a rage or frightened also carries with it partially shut-off analytical power. The hypnotist has "success" where he does because he is able, by talking to people about "sleep," to put into restimulation some engram which contains the word sleep and shut-down analytical power. This is one of the reasons hypnotism "works." The whole society, however, is liable to analytical shutdown in greater or lesser degree by the restimulation of engrams. The number of engrams a person's reactive bank contains may not, however, establish the amount of analytical reduction to which he is subjected. A person may have engrams and they may not have been keyed in. And if they have been keyed in, he might not be in an environment which contains any great number of res-timulators. Under these conditions his survival zone position may be high even though he is possessed of a great many engrams. And again, he might have educated 7. dopey: tired, sleepy, foggy (as though doped). 109 L. RON HUBBARD himself over and above these engrams to some slight degree. But a person who has keyed-in engrams and does exist in the area of many restimulators is liable to an enormous amount of restimulation and analytical shutdown. This is a normal condition. If a person has a large number of engrams, and they are keyed in, and he lives around many restimulators, his condition can vary from normal to insane. And in a single day-as in the case of a man who experiences moments of rage or a woman who drops into apathies-the condition of a person may vary from normal to insane and back to normal. We take here the word insane to mean utter irrationality. So there is temporary or chronic insanity. The court of law which goes through the lugubrious8 process of having a man pronounced sane or insane after that man has murdered somebody is itself being irrational. Of course the man was insane when he committed the murder. What the court is asking now is whether or not the man is chronically insane. This has little bearing on the matter. If a man has gone insane enough to murder once, he will go insane enough in the future to murder again. Chronic, then, means either a chronic cycle or a continuous condition. The law says sanity is the "ability to tell right from wrong." When man is subject to a mechanism (and all men are) which lets him be rational one minute and restimulated the next, none in the society, if uncleared, can be considered able to always tell right from wrong. This is completely aside from what the law means by right and what it means by wrong. This is an example of the roller-coaster sanity curve of the aberree. All aberrees possess engrams (the 8. lugubrious: very sad or mournful, especially in a way that seems exaggerated or ridiculous. 110 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM normal number is probably in the hundreds per individual). Analytically, people have a wide latitude9 of choice and they can deal even with philosophic rights and wrongs. But in aberrated persons the engram bank is always susceptible of restimulation. The "sanest" aber-ree of Tuesday may be a murderer on Wednesday if the exactly right situation occurs to trip the exact engram. A Clear is not entirely predictable in any given situation-he has such a wide power of choice. But an aberrated person transcends10 all predictability for the following reasons: (1) what engrams an aberree has in his reactive engram bank none know including himself; (2) what situation will contain what restimulators is a matter of chance; and (3) what his power of choice will be with the factors in the engrams on a reactive level cannot be established. The variety of conduct which one can evolve out of these basic mechanics is so wide that it is no wonder that man was considered to be a rather hopeless case by some philosophies. The cells, if the engram bank is retained on a cellular level, might be theoretically supposed to have made sure that the analyzer did not get too adventurous in this life-and-death matter of living. They therefore could be considered to have copied down all data contained in every moment of physical pain and emotion' resulting in or contained in "unconsciousness." Then when any data similar to this appeared in the environment they could be wary and, with a large number of restimulators in sight, they could be considered to shut down the analyzer and proceed on reaction. This has a crude safety factor. Obviously, if the organism survived 9. latitude: freedom from narrow restrictions; freedom of opinion, conduct or action. 10. transcends: goes beyond the limits of; oversteps; exceeds. L. RON HUBBARD through one period of "unconsciousness," it could be theorized by the cells that the placing of the data and action in effect under circumstances which threatened to be similar would result once more in survival. What's good enough for Grandpa is good enough for me. What was good enough in the bus accident is good enough in a bus. This moronic "thinking" is typical of the reactive mind. It is just the sort of thinking it does. It is the ultimate in conservatism. It misses the point and important data at every turn, it overloads the body with pain, it is a whirlpool of confusion. If there were just one engram per situation, maybe it would get by. But there may be ten engrams with similar data in them (an engram lock chain") and yet the data may be so contradictory that when a new emergency arises which contains the restimulators of the chain, no proper past conduct can be put forth to meet it. Obviously the x factor is language. The cells, if this is a problem in cells (for recall, this part is theory based on data in an effort to explain what happens, and a theory can be altered without altering the scientific usefulness of the facts), probably do not understand languages very well. If they did they wouldn't evolve such "solutions." Take two engrams about baseball bats. In the first, the individual is hit on the head and knocked out and somebody yells, "Run! Run! Run!" In the second, the individual is knocked out by the bat in the same environment and somebody yells, "Stay there! You're safe!" Now, what does he do when he hears a baseball bat or smells one or sees one or hears these words? Run or stay there? He has a similar pain for each action. 11. chain: a series of incidents of similar nature or similar subject matter. 112 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM What actually happens? He gets a headache. This is that thing called conflict. This is anxiety. And anxiety can become very acute indeed on a purely mechanical level when one has ninety engrams pulling him south and eighty-nine pulling him north. Does he go north or south? Or does he have a "nervous breakdown"? The level of brilliance of the reactive mind is about the same as a phonograph. The needle gets put on the record and the record plays. The reactive mind merely puts on the needle. When it tries to select several records out and play them all at once, things happen. By intentional construction or accident in design or bypass in evolution-where the old, useless organ is still built-the cells managed to hide this engram bank fairly well. Man is conscious in his analytical mind. When he is "unconscious," his analytical mind is unable to monitor the incoming data and the data is not to be found in the thing we call, by analogue, the standard banks. Therefore, whatever came in passed by consciousness. And having passed by, consciousness cannot (without Dianetic process) recall it, since there is no channel for recall. The engram enters when consciousness is absent. It thereafter operates directly into the organism. Only by Dianetic therapy can the analyzer come into possession of this data (and the removal of it does not depend upon the analyzer contacting it at all, despite an old belief that the "realization" of something cures it: "realize" an engram and one is in quick trouble, without Dianetic technique). The engram is received by the cellular body. The reactive mind could be the very lowest level of analytical power, of course, but this does not alter the scientific fact that the engram acts as if it were a soldered-in connection to the life function regulator and the organic coordination and the basic level of the analytical mind itself. By soldered-in is meant "permanent 113 L. RON HUBBARD connection." This keying-in is the hookup of the en-gram as part of the operating machinery of the body. An analytical thought process is not permanently hooked in but can be thrown in and out of circuit at the will of the analyzer. This is not true of the engram. Thus the term, soldered-in. The analytical mind lays down a training pattern; on a stimulus-response basis, this training pattern will work smoothly and well whenever it will do the organism the most good. An engram is a training pattern, all complete in a package, "permanently" hooked into the circuits (without Dianetic therapy) and it goes into operation like a training pattern without any consent whatever from the analyzer. Influenced itself by the engram in the several ways of reduced analytical power and positive suggestion in the engram, the analytical mind is unable to discover any truly valid reason for the conduct of the organism. It therefore makes up a reason, for its job is to make sure the organism is always right. Just as the young man with the detachable coat gave forth a number of silly explanations as to why he was detaching his coat, so does the analytical mind-observing the body engaged in irrational actions, including speech, for which there seems to be no accounting-justify the actions. The engram can dictate all the various processes incident to living; it can dictate beliefs, opinions, thought processes or lack of them and actions of all kinds, and can establish conditions remarkable for their complexity as well as their stupidity. An engram can dictate anything it contains and engrams can contain all the combinations of words in the entire language. And the analytical mind is forced, in the light of irrational behavior or conviction, to justify the acts and conditions of the organism, as well as its own strange blunders. This is justified thought. 114 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM There are three kinds of thought, then, of which the organism is capable: (a) analytical thought, which is rational as modified by education and viewpoint; (b) justified thought, analytical thought attempting to explain reactions; and (c) reactive thought, which is wholly in terms of everything in an engram equals everything in an engram equals all the restimulators in the environment and all things associated with those restimulators. We have all seen somebody make a blunder and then give forth an explanation of just why that blunder had been made. This is justified thought. The blunder was made, unless out of education or viewpoint, by an engram. The analytical mind then had to justify the blunder to make sure that the body was right and that its computations were right. Now, there are two other conditions which can be caused by engrams. One is dramatization and the other is valence.n You have seen some child come forth with a tirade, a tantrum. You have seen some man go through a whole rage action. You have seen people go through a whole irrational set of actions. These are dramatizations. They come about when an engram is thoroughly restimu-lated, so thoroughly that its soldered-in aspect takes over the organism. It may come into circuit slightly or wholly, which is to say that there are degrees of dramatization. When it is in full parade, the engram is running off verbatim and the individual is like an actor, puppetlike, playing his dictated part. A person can be given new engrams which will make these old ones take secondary importance. (Society's punishment complex is aimed squarely at giving anti-engram education.) 12. valence: personality. The term is used to denote the borrowing of the personality of another. A valence is a substitute for self taken on after the fact of lost confidence in self. A preclear "in his father's valence" is acting as though he were his father. 115 L. RON HUBBARD Dramatization is survival conduct-in the silly, reactive mind way of thinking-based on the premise that the organism, in a "similar" situation, lived through it because these actions were present. The woman who was knocked down and kicked would dramatize her engram, possibly, by doing and saying exactly the same things done and said to her. Her victim may be her child or another woman. It could or would be the person who gave her the engram if she were strong enough to overcome him. Just because she has this engram does not mean she will use it. She may have a hundred other engrams she can use. But when she dramatizes one it is as if the engram, soldered-in, were taking over a puppet. As much analytical power as she has left may be devoted to altering the pattern. Therefore she can make a similar or an identical dramatization . This aspect of dramatization is strictly "tooth and claw" survival. This is the sort of thing which made observers think that "tooth and claw" was a primary rule. In went the engram, bypassing rationality and the standard memory banks. Now it is in the organism but the organism does not know it in the level of consciousness. It is keyed in by a conscious level experience. Then it can be dramatized. And far from becoming milder the more it is used, the more an engram is dramatized the more solid is its hold in the circuits. Muscles, nerves, all must comply. "Tooth and claw" survival. The cells were making sure. And here we come to valence. Valens means "powerful" in Latin. It is a good term because it is the second half of ambivalent (power in two directions) and exists in any good dictionary. It is a good term because it describes (although the dictionary did not mean it to) the intent of the organism when dramatizing an engram. 116 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM Multivalence would mean "many powerfuls." It would embrace the phenomena of split personality, the strange differences of personality in people in one and then another situation. Valence, in Dianetics, means the personality of one of the dramatic personnel in an engram. In the case of the woman being knocked out and kicked, there were two valences present: herself and her husband. If another person had been present the en-gram would have contained three valences, providing he took any part: herself, her husband and the third person. In an engram, let us say, of a bus accident where ten people speak or act, there would be, in the "unconscious" person, an engram containing eleven valences: the "unconscious" person and the ten who spoke or acted. Now, in the case of the woman beaten by her husband, the engram contains just two valences. Who won? Here is the law of "tooth and claw," the aspect of survival in engrams. Who won? The husband. Therefore it is the husband who will be dramatized. She didn't win. She got hurt. Aha! When these restimulators are present, the thing to do is to be the winner, the husband, to talk like him, to say what he did, to do what he did. He survived. "Be like him!" say the cells. Hence, when the woman is restimulated into this engram by some action, let us say, on the part of her child, she dramatizes the winning valence. She knocks the child down and kicks him, tells him he is a faker, that he is HO good, that he is always changing his mind. What would happen if she dramatized herself? She would have to fall down, knocking over a chair, pass out and believe she was a faker, no good and was always changing her mind, and she would have to feel the pain of all blows! "Be yourself" is advice which falls on deaf reactive mind ears. Here is the scheme. Every time the organism 117 L. RON HUBBARD gets punished by life, the analytical mind, according to the reactive mind, has erred. The reactive mind then cuts the analytical mind out of circuit in ratio to the amount of restimulation present (danger) and makes the body react as if it were the person who won in the earlier, but similar, situation where the organism was hurt. Now what happens if "society" or the husband or some exterior force told this woman, who is dramatizing this engram, that she must face reality? That's impossible. Reality equals being herself, and herself gets hurt. What if some exterior force breaks the dramatization? That is to say, if society objects to the dramatization and refuses to let her kick and yell and shout? The engram is still soldered-in. The reactive mind is forcing her to be the winning valence. Now she can't be. As punishment, the reactive mind, the closer she slides into being herself, approximates the conditions of the other valence in the engram. After all, that valence didn't die. And the pain of the blows turns on and she thinks she is a faker, that she is no good and that she always changes her mind. In other words, she is in the losing valence. Consistent breaking of dramatization will make a person ill just as certainly as there are gloomy days. A person accumulates, with the engrams, half a hundred valences before he is ten. Which were the winning valences? You will find him using them every time an engram is kicked into restimulation. Multiple personality? Two persons? Make it fifty to a hundred. In Dianetics, you can see valences turn on and off in people and change with a rapidity which would be awesome to a quick-change artist. Observe these complexities of conduct, of behavior. If one set out to resolve the problem of aberration by a system of cataloging everything he observed, and were 118 THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM unaware of the basic source, he would end up with as many separate insanities, neuroses, psychoses, compulsions, repressions, obsessions and disabilities as there are combinations of words in the English language. Discovery of fundamentals by classification is never good research. And the unlimited complexities possible from the engrams (and the severest, most thoroughly controlled experiments discovered these engrams to be capable of just such behavior as is listed here) are the whole catalog of aberrated human conduct. There are a few other basic, fundamental things that engrams do. These will be covered under their own headings: parasite circuits, emotional impaction13 and psychosomatic ills. With the few fundamentals listed here, the problem of aberration can be resolved. These fundamentals are simple, they have given rise to as much trouble as individuals and societies have experienced. The institutions for the insane, the prisons for the criminals, the armaments accumulated by nations, yes, and even the dust which was a civilization of yesterday exist because these fundamentals were not understood. The cells evolved into an organism and in the evolution created what was once a necessary condition of mind. Man has grown up to a point where he creates now the means of overcoming that evolutionary blunder. Examination of the Clear proves he no longer needs it. He is now in a position where he can take an artificial evolutionary step on his own. The bridge has been built across the canyon. 13. impaction: the action of becoming, or condition of being, impacted (pressed closely into or in something) or firmly fixed in. 119 CHAPTER FOUR The "Demons" For a moment let us leave such scientific things as cells and consider some further aspects of the problem of understanding the human mind. People