Reference: Hubbard 1950: Dianetics TMSMH
These are some comments on Book Three, Chapter 5, “Returning, the File Clerk, and the Time Track” from DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH.
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Comments on
Returning, the File Clerk, and the Time Track
KEY WORDS: Returning, File Clerk, Time Track, Charge, Recounting
Usually, anyone can be “sent back” wide awake to an experience of the past. If asked to return to your favorite breakfast, you may have to be coaxed a bit, but suddenly you might find yourself sitting at a table eating your favorite breakfast. This is not memory in the way one “remembers something.” It is returning. It provides a very precise, specific bit of information by reproducing a past perception. Regression is an artificial use of the natural process of returning.
Returning reproduces past perceptions in the mental matrix in precise details.
We have the concept of spectrum, which provides gradations of something in wider and wider scope or range. For example, we have the spectrum of dynamics one to eight through which the scope of survival is expressed. Similarly, we have a spectrum of memory. First there is remembering; then returning; and then reliving of some period of life.
Returning is much more precise than ordinary remembering.
Returning is employed through a mechanism of the mind, which we may call the file clerk. It hands out the datum asked for, but it is, often, literal in nature. There appears to be a time track because the file clerk can retrieve data precisely by the index of time. The data is made available instantaneously, or it may take minutes or days depending on some aberration blocking it.
In the absence of aberrations, the past information may be retrieved instantaneously with precision.
To retrieve information relating to unassimilated impressions, you simply ask the file clerk to go back to it. The file clerk works best when your attention is extroverted and there is no anxiety. As you maintain a contemplative mode, you may suddenly find yourself in possession of the requested information. You then go over the information enough times to take the charge (tension) out of it.
You take charge out of the information relating to unassimilated impressions by going over it enough times.
Like the hypnotic suggestions, these unassimilated impressions affect your thinking. As you become increasingly aware of these impressions by taking the charge out, you get rid of their hypnotic effects. It is expedient to work on areas as early in your life as possible.
Aberration reduces as you take charge out of the retrieved information.
The effort is to get into the basic area, contact early engrams, erase the basic-basic engram by recounting the information and then progress upwards, erasing engrams. Engrams vanish when they are assimilated with rest of the experience.
Clearing is the assimilation of engrams or facsimiles.
In short, you assume the contemplative mode and return to a period of your life along your time track. The file clerk may hand things out by phrases, by somatics, by time. You recount and re-experience the given incidents. Whatever the file clerk hands out ordinarily will reduce on recounting. This is the entire routine of dianetic therapy.
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