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Reference: DIANETICS: The Original Thesis

This paper presents Chapter 12 from the book DIANETICS: THE ORIGINAL THESIS by L. RON HUBBARD. The contents are from the original publication of this book by The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc. (1948).

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.  Feedback on these comments is appreciated.

The heading below is linked to the original materials.

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Diagnosis

It is a useful and positive principle that whatever confronts or contests the analytical mind of the preclear will also confront and contest the analytical mind of the auditor. When the auditor is acting as the analytical mind of the preclear, whatever emotion or antagonism is directed towards him is the emotion or antagonism which is directed by the reactive mind toward the preclear’s own analytical mind. If a preclear cannot hear what people are saying in his engrams, he has another engram about “can’t hear.” If he cannot feel anything in his engram, it is because he has an engram about “can’t feel.” If he cannot see, he has an engram about not being able to see, and so forth. If he cannot return, he has an engram about going back, or returning to childhood, or some such thing. If he is doubtful and skeptical about what is happening or what has happened to him, it is because he has an engram about being doubtful and skeptical. If he is antagonistic, his reactive mind contains a great deal of antagonism. If he is self-conscious or embarrassed, it is because his reactive mind contains self-consciousness or embarrassment. If he insists on maintaining his own control, refusing to do what the auditor tells him to do (although he is returned), it is because he has an engram about self-control, and so forth and so on. This is identity thought, and is used in diagnosis.

In the “BODY-MIND-I” model, the “I” is the objective viewpoint, which sees things as they are. The mind puts the filters there. When the auditor cannot understand something about the auditee, then it is the same thing that the auditee cannot understand about himself. That difficulty is being generated by the aberrated nodes of the mental matrix.

The return is the best method of learning the problems of the preclear. Trying to work the preclear into remembrance, hearing, seeing, feeling, going back and forward, going to sleep, awakening, and taking due notice of what he says about the entire process will form a rather complete diagnosis on one who is not insane. Questioning the preclear as to what is wrong with him while returned will elicit replies straight out of his principal engrams. Listening to an endless justification of his actions is both a delay and a waste of time but listening to what he has to say about what he thinks has happened to him or what he is afraid of is of definite value.

Dianetics employs the method of “return”, which is to go back and re-experience an incident. But there is not always a clear cut incident. Therefore, mindfulness employs the method of concentrating on the difficulty while letting the mind freely associate.

Free association is letting the mind associate whatever is there without any interference. No conscious effort is made for the auditee to remember anything. The auditee simply thinks of the difficulty and focuses on it for as long as necessary. The focus can go pretty deep. There is no questioning of the auditee other than that the auditee may briefly summarize the outcome of the free association. The auditee is trained simply to observe and not to justify any outcome.

The insane form and pose a slightly different problem but essentially the same.

It is a clinically established observation that the reactive mind is relatively shallow. Below it lies the basic personality of the individual no matter how “insane” he may be. Therefore, by one means or another, a rational being may be reached within a person, a being which is not aberrated. It is this fact of non-aberration which makes the basic personality a difficult aid in diagnosis. Here however it can be established what the person really wants, what he hopes, what he actually feels. It has been observed that no matter what his raving state, providing his brain structure is normal and complete, the basic personality is entirely sound and sane and will cooperate. After auditing the person will become this strong, competent and able personality.

An insane person is simply too introverted. His attention needs to be extroverted before he can be audited. But this is the first step with any introverted person.

The reactive mind, when unable to exert itself to its aberrated full in the environment of the person, will break the person, or cause him to lose tone. Therefore it is of definite interest to discover what immediately preceded the break of the preclear or what is currently causing him unhappiness. Something is dispersing his dynamics. The probability is that he has a chronic restimulator in his vicinity. Wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, superiors, etc., can be the source of such breaking since they turn the purpose of the reactive mind, which pretends to desire above all else the best interest of the person, back upon the person himself. Thus these sources cause the individual to lower back into the tone of the reactive mind, apathy, or a low tone two.

Diagnosis is isolating the difficulty to focus on. The difficulty may be understood broadly at first whatever is currently causing him unhappiness. As auditing proceeds, this difficulty may be narrowed down to something more specific. When there is a mental breakdown one may isolate the difficulty that preceded the break. There may be persons associated with the difficulty. The free association then includes their personalities.

The problem of the fixed person and the problem of the sympathy engram are both visible in the aberrated individual. The identity thought of the reactive mind has taken some part of the personality of some individual in the current environment and referred it to some part of the personality of an individual in the engramic past. The discovery of this identity is one of the principal problems in auditing. The sympathy engram is of a very specific nature, being the effort of the parent or guardian to be kind to a child who is severely hurt. If that parent or guardian has shown the child antagonism prior to the time of the injury, the adult (preclear) is prone to reactivate the injury in the presence of the identity personality with whom he is now associated. This causes many somatic ills to present themselves in the present. Only the exact words of a sympathy engram will soothe the aberrated personality.

A key problem occurs when a person gets attached to somebody because that person is similar to a personality in his engramic data. Discovering this brings great relief. Another key problem occurs when the engramic data is making a person ill in an effort to gain sympathy from somebody similar to an engramic personality.

There are not many personality types. A human being learns through mimicry. If his own self is found to be too painful he can become another self and very often does. A tone four can become another person at will without being aberrated about it, thus enjoying books and plays by “being” the person portrayed. But an aberrated individual can become part of the engramic cast of his reactive mind and so solve all of his problems in such an aberrated fashion. Aberrated persons are not themselves since they do not possess their own determinism.

As has been stated, those emotions, doubts, worries and problems which confront the auditor when attempting to place the preclear in reverie or to work him in that reverie will lead the auditor into the basic content of the reactive mind.

There are certain definite manifestations which can be suspected and certain routines which follow every case. Every human being has been carried in the womb and every human being has been born. The discovery of the basic engram on each chain is extremely important. Finding the basic engram is like taking the enemy in the flank. There is nothing before it, therefore the end most remote from the adult life of the individual is the end most exposed for the attack of the auditor.

The above is good to know. The mind engages its knowledge in free association as it sees fit. The mind is not consciously directed in any way.

In the basic engram the preclear can see, feel, hear, and freely emote. When he is returned to later incidents, it may be found that he cannot do these things no matter how hard the auditor works to enable him to do so. By pursuing the engramic chain up its chronological sequence, this ability will be restored. Therefore it is necessary first and foremost to locate the basic engram. This may, in some few cases, lie later than birth. In the majority of the cases it will be found to lie at or before birth. No discussion is here entered about the ability of the human mind to remember at such remote periods. It can be stated however that when engramic data does exist, the time track is opened by pain and antagonism at these extreme points and can be contacted and exhausted. It is with the greatest difficulty that the auditor will find the basic engram. It is ordinarily quite painful, and since the scanning mechanism has as its purpose (or one of its purposes) the avoidance of pain, it will not easily reach them. Like the scanning mechanism on a cathode ray tube, the scanners of even a very reduced potential analytical mind sweep over, skipping and not touching the data on the engramic chain. By various means the auditor must then require the scanners to contact that data and force the data back onto the time track where it can be properly exhausted.

In Dianetics procedure one’s primary effort is to find the basic engram by tracing the somatics down the time track, and force its contents into awareness. This is a simplistic model and dangerous. It does not work always, and it does create problems.

In Mindfulness procedure, the mind finds its own best way to assimilate the aberrated nodes back into the mental matrix. The mind is neither forced nor directed in any way. The concentrated focus on the difficulty maintains the general pressure on the mind to keep freely associating to resolve the difficulty. This approach is very safe.

Light prenatals are the best possible approach to a case. When the only prenatal is an extremely heavy one or an attempted abortion (which, by the way, are very common), the auditor must use a great deal of guile. It can be said that the basic engram and the beginning of the actual engram chains is very early, before, near, or during birth, is painful, and will not be easily contacted. In that few preclears have more than a few hundred serious engrams, the task is light when once begun but requires a great deal of imagination and persuasion.

The early Dianetics procedure made guesses and then used lot of cleverness to contact the actual engramic data. This is trial and error that can backfire. No such guile, imagination or cleverness is required in the mindfulness approach. It renders the use of E-meter unnecessary.

A prenatal must always be suspected unless birth, when lifted, rises easily into a tone four. If none of the engrams will rise into a tone four, the auditor would suppose that he has not discovered the basic. There are three kinds of engrams: the precursor, the engram and the follower. By engram here is meant that experience which the auditor has found and is working upon. If it does not seem to be lifting after a few recountings, a precursor (earlier engram) must be suspected and returned to. In this way an earlier basic may be discovered. Blows in the womb, attempted abortions, and birth are the usual basics. Easily the most important are the prenatals.

All this information should just be kept as part of background knowledge. It is not used consciously in mindfulness auditing. This information may or may not be applicable. The missing data could simply be not having connected all the dots. It could be more than just a single basic incident at the bottom of it.

When a child is abnormally afraid of the dark, he probably has a severe engramic experience in prenatal. This prenatal experience will include all the sound data and sensory data of the incident. It is idiotic and identical. The preclear will have somatics. These on the first few recountings will be ordinarily faint and then become more severe as more data is located. The data will finally be in a more or less complete state and the engram will begin to lift, rising up through the various tones. All prenatals are apathy experiences and are therefore serious. Minor taps and discomforts in the womb are of no consequence. A true engram will consist of such a thing as a knitting needle being rammed through the foetus, half of the foetus’ head being badly injured, blows of various kinds bringing about foetal unconsciousness and so forth. Return eventually will find an opening into any period when there has been pain.

Disbeliefs and antagonisms from the preclear on the subject of such a thing as an attempted abortion should be overlooked by the auditor or taken into account as the sign of an existing engram. A case is recalled wherein a girl insisted that if an abortion had ever been attempted on her it should have been successful. Through several sessions, while an attempt was made to lift birth, she continued this assertion until the auditor realized that this was probably a remark made by the abortionist (or the mother) when his efforts failed. As soon as this was suggested to the girl she was able to contact the actual incident. A chronic apathy case under treatment for some years in an institution, she suddenly responded to auditing, brought the abortion to tone four, erased birth to tone four and recovered mentally and physically into a social asset well above normal.

The auditor should continue to suspect prenatals as long as he cannot get later engrams easily into tone four. Once an engramic chain has been lifted at its end nearest to conception, the preclear should begin to release relatively automatically, aided but little by the auditor. The erasure should be in terms of laughter at its optimum. This laughter is the reversing of charges residual in the locks which depended for their fear content or antagonistic content upon the basic engrams.

If a prenatal painful experience is there it will come up automatically in the mindfulness approach.

Abortion attempts are easy to recognize when an auditor has had some experience. The parent who attempted the abortion will, after the child’s birth, likely be a source of anxiety to the individual who seems to require a great deal of affection and attraction from that parent. The individual will be found to be most fond of the parent (or other) who did not aid, or who actually tried to prevent the abortion attempt. At this time abortion attempts are extremely common. When an abortion attempt has been lifted, the engramic chain should easily be brought to the time track and exhausted.

If an abortion attempt painful experience is there it will come up automatically in the mindfulness approach.

Auditing is essentially very simple but it demands precise understanding of the principles involved and imagination and sympathy on the part of the auditor. He must learn to compute engramically—or learn to think with his analytical mind, only for the purposes of auditing others, engramically. His biggest problem is the discovery of the basic of basics. It may elude him for a considerable period of time.

The primary principle that is necessary is to keep the viewpoint objective and to relegate any assumption to the background. As the process of free association may take some time to conclude, a bit of patience is required.

There is, however, preparatory work to do in a case other than the discovery of the basic. Occasionally an entire time track must be rehabilitated in which “do not remember” and “can’t remember” have obscured the track. Later locks can be found and exhausted in the same manner that engrams are exhausted, and rapid scanning methods may be developed in the future for these. The hysteria or fear of the individual can be momentarily allayed one way or the other and the problem of reaching the basic can be entered upon. There are as many types of case as there are cases, but these are the primary fundamentals.

If the auditee is concerned about nothing coming up in a session then he may focus on the difficulty with remembering. The focus on difficulty may thus shift in the mindfulness approach as the situation arises.

An auditor must think his way through every case, taking as his data the constantly reiterated statements of the preclear during auditing, and accumulating experience as to how incidents can be thrust off the time track, burying them from sight by the analytical mind, thus forming a reactive mind to the detriment of the organism.

The Dianetics procedure depends on the ability of the auditor to “compute” the case. That is a great weakness of this procedure. In mindfulness procedure, no such computation is required. Even when one can guess the content of engramic node, such knowledge is simply kept in the background.  

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FINAL COMMENTS

Diagnosis means isolating the difficulty that a person (auditee) is going to focus on in his auditing session. The difficulty may be understood broadly at first as whatever the auditee is unhappy about. As auditing proceeds, this difficulty may be narrowed down to something more specific.

Dianetics assumes that all aberrations arise, ultimately, from a physically painful experience. In its opinion, locating and running that painful incident is the fastest way of curing that person. Therefore, Dianetics employs the method of “return”, or light regression, to make the auditee re-experience an incident that is causing his difficulty. There is, however, not always a clear cut incident to return to.

Mindfulness auditing, on the other hand, employs the method where the auditee focuses on the difficulty while letting the mind freely associate whatever data it finds. The auditee is not made to recall or return to some incident. Instead he simply concentrates on the details of his difficulty. Mind shall automatically associate freely the data available to it.  If there is an incident to come up, it will do so. The auditee is trained to simply observe and not to justify what comes up. This way his focus can go pretty deep.

The auditee will discover details about his difficulty but he is not required to provide them to the counselor (auditor). He may discuss whatever details he wants to as part of further diagnosis. If the auditee is concerned about nothing coming up in a session then he may focus on the difficulty with remembering. The difficulty to be focused on may thus shift in the mindfulness approach as the situation arises.

When there is a mental breakdown one may look at the difficulty that preceded the break. When the auditee is too introverted his attention needs to be extroverted by taking walks, or by changing his environment, before he can avail of an auditing session.

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Reference: DIANETICS: The Original Thesis

This paper presents Chapter 10 from the book DIANETICS: THE ORIGINAL THESIS by L. RON HUBBARD. The contents are from the original publication of this book by The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc. (1948).

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.  Feedback on these comments is appreciated.

The heading below is linked to the original materials.

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The Auditor’s Code

Not because it is a pleasant thing to do or because it is a noble idea, the auditor must always treat a preclear in a certain definite way which can be outlined as the auditor’s code. Failure to follow this code will cause trouble to the auditor, will considerably lengthen and disturb his work and may endanger the preclear. The auditor in the first place, at the optimum, should be himself cleared; otherwise he will find that many of his own engrams are restimulated as he listens to the engrams of his preclears. This restimulation may cause his own engrams to become chronic, victimizing him with various allergies and delusions and causing him to be, at best, extremely uncomfortable. An auditor can audit while he himself is being cleared as this is a peculiar and special method of locating his own engrams, since they become restimulated. Becoming painful to him, they can be found and speedily removed. Even if he is not himself cleared, the auditor must act like a Clear towards the preclear. The auditor’s code is the natural activity of a Clear.

In mindfulness meditation, a person is both the auditee and the auditor. The auditor’s code is same as the discipline of mindfulness. An auditor must apply this code to oneself and others for the benefit of all.

The auditor must act toward the preclear exactly in the way that the preclear as an organism would desire that his own conscious analytical mind would react to and consider the organism. An affinity must therefore be maintained at all costs.

The analytical mind is made up of the fully assimilated mental matrix. Its effort is to assimilate the engramic and aberrated nodes. This is accomplished by recognizing the aberration and following it to fully recognize its source. The auditor supports this effort fully. He does not deviate from this effort by adding other considerations.

The auditor must never permit himself to lose his temper, become aggravated, to scold or badger or antagonize the preclear in any way. To do so would not merely disturb the comfort of the preclear but might additionally derange him and might even prohibit further beneficial therapy by the auditor.

The code is nearly “Christlike.”

The auditor approaches the situation objectively and does not become rattled. He maintains his own mental matrix in an assimilated state. He becomes aware when his own aberrated nodes are activated, and uses the discipline of mindfulness to defuse them.

The auditor must be confident in that he must continually reassure the preclear when restimulated engrams cause despondency on the preclear’s part. A cheerful optimistic presence encourages the preclear through his most painful experiences.

The auditor is confident in the application of mindfulness and is continually reassuring others of its success in a cheerful and optimistic manner. He keeps the attention extroverted and objective.

The auditor must be courageous, never permitting himself to be intimidated by either the aggression or hostility of the preclear.

The auditor recognizes any aggression or hostility to be dramatizations and does not react to them. He courageously applies mindfulness to defuse that behavior.

The auditor must be kind, never indulging in hostilities or personal prejudices. The auditor must be trustworthy, never betraying or capriciously denying a preclear and above all never breaking his word to the preclear. An auditor must be clean, for personal odors or bad breath may be restimulators to the preclear or may disturb him. The auditor must take care not to offend the concepts or sensibilities of the preclear.

The auditor is kind and aware of the needs that are there. He can be trusted for his skills and actions to bring assimilation to the mental matrix. He keeps good hygiene. His approach is just right to help overcome a difficulty.

The auditor must be persistent, never permitting the case of the preclear to either resist him or to remain unsolved until it is in a proper tone four, since the restimulation of engrams is a malady unto itself unless they are being properly exhausted.

The auditor proceeds systematically with the help of the assimilated mental matrix to resolve the aberrated nodes as aberrations are presented. He never gives up.

The auditor must be patient, never hurrying or harassing the preclear beyond the needs of stirring an engram into view. He must be willing to work at any and all times necessary and for the length of time necessary to exhaust the engrams in process of elimination.

The auditor approaches the aberrated node on a gradient by letting the mind unwind as it may. He handles the aberrated node as soon as it becomes available. He is patient and willing to work whenever and as long as needed.

In addition to these things it may be remarked that a definite affinity is established between the auditor and preclear during the auditing. In the case of opposite sexes this affinity may amount to an infatuation. The auditor must remain aware of this and know that he can and should redirect the infatuation to some person or activity other than himself when auditing is at an end. Not to do so is to produce an eventual situation wherein the preclear may have to be rebuffed with consequent trouble for the auditor.

Over time there is a deep and mutual understanding established between the auditor and the auditee. The auditor respects this trust and understanding and never takes advantage of it for personal gains.

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FINAL COMMENTS

The auditor has the responsibility of keeping his own mental matrix well assimilated and not disturbed by his own aberrated nodes, while helping others assimilate their aberrated and engramic nodes.

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Reference: DIANETICS: The Original Thesis

This paper presents Chapter 8 from the book DIANETICS: THE ORIGINAL THESIS by L. RON HUBBARD. The contents are from the original publication of this book by The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc. (1948).

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.  Feedback on these comments is appreciated.

The heading below is linked to the original materials.

.

The Character of Engrams

There are several general types of engrams. It must be understood that the mind possesses a time track of one sort or another and that this track is a specific thing. The time track of an individual will include all those things available to his analytical mind when in a light trance or during regression. However, a person can be regressed and the data which he can easily contact along his time track is definitely not engramic even if it possesses an emotional charge. Everything on this track will be rational or justified experience. It will not include engrams. It may include locks—which is to say that it may include moments of mental anguish or antagonism and may even include instants of unconsciousness which have some slight engramic command value.

The matrix model of mindfulness is more comprehensive than the time track model of Dianetics. All data merged into the mental matrix is analytical and it is available to the individual. Dianetics uses regression but there is no need for regression in mindfulness meditation. Data relevant to contemplation comes up automatically when the mind is not interfered with, and allowed to unwind at its own pace. Well-focused attention is adequate.

The content of the aberrated node is not significant. What is significant is the inconsistency which that node presents to rest of the mental matrix. In other words, the significant aspect is anything that does not make sense. As the mind sorts out the inconsistencies, charge (tension) blows off. Locks-secondary-engram is simply the gradient in which inconsistencies present themselves to be resolved. Resolution comes about as the node under attention unwinds. The contents of the node then assimilate into the matrix.

An engram has several specific, positive characteristics. It is received by the individual at some moment of physical pain. It is not available to the analyzer and it includes conceived or actual antagonism to the survival of the organism. Certain mechanics such as “forget it” may swerve a minimumly painful or unconscious experience off the time track. In that case it becomes possessed of engramic command value.

All engrams with power to derange the analytical mind and aberrate the physical body, lie off the time track and are not available to the analytical mind.

By reason of its disorganization during the moment the engram was received, or because it has been forcibly instructed that the data in the engram is not to be recalled, the analyzer cannot reach the engram by ordinary means because the data has been erroneously labelled “dangerous,” “important,” or “too painful to touch.” The engram then, by a bypass circuit, feeds hidden commands into the analyzer. By a direct instantaneous circuit it is permanently connected to the motor controls, all perceptic channels, the glands, and heart. It is awaiting a moment of low general tone, weariness, or injury when the analytical mind has reduced powers. It is also awaiting the perception of one or more of the engram’s restimulators in the environment of the organism.

At the root of engram is a shock or pain that translates as intense confusion to the mind. When the engram is received the mind is unable to process that confusion on the spot. This confusion releases when there is adequate attention and enough time to let it unwind. An individual should never be forced into the engram, especially when he is weak and tired. That will only bring the “hypnotic” effects of the engram into play.

Continuous restimulation of the engrams can, in itself, cause a low general tone which in its turn permits more engrams to become restimulated. As the reactive mind comes into a more or less completely chronic state of restimulation, the individual becomes more and more governed by this mind. His thought becomes more and more engramic and he can be seen to drop in general tone on the tone scale down to the break point which may be arbitrarily placed somewhere between 2 and 2.5 and below which lies the region of insanity.

If a person is low on the Tone Scale, and he is behaving irrationally then he has many engrams that are in an activated state. He may not be able to concentrate on them and let his mind unwind.

Engramic thought is irrational identity-thought by which the mind is made to conceive identities where only vague similarities may exist. It is necessary that the auditor thoroughly understand engramic thought, for it is with this complete irrationality of identity that he will basically deal. As he works with any preclear, he must continually employ in the bulk of his computation on the case the equation of engramic thinking.

Engramic thinking can be stated by: A equals A equals A equals A equals A.

The engram, when one or more of its restimulators is perceived in the environment during a moment of low general tone, may dramatize. The dramatization is the precise content of the engram. The aberration is the precise content of the engram. The reaction of an individual’s analytical mind when an engram is reactivated is justification.

There is reason to believe that part of this survival mechanism consists of the axiom: The analyzer must never permit an incorrect solution. The engram brings about many incorrect solutions. The analyzer may very well become entirely involved with the attempt to discover and deliver to a society, or to itself, adequate rational reasons for the behavior of the organism.

A person is irrational to the degree he is unable to differentiate among things. Since he is unable to perceive his irrationality he justifies his behavior. His irrationality may be traced through his justifications.

The analytical mind, though working from the command of the engram itself, is unaware of the source of the command. Not being able to discover the source, it introverts more and more in an effort to solve a problem which contains danger to the organism. The analytical mind tends to find the danger without and within the organism.

When a person senses that something is wrong with him, and he can’t find the reason, then he increasingly introverts.

There are five ways that the organism can react to a danger in its vicinity. It can attack it, avoid it, neglect it, run from it, or succumb to it. In just these ways can the analytical mind, which, it must be remembered, is possessed of self-determinism and will power, react to the reactive mind. As the general tone lowers, as the analytical mind becomes less and less powerful through weariness, continual reverses in general health, etc., the more and more heed it must give to the problems unsolved in the reactive mind. These are in essence unsolved problems. As such, they contain their own solutions. The analytical mind, unable to reach them, justifies the organism’s reaction to them (succumbs to them), causes the organism to attempt to flee from them, apathetically may neglect them (as in prefrontal lobotomy), avoids them in many intricate ways, or attacks them. The analytical mind is not only not certain where the experience lies on the time track, it also does not know whether the menace is within the organism or without it. So it can become entirely indiscriminate, and eventually it may achieve highly irrational solutions by which it seeks to solve the problems of the highly irrational reactive mind.

There are five ways that a person deals with a threat: attack it, avoid it, neglect it, run from it, or succumb to it. His handling of threat may become highly irrational too.

The deep sensory perception channel entering the mind is evidently equipped with an “appreciator” which sorts according to the momentary general tone or potential of the analytical mind. The higher the general tone or potential of the analytical mind the better the data in the appreciator is sorted. The appreciator circuits are evidently fully apprised of engramic content in the reactive mind and evaluate restimulators perceived in the environment against the general tone of the analytical mind. When that is low, restimulators route more or less directly to the reactive mind which instantly responds by fixed connections into the motor controls. Commands to the various members, muscles, glands and organs of the body may be sporadic or constant, producing a high variety of responses in the body. Entire vocabularies are fed into the voice circuits directly from the reactive mind when an engram is restimulated. Orders to be active or inactive are fed to other portions. The individual time track of the engram spaces the commands to the organism and a dramatization is accomplished which may contain a portion or all of the content of the engram as governed by the situation. Psychosomatic ills, hysterias, rages, tantrums, criminal acts and any and all content prejudicial to the survival of the organism in which the organism is seen to be indulging has as its source the reactive mind.

The sole and only content of the reactive mind is what exterior sources have done to the organism.

None of the content of the reactive mind is self-motivated. The auditor is then interested only in what is done to the person, not what the person himself has done, since, for purposes of auditing, the acts of the organism in its society can be discounted beyond diagnosis. Even then they are of small importance to the auditor.

The engramic node short circuits the mind when activated. Its content causes psychosomatic illnesses as well as irrational behavior. It is a systemic problem. The person cannot be blamed for it. What needs to be resolved is why the person is behaving the way he is.

An organism possessed of an analytical mind, not victimized by incapacitating disease or injury (and unimpeded) will commit no act knowingly prejudicial to the survival of the organism or other facets within the dynamics. It will combat only those dangers in society, which are actual menaces.

Whatever may be the status of the “innate moral sense,” the basic intent of the basic personality is to further various energy forms along the dynamics toward the goal. Only moments of actual dispersal of the awareness of the analytical mind permit data to be received which is prejudicial to the intent of the dynamics. Only from these “unconscious” moments can the basically stable and enormously powerful and able analytical mind be aberrated through the implantation of unanalyzed, painfully administered, and antagonistic information. It is the purpose of the auditor to find and exhaust these moments from the life of the individual. Dianetic auditing includes therefore, as its basic principle, the exhaustion of all the painfully unconscious moments of a subject’s life. By eradicating pain from the life of an individual, the auditor returns the individual to complete rationality and sanity.

The auditor should never be content with merely bringing the person back to normal. He should achieve with the person a tone 4 even though this is far in advance of the average state of society at this time. A tone 4 with his drives intact and powerful, with his rationality and intelligence increased to the optimum, becomes extremely valuable to the society, whatever his past.

Knowing this the auditor can expect a maximum result of lasting duration with any preclear not physically hopeless.

Dianetics proposes to remove all the painfully unconscious moments of a person’s life. Mindfulness focuses on the removal of all confusions. When one does the latter all painfully unconscious moments also come out in the wash. The outcome is a person who is way above normal.

The entire purpose of the auditor is to rehabilitate the basic dynamic and the normal purpose or profession of the individual whom he audits. Anything implanted by positive suggestion or “education” in the course of auditing is harmful and must be cancelled if delivered. Only the basic personality of the individual can decide and evaluate things in his environment. Therefore, hypnotism as practiced with positive suggestions should be shunned since any and all hypnotic commands with the attendant forgetter mechanisms are no more than artificially implanted engrams. Indeed, it is quite usual for the auditor to have to exhaust hypnotically implanted material received either from some hypnotist or from the analytical mind itself when the person has been operating under auto-control. Hypnotism as such does not work, and a study and short practice in Dianetics will reveal exactly why.

Any “positive suggestion” implanted in the mind through hypnotism, indoctrination or education is harmful to the individual, as it bypasses understanding and is not fully integrated into the mental matrix.

The auditor is attempting to delete the reactive mind from the individual. This reactive mind is an infestation of foreign, careless and unreasoning commands which disrupt the self-determinism of the individual to such an extent that he no longer has charge, through his analytical mind, of the organism itself but finds himself under the continual and chronic orders of unseen, never reviewed exterior forces, often and usually antipathetic to the survival of the organism.

Engrams deal with identities where no identities exist. They therefore pose many strange and irrational problems which are seen as aberrations in preclears. If a human being has been born, he can be supposed to have at least one engram. Anyone who has a birth which has not been cleared by therapy has therefore a reactive mind. There is no disgrace attached to having a reactive mind since it was thrust without his consent and without his knowledge upon an unconscious and helpless individual. Sometimes this was done by persons with the best of imaginable intentions. A person not possessed of a rational mind cannot be rationally considered to be morally responsible, no matter the demands of the current society which hitherto lacked any method of determining responsibility.

The process of birth may result in an engramic node.

The pain contained in the reactive mind is normally severe. The usual parental punishments, family complications, reprimands, minor accidents and the battle of the individual with his environment, influence but do not cause a reactive mind, nor do these things have the power to change materially the reactions of an individual.

In the background of any individual exist many hidden personalities contained in the reactive mind. Dealing in identities, the reactive mind often confuses identities of individuals. Therefore, irrational attachments and antipathies are formed by aberrated individuals who can often find no reason for such attachments or antipathies in their contemporary environment.

The content of an engram is literally interpreted, not as it was stated to the “unconscious” subject, but as it was received in its most literal phraseology and perception.

The organism possesses many inherent mechanisms and abilities by which it can learn or preserve or forward itself along the dynamics. Any one of them may be exaggerated by engrams to a point where it becomes an actual threat to the organism or impedes it. Engrams can and do aberrate all the sensory perceptions, any and all parts of the body, and the mind itself. By demanding suicide the engram can destroy the entire organism.

The error of the reactive mind was introduced by the evolution of speech, for which the basic mechanism was not designed. When all perceptics save speech formed the reactive mind, it was to some degree serviceable. With speech came such complexities of perception and such interchanges of ideas that a whole series of illusions and delusions could be derived from the reactive mind’s necessity to determine identities for purposes of emergency.

With speech the reactive mind came to possess far more power and extensive content. The analytical mind, being a delicate mechanism in some respects no matter how rugged and capable in others, then could become subjected to delusions and illusions which, however shadowy and unreal, must nevertheless be obeyed. By stripping the reactive mind of its past painful content the analytical mind may be placed in complete command of the organism.

The evolution of speech has greatly contributed to the aberrations generated by the engramic node.

The moment a man or a group becomes possessed of this ability, it becomes possessed of self-determinism. So long as these possess reactive minds, irrationalities will persist. Because it contains literal speech, no reactive mind can be conceived to be of any value whatsoever to the rational organism since the methods of that reactive mind remain intact and will continue to act to preserve the organism in times of “unconsciousness” of the analytical mind. There is no residual good in any reactive mind. It is capable of any illusion. It has no assist power along the dynamics save only to cancel or modify other reactive mind content. The source of the individual’s power and purpose is not derived from the reactive mind but from the Basic Dynamic and its eight divisions. Any auditor will establish this to his own satisfaction after he has run a very few cases.

When an individual during auditing is attempting to “hold on to his aberrations,” the auditor may be assured that that person has as part of the content of the reactive mind such phrases as, “don’t dare get rid of it,” which, identically translated, apparently applies to aberrations. It may, in fact, apply in an engram containing an attempted abortion.

The identity factor in the reactive mind may cause the analytical mind to respond irrationally in auditing and to justify the aberrations in many irrational ways. Whatever means he uses or statements he makes to avoid the exhaustion of his reactive mind is contained exactly in the reactive mind as a positive suggestion and has no application whatsoever in rational thought.

Individuality (if by that is meant a man’s desires and habits) is not traced to the reactive mind save when by individuality is meant those flagrant eccentricities which pass in Dickens for characters.

A man is much more an individual after his reactive mind has been cleared.

An individual becomes himself or herself after the confusions and flaws in the mind are cleared.

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FINAL COMMENTS

The Dianetic theory says that engrams (perceptions congealed due to shock and pain and stored) are the source of all aberrations. Engram resolves when one becomes aware of its contents. Engramic content may be accessed by guessing and mimicking it. The Dianetic approach tries to dig into the mind and is dangerous. It can have unintended consequences resulting in mental conditioning.

Mindfulness says that all aberrations are caused by perceptions that could not be assimilated into the mental matrix. Such perceptions remain as unassimilated nodes, among which are engramic nodes. Such nodes may be assimilated by letting the mind unwind without interfering with it. The mindfulness approach is a more gradient approach.

Shock corrupts the functioning of the mind by congealing the perceptions of painful experience into engramic nodes. Such nodes take time to unwind. But with mindfulness approach combined with intense focus these engramic nodes may be diffused relatively quickly.

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