I Read Dianetics (Scientology Book One) So You Don't Have To

It took me eight months, but I finally finished reading Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, referred to as Book One by the Church of Scientology. What I am about to tell you is lengthy, but if you were to read the following text, then you would understand more about this belief and its basic principles than most people you've met—even those who claim to know anything whatsoever.

On some level, Scientology has always captivated a slice of my interest pie. I was intrigued, not by anything I had read or anything I had been told about their practices, but rather, the extreme opposition the church appeared to have perpetually faced since their launch in 1952. It astonished me that everyone seemed to have an opinion on this organisation, forever using words like “cult” or “science fiction” to describe it, while jumping up and down as they excitedly mentioned Tom Cruise or John Travolta as part of their argument. Hell, there were even those who had watched a scathing documentary or two and scoffed as they mentioned Xenu or the thetans which apparently lived within all of us. And yet, nobody could actually explain to me what the fundamentals of the Church’s teachings were. Why was that, exactly? How had everyone formed such intensely aggressive assessments of something they did not even understand a single thing about? And, on the other side, how come so many well-educated, successful people were convinced to join these ranks despite reputation? There had to be more to this story! And, goshdarnit, I was going to find out! Hence why I picked up this book and read it, unsurprised to discover that, of course, the Scientology religion was shamefully misinterpreted.

Scientology (or rather, Dianetics, which is the core program which predates Scientology itself) is an endlessly fascinating concept but is also quite difficult to summarise. However, I shall give it my best go, delivered in the simplest manner I can muster. How I have come to understand it, goes like this: everything that has ever happened to you is recorded in your mind “subconsciously” (even though this is not exactly the right word, but whatever). Dianetics specifically concerns itself with those “memories” which are saved during times when a person is unconscious, injured, severely ill, or not fully aware of their surroundings. These “memories” are called engrams and do not enter your memory bank properly, hence why you cannot recall them like the rest of your life. Instead, these engrams have been captured by your brain at a more root level, where they lodge themselves deep within your thoughts and cause all sorts of psychosomatic illnesses and irrational behaviours. This happens because engrams only develop during very vulnerable moments of your life. In order to prevent such a vulnerability from happening again in the future, this engramic data is considered of the utmost importance and imperative to your survival, hence why it can assert complete control over your mind whenever it is activated. To summarise in an even simpler fashion: when an incident takes place which reminds your engrams of another previously traumatic incident, your brain will be instructed to behave in an automated fashion, often in very illogical ways, because it thinks that this is the only action which will keep you alive.

Dianetics is a therapy which is intended to remove these engrams. It does so, by reminding you of the once-forgotten incident when that engram was developed, forcing you to “relive” this moment over and over again until the engram loses its power, now saved into your proper memory like it always should have been. Apparently, most of us have hundreds of these engrams, so it takes some time. However, once you have removed all of your engrams, you become what is known as a Clear, which is kind of like a superhero as well as the ultimate goal of Dianetics. According to the book, Clears are aware of everything, they no longer behave in any seemingly illogical ways, all of their senses regenerate back to 100%, their mood is forever positive, and they hardly ever fall ill (among many other guarantees).

And that's basically it! Of course, there is soooo much more to this and I could easily sit here for hours explaining the various other minute details, but at its core, the above just about covers it.

It all sounds innocent enough on paper though, doesn't it? So then why such a furious global opposition? Well, a large part of the antagonism towards Dianetics is due to the author himself, L. Ron Hubbard. Admittedly, it doesn’t look great when you create a religion as a former science fiction writer. However, it is worth noting that (unlike any other novelist in any other genre) Mr Hubbard currently holds the Guinness World Record for the author with the most published works in history (at 1,084). If nothing else, this at least proves that Ron was a little something extra, quite far above your average character on the fictional scene. Furthermore, the man’s talent in the writing field is definitely a skill he's sharpened expertly, which becomes apparent very quickly within these pages as one well-read individual, more than able to craft convincing prose while undeniably harnessing some sort of a genius mind within his skull. That said, there were also plenty of paragraphs when I doubted the man’s sanity, slapping my forehead as he frequently sounded like he was lost within a world of his own creation, blabbering about grandiose concepts which were impossible to prove or disprove. In my opinion, one of the biggest crimes of the written language is when a large word is favoured over an equally efficient smaller word. Ron is very guilty of this, using multisyllabic terms in an attempt to sound clever which will only alienate simpler readers as well as those of us who could not be bothered. Consequently, this book was, at times, a grueling endurance test and my brain would often shut off, refusing to have anything to do with such verbose nonsense.

Which brings us to the main issue surrounding this whole Dianetics idea in the first place. It's that there is very little scientific basis behind any of it (regardless of the Scientology name). L. Ron Hubbard makes incredibly bold statements, all delivered so matter-of-factly that you may often catch yourself accepting his word for it, despite the lack of any researchable case studies available beyond the book you hold. Truthfully, if there were any outside references to back up these experiments or subjects he speaks of, then I would have signed the paper a long time ago. Instead, I eventually came to the conclusion that Dianetics was, in many ways, a unique angle in approaching regressive hypnotherapy, except packaged with a brand new backstory and wrapped up using unfamiliar terminology for every single fucking word until it looked like something completely different. What's worse was the author's incessant assurance that this was not regressive hypnotherapy in any way, desperately repeating this statement over and over again, which only worked to make it sound even more suspicious. (Please note: while the comparisons I have just made are reasonable, they are also not entirely fair. What Dianetics promises is an immeasurably faster process of mental healing as well as the chance to achieve complete neurotic freedom. This is a relatively unheard of notion.)

Be all of this as it may, the book did have a lot of exciting cogs churning in its favour. For me, the most impressive element was the sheer depth of this Dianetics documentation, delivered with a seemingly infinite pool of thought, which alone deserves the following it now has. I'm being serious too. Even if L. Ron intentionally pulled the entire Dianetics idea out from his own ass, the amount of work that has gone into this branch of therapy alone shows such a dedication to his cause that he has earned his Church as far as I’m concerned. He did not take any shortcuts, that’s for sure. Furthermore, once you get used to his inflated descriptions and needless jargon, Hubbard's strategic method of repeatedly revisiting and elaborating on each of his theories was a clever approach. Eventually, it all starts to piece together, making a lot of sense as a belief system worth exploring just in case he actually has uncovered something incredibly special here. I mean, the hundreds of thousands of dollars people spend on Dianetics each year has got to mean something, right? You surely couldn’t get away with such an expensive "product" if it did absolutely nothing? And it’s not like it’s asking you to believe in some spirit living in the sky or the infernal pits of Satan or anything. It’s asking you to get rid of bad memories. It all seems relatively harmless to me. Sort of.

Either way, after this book was published, Dianetics became much more popular, and with bigger audiences come bigger problems. What's important to know at this point, is that Dianetics is not a religion. It’s a therapy. Scientology is the religion. In fact, Dianetics by itself is currently used by various independent groups who have distanced themselves from Scientology. The Nation of Islam has adopted the therapy into their own teachings since 2010, for example. Certainly, the Church will disagree, but I am fairly convinced that the religious phase of this story was conceived for financial reasons by dodging taxes while benefiting from the other legal advantages such organisations can exploit. This book features absolutely no mention to religion in the slightest manner of breath, and I personally feel that all of the kooky Hubbarism mythologies which followed have completely detracted from the beautifully intricate information on offer here. I read nothing about previous lives, nothing about operating thetans (aka immortal souls), or nothing about Xenu (aka a space alien dictator). Even the E-meter was not around at this date of publication. Rather, here was a simple guide about getting from A to B to Clear using transparent auditing techniques. That's all.

Regardless, I must appreciate what Ron designed in religious terms too. To build some intricate rating system where you can purchase a rise in your spirituality levels like a computer game is pure business gold. And while the legendary 75 million-year-old story behind Scientology is too far out for any rational mind to accept, it’s still just about as fucked as any other religion’s claimed history. Do you really think every Scientologist believes in the Galactic Confederacy? Do you really think every Christian believes in Adam and Eve and the talking snake?

From my own personal stance, I want everyone to know that I read this book on high defense. I tried my best to spot any evil cult suggestions or manipulative trickery, luring me in with promises of fame or money or perhaps an action film franchise. But in the end, its message seemed so logical and positive that I came out the other side still very unsure on what it is I actually believe or disbelieve at this point.

But what I will say, is this: these pages caused me to look deeper into my own mind than I ever have before. I started to question certain thoughts and behaviours which this text described perfectly. I began to notice peculiar actions from my friends and automatically analysed them in context of these teachings, convinced that I had spotted some deeper part to their mind which they themselves had not yet spotted (what's more, I was too afraid to explain it to them because of the dirty word that is “Scientology”). A large portion of what I read connected quite intensely to my life and this has slightly altered my direction of thinking, which is something I'm still not fully able to articulate properly. But these ideas will stick with me forever in what I believe to be a good way.

For these reasons, I have decided to cautiously explore Scientology further in real life. I have already taken the initial steps to do so.


If you are interested in this book, you should buy it, because then they may forgive me for the stolen text which follows. However, if this book is something you're interested in but will never ever read, do not fear! For I have picked out what I consider to be the most valuable pieces and then pasted them below, all the while adding my own commentary because I know you care.

PLEASE NOTE 1: Unfortunately due to L. Ron's persistence of renaming everything in the world, these notes may not make sense if you jump around. They are designed to be read in a consecutive fashion. There was no logical way around this, unfortunately.

PLEASE NOTE 2: I utilised much suspended disbelief in the following notes. There would be no point in picking apart everything I was unsure of, hence why I opted to just roll with many of the statements on offer. Don't let that put you off.

Read This Next Maybe

I Read the Satanic Bible So You Don't Have To

SYNOPSIS

THE DYNAMIC PRINCIPLE OF EXISTENCE IS: SURVIVE!

Sounds a little simple and obvious, but is actually a key component at the root of all of Scientology's beliefs.

DYNAMIC ONE:
The urge of the individual to reach the highest potential of survival in terms of self and his immediate symbiotes.

DYNAMIC TWO:
The urge of the individual to reach the highest potential of survival in terms of sex, the act and the creation of children and their rearing.

DYNAMIC THREE:
The urge of the individual to reach the highest potential of survival in terms of the group, whether civil, political, or racial, and the symbiotes of that group.

DYNAMIC FOUR:
The urge of the individual to reach the highest potential of survival in terms of Mankind and the symbiotes of Mankind.

The different types of survival. Actually not that important in the bigger scheme of things, but an interesting breakdown all the same.

The concept of the unconscious mind is replaced in dianetics by the discovery that the "unconscious" mind is the only mind which is always conscious. In Dianetics this sub-mind is called the reactive mind. A holdover from an earlier step in Man's evolution, the reactive mind possesses vigor and command power on a cellular level. It does not "remember"; it records and uses the recordings only to produce action. It does not "think"; it selects recordings and impinges them upon the "conscious" mind and the body without the knowledge or consent of the individual. The only information the individual has of such action is his occasional perception that he is not acting rationally about one thing or another and cannot understand why.

This is incredibly important. Subconscious is called a "reactive mind" in Dianetics, and it's here where literally all the trouble happens. Basically put, it keeps a record of everything you've ever seen and heard for your whole life. This causes you to behave automatically under certain circumstances in hopes of steering you away from a repeat of previous troubles, i.e. to survive. It's an outdated survival mechanism, according to the book. It's also a pretty standard understanding of subconscious behaviour anyway, but a central point to the belief all the same, for reasons which will make more sense as we go on.

Dianetic therapy may be briefly stated. Dianetics deletes all the pain from a lifetime. When this pain is erased in the engram bank and refiled as memory and experience in the memory banks, all aberrations and psycho-somatic illnesses vanish, the dynamics are entirely rehabilitated and the physical and mental being regenerate.

Simply put, an "engram bank" is the (biologically different) part of the brain where traumatic memories are saved (apparently). So here is the big promise: Dianetics can remove the pain associated with all of these memories by removing them from that place and then relocating them into your more logical, "conscious" memory.

All therapy is done, not by remembering or associating, but by travel on the time track. Every human being has a time track. It begins with life and it ends with death. It is a sequence of events complete from portal to portal as recorded.

Sounds more far-fetched than it is. It's basically regressive therapy, where you visit memories rather than remember them. A very common idea, renamed for Hubbard's Scifi wankery.

The engram is a recording like the ripples in the groove of a phonograph record: it is a complete recording of everything which occurred during the period of pain. Dianetics can locate, with its techniques, any engram which the cells have hidden, and in therapy the patient will often discover himself to be upon the prenatal cellular time track.

A slightly better description of engrams, which can even occur before birth. Dianetics can find and release even those. If that sounds somewhat implausible to you, then my God, just you wait.

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

This volume has made no effort to use resounding or thunderous phrases, frowning polysyllables or professorial detachment.

This is so funny. Especially because this book is so superfluous in delivery.

BOOK ONE
THE GOAL OF MAN

CHAPTER ONE: THE SCOPE OF DIANETICS

I struggled immensely at the beginning of this book, as I think most would. It doesn't ease you in hence why my notes were fairly minimal. However, it works as a summary chapter, of which all the components are revisited and evaluated on at later stages. It will all come together at some point.

According to a modern writer, the single advance of psycho-therapy was clean quarters for the madman. In terms of brutality in treatment of the insane, the methods of the shaman or Bedlam 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 zombie-ism, 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.

His stance on how to best deal with insanity is held strong throughout the book, and I agree with them.

CHAPTER TWO: THE CLEAR

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.

Basically, when your analytic mind (i.e: the logical part) is faced with a problem, it performs an infallible calculation, weighing up your options based on previous experiences and education. Even if the result is wrong, the calculation itself never is. However, the reactive mind (i.e: the subconscious level) does not do any calculations and behaves in automated manner which even you can't explain. That's where the trouble starts. Hence why the idea is to wipe the reactive mind clean to become a Clear.

CHAPTER THREE: THE GOAL OF MAN

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.

Sure enough, on page 29 of my copy, a DESCRIPTIC GRAPH OF SURVIVAL has been included, which basically shows how to map out man's desire to survive from points of death up until hypothetical immortality. This comes with "zones" which are essentially your current mood (happiness to bearable to anger to apathy), which is used to illustrate how close to death and/or "immortality" you are. It's an inflated concept I never fully got on board with and yet is it revisited throughout as some fundamental piece of the puzzle.

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.

Sure, I can dig it.

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.

Hahaha waste my time, L. Ron.

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 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; it is hearing the kid first say daddy; it is a brawl on the Bund at Shanghai or the whistle of amour 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.

This is very nice.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE FOUR DYNAMICS

This is an elaboration on the four dynamics of survival, which I already noted in the synopsis section. I also came across a note I wrote for myself around here, which states, "it's killing me to read this".

A theory is only as good as it works. And it works as well as it explains observed data and predicts flew material which will be found, in fact, to exist.

What terrible wording.

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, 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.

Once again, can't argue with that logic. It also shows that, at its core, Scientology/Dianetics wears its heart in the right place.

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY

This section actually does a great job of summarising the whole book thus far, but obviously short of pasting an entire chapter here, it would take too much effort for me to do the same. What's important to remember, however, is that we wish to survive for the four dynamic reasons stated in the synopsis. Pleasure is an indicator of survival, pain is the opposite. Based on these factors, our "analytic" mind makes choices for our better survival. However, these are often hindered by engrams, causing the "reactive" mind to feed tainted data into our decision making due to past trauma. This is the root of all of your problems, including neurosis and physical ailments.

The potential value of an individual or a group may be expressed by the equation
PV = ID^x
where I is Intelligence and D is Dynamic.
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, 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.

I've read many people complaining about this part, and I agree. Wtf. A formula to work out your self-worth? Where is this even coming from?

BOOK TWO
THE SINGLE SOURCE
OF ALL INORGANIC MENTAL
AND ORGANIC
PSYCHO-SOMATIC ILLS

My interested really pricked up during Book 2, hence why my notes will be much more extensive from this point onward.

CHAPTER ONE: THE ANALYTICAL MIND AND THE STANDARD MEMORY BANKS

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."

"egsusheyftef", lol.

Between the standard banks, which are perfect and reliable, and the computer, the analytical mind, which is perfect and reliable, there is no irrational concourse. 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.

This is spot on and is something I've said myself on many occasions. The so-called "analytical mind" will always calculate the best choice based on the data saved in the memory, weighing it up against the current situation. It's a perfect process and exactly my argument for hard determinism.

CHAPTER TWO: THE REACTIVE MIND

I'm going to attempt to explain this myself.

The "reactive mind" (aka subconscious) is where everything goes wrong. This is when you react to something in an automatic fashion, in a way that is not only illogical but also not how you would like to behave. This is because something has happened to you in your past, and even if you can't really recall what it was, your brain does. It remembers that acting in a certain way provided certain results in this traumatic situation, and as a mean of misguided survival, it overrides all of your circuits and takes control, either to avoid or to repeat the same outcome as last time.

All of this seems like a fairly standard psychological "subconscious" concept, but Dianetics does come with its own unique elements.

According to Scientology, the reactive mind is always recording everything around you, even when you're unconscious, or even when you were in your mother's womb. When an incident occurs which causes you intense physical or mental pain, everything which happens around you (in particular, every noise heard) is not saved correctly in the memory banks. Rather, they are engraved into your brain on a biological level, fused into the actual tissue (hence why they cannot be easily recalled). These are called engrams and will flare up (be keyed-in) when something happens which reminds you of that exact traumatic memory. They then take over your actions even though you have no idea why.

And that's Dianetics in a nutshell. To locate these buggers and release them from the brain tissue, resaving them into your memory banks where they no longer harness any power to take control. A Clear is someone who has none of these engrams in their head to slow them down. Once again, all of this will make more sense as we go on.

CHAPTER THREE: THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM

The purpose of this chapter is to describe cells as sentient components which remember our traumas. Hence why engramic cells form and recall our anguish even when our memory cannot, and hence why we all (reportedly) have hundreds upon hundreds of these things each.

This chapter also goes into the different kinds of reactions which can take place when an engram is woken up. When these engrams form during an incident of injury/trauma, everyone who was around you at that time gets captured into the cell as part of its "memory". If the engram is one of great conflict, your cells will remember who was the winner of that dispute. As it is a survival mechanism, it will then instruct you to assume the role of the party who won the altercation. For example: someone who is violently raped and develops an engram of that moment, will become violent themselves when it is "keyed-in".

This is the reason why so many abused people become the abusers.

There are many other variations of an engramic reactions, and we will hopefully cover most of them before we reach the end.

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 reversed the process as though the cells were sorry they had put so much power in the hands of a central commander.

This is a clever analogy to describe how we lose control of our mind the more engrams we have.

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. 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.

I liked the vinyl analogy. It's also worth noting that two conflicting engrams are where some big trouble starts.

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.

Interesting break down on the apparent three types of thought.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE "DEMONS"

Thankfully, this book was written at a point in Mr. Hubbard's teachings where he didn't necessarily subscribe to any "demon" concepts. This chapter is quick to give more rational answers to people who believe they are under attack from such otherworldly concepts.

Naturally, it's all engramic based. More specifically, those evil entities a person may hear in their heads are nothing more than engrams speaking, and without the memory connection, these may sound like a different voices to the one in their own mind. These are what L.Ron calls "parasitic circuits", which become much bigger internal monsters thanks to the help of a little bit of imagination. But at the end of the day, said "demons" can only think as smart or act as powerful as the host itself, proving there is no spooky nonsense going on here.

This to me is the strangest inclusion as the strongest evidence of how far Scientology has strayed, now in some Scifi realms of Xenu and Galactic Confederacies and whateverthefucks. These ideas could not be further from what the book of Dianetics teaches. It is highly confusing. Where did it all go wrong?

CHAPTER FIVE: PSYCHOSOMATIC ILLNESS

A lot of this chapter connects all ailments to the mind, or more specifically, the engrams attached to it. It rightfully uses hypnotism as an example of how we can be convinced to feel ill or feel better at the very suggestion of it. It's not an unusual statement and it is something which I believe has much merit to it.

In fact, one could ask this question of the entire field of pathology: what is the actual effect of disease minus the mental equation? How serious are bacteria?

It's a common question. According to this book, a Clear very seldom gets sick in any way.

The individual who dramatizes the survival valence in his engrams may do violent things to other people. The individual who will not permit himself such a dramatization or who is forced by society away from such dramatization will most certainly become psychosomatically ill. "Heads I win, tails you lose."

Ok, so a "dramatization" is kind of what it sounds like. It's when an engram is "keyed-in" (activated) and causes a person to act loud and exaggerated as if a performer, suddenly a whole different persona, taking on a new overly-emotional character who has completely lost control. I'm sure you've witnessed people behave in this manner before, and if you're honest, you've acted this way too for reasons you are still unsure about.

In the context of the above quote, it's stated that the suppression of a dramatisation is to go against your engrams survival instinct. This will essentially cause your brain to short-circuit, resulting in a mind-created illness. If that makes sense.

The sexual pervert (and by this term Dianetics, to be brief, includes any and all forms of deviation in Dynamic II such as homosexuality, lesbianism, sexual sadism, etc. and all down the catalogue of Ellis and Krafft-Ebing) is actually quite ill physically.

And there it is. The classic "all gays are sick" stance that so many religions subscribe to. FUCKING SIGH.

A bit off the subject here, but it can be remarked about perversion that the best previous explanation for it was something about girls becoming envious of Papa's penis or boys becoming upset about that terrible thing, the vulva, which Mama was incautious enough to show one day. It takes a great deal more than this utter tripe to make a pervert. It is, rather, something on the order of kicking a baby's head in, running over him with a steam roller, cutting him in half with a rusty knife, boiling him in lysol and all the while with crazy people screaming the most horrifying and unprintable things at him. The human being is a very tough character. He is so confoundedly tough that he has whipped the whole animal kingdom and he can shake the stars. And when it comes to throwing his second dynamic out of balance, what that takes is straight out of Dante and Sax Rohmer combined. Hence the pervert, containing hundreds and hundreds of vicious engrams, has had little choice between being dead and being a pervert.

Intense!

It can be observed that the Church is entirely correct in doing all in its power to prevent blasphemy. Blasphemy can very often be uttered during the "unconsciousness" of a person who has been struck. This would enter sacred names and curses into engrams which, reacting within the individual, give him an unnatural terror and compulsion or repulsion toward God. It is not the religion which is at fault, it is the blaspheming of the religion. Such blasphemy makes the insane zealot and the murderous atheist, both of whom the Church would very gladly do without.

"Interesting thought," I thought.

Pain is extremely perishable. Pleasure is recorded in bronze. (Not poetry here, science. Physical pain will delete with brief attention, a pleasant or even a media-media experience is so solidly fixed in the mind that no treatment known to dianetics will shake it and a great deal of effort has been leveled at pleasure recordings just to test them for permanence. They are permanent; physical pain is perishable...)

Reassuring.

CHAPTER SIX: EMOTION AND THE DYNAMICS

I struggled with this chapter due to L. Ron ceaseless obsession of assigning numeric values and classes to everything. Our survival has tone scales, engrams have tone scales, emotions have tone scales, it's all a bit too much for me to genuinely invest in. Certainly, the approach makes sense as a simplified method of measuring different components, but my issue comes with the way in which it is presented as fact. These are interpretations rather than some grand new ideas, just another way to look at a theory, not necessarily a set-in-stone formulaic approach of reaching conclusions. It shows that Hubbard just decides things a lot.

As a result, I left much of this chapter out, but if anyone asks you about it, just tell them that "emotions are explicitly linked to survival".

In passing it should be mentioned that only absolute silence, utter silence and tomb-like silence, should attend an operation or injury of any kind. There is nothing which can be said or given as a perceptic in any moment of "unconsciousness" which is beneficial to a patient.

Nothing! In the light of these researches and scientific findings (which can be proven in any other laboratory or group of people in very short order), speech or sound in the vicinity of an "unconscious" person should be punished criminally as, to anyone who knows these facts, such an act would be a willful effort to destroy the intellect or mental balance of an individual. If the patient is complimented, as in hypnosis or during an injury or operation, a manic is formed which will give him temporary euphoria and eventually plunge him into the depressive stage of the cycle.

The golden rule could be altered to read: If you love your brother, keep your mouth shut when he is unconscious.

This is a notion repeated throughout the book. If anyone is ever injured or sick or unconscious, any of your words can cause an engram.

Dianeticists, having discovered that people evaluate the emotions, beliefs, intelligence and somatics of the world in terms of their own engramic reactions, delight in discovering new concepts of "emotion." "You know how people feel when they're happy. Their ears burn." "I feel just like anybody else when I'm happy; my feet and eyes ache." "Of course I know how people feel when they're happy; just pin prickles going all over them." "I wonder how people can stand to be passionate when it makes their noses hurt so." "Of course I know how people feel when they're excited: they have to go to the toilet."

Probably every person on earth has his own peculiar definition for every emotional state in terms of engram command. The command plus the somatics and perceptics make what they call an "emotional state."

I found this equal parts funny and fascinating.

Laughter plays a definite role in therapy. It is quite amusing to see a pre-clear, who has been haunted by an engram which contained great emotional charge, suddenly relieve it, for the situation, no matter how gruesome it was, when relieved, is in all its aspects a subject of great mirth. The laughter fades away as he becomes disinterested in it and he can be said to be "Tone 3" about it.

Laughter is definitely the relief of painful emotion.

Yet another happy thought from your local Scientology team.

CHAPTER SEVEN: PRENATAL EXPERIENCE AND BIRTH

One of the many unusual teachings of Dianetics: our reactive mind records our birth too (and even before that). Of course, the act of birth can be incredibly traumatic for everyone involved, and this is all packaged up into nice little engrams, saved for later spazzes.

Most patients to date sooner or later startle themselves by finding themselves swimming up a channel or waiting to be connected with. The recording is there. And there's little use arguing with a pre-clear that he cannot recall being a sperm, engramic or not as the case may be. It must be remarked because any dianeticist will encounter this.

Soooo we can remember being a sperm even? Ok.

The child on whom the abortion is attempted is condemned to live with murderers whom he reactively knows to be murderers through all his weak and helpless youth! He forms unreasonable attachments to grandparents, has terrified reactions to all punishments, grows ill easily and suffers long. And there is no such thing as a guaranteed way to abort a child. Use contraceptives, not a knitting needle or the douche bag, to hold down population. Once the child is conceived, no matter how "shameful" the circumstances, no matter the mores, no matter the income, that man or woman who would attempt an abortion on an unborn child is attempting a murder which will seldom succeed and is laying the foundation of a childhood of illness and heartache. Anyone attempting an abortion is committing an act against the whole society and the future; any judge or doctor recommending an abortion should be instantly deprived of position and practice, whatever his "reason."

Very intense, and a central theme which runs through the core of Dianetics. Abortions are extremely frowned upon. What's more, it claims that abortions are, more often than not, unsuccessful. Which perhaps was the case back in 1950? Either way, a failed abortion is apparently the worst thing that can ever happen to a child as its brain will be scrambled with engrams before it even gets a chance. Take this as you will.

CHAPTER EIGHT: CONTAGION OF ABERRATION

Mental troubles (aberrations) are contagious, in the way that people pass their neurosis onto others. Parents to children would be an inarguable example of this.

Misconceptions and poor data in a society's culture become engrams because not all the conduct around an "unconscious" person is dramatization. If some society believed that fish-eating brought on leprosy, it is quite certain that this false datum would find its way into engrams and sooner or later some one would develop a leprosy-like disease after having eaten fish.

I believe this, you know. If the whole world told you over and over again that something would happen, your brain would make it so.

CHAPTER NINE: KEYING-IN THE ENGRAM

As I've said before, the structuring of this book is rather excellent, as it lumps all of this crazy terminology and new ideas onto you right at the beginning, and then spends the rest of the time slowly unraveling these pieces, revisiting each one individually and explaining them in more detail. This approach maximises understanding, good job.

This chapter was a great example of that. It expands on the "keying-in" of engrams, explaining how some engrams may never become activated, but when one does, the analytical mind weakens, then related engrams may fire, then the analytical mind weakens further, and ultimately you'll spiral into a quick disaster.

It may be that a patient is urgent in her insistence that her father raped her when she was nine and that this is the cause of all her misery. Large numbers of insane patients claim this. And it is perfectly true. Father did rape her, but it happened she was only nine days beyond conception at the time. The pressure and upset of coitus is very uncomfortable to the child and normally can be expected to give the child an engram which will have as its content the sexual act and everything that was said.

This is weird and I can't think of a reasonable comment.

The problem of the child lashing back at his parents by "negation" and the problem of Jimmie the Cob blowing a bank guard apart in an armed robbery stem both from the same mechanism. The child, examined on the "conscious-level," is not aware of his causes but will put forth various justifications for his conduct. Jimmie the Cob, waiting for this oh so very sentient society to tie him down with straps in an electric chair and give him an electric shock therapy which will cause him to cease and desist forever, examined for his causes, will pour forth justifications to explain his life and conduct. The human mind is a pretty wonderful computing machine. The reasons it can evolve for unreasonable acts have staggered one and all and particularly social workers. Without knowing the cause and the mechanism, the chances of drawing a correct conclusion by comparing all conducts available are as remote as winning at fantan from a Chinese. Hence, the punishments have continued as the muddled answer to a very muddled society.

I believe in this. People are acting mental all over the show and yet we all come up with these elaborate justification for our actions. The truth is, we have no idea why we do half of the things we do, our brain just told us to.

These are the five mechanisms: attack, flee, avoid, neglect or succumb.

Logical.

The cycle, then, of life which will be "normal" (current average state) or psychotic is an easy thing to draw. It begins with a large number of engrams before birth, it gathers more in the dependent and rather helpless condition post-birth. Punishment of various kinds entering now as locks key-in the engrams. New engrams which will involve the earlier ones enter. New locks accumulate. Illness and aberrated action set in most certainly by the age of forty or fifty. And death ensues sometimes afterwards.

Bleak future then.

Such methods can be classified under the headings of environmental change, education and physical treatment. Taking factors out of the environment of an aberree or taking the aberree out of the environment in which he is unhappy or ineffective can bring about some astonishingly swift recoveries: this is valid therapy; it removes the restimulators from the individual or takes the individual away from the restimulators. It is ordinarily quite hit-or-miss and more miss than hit, and it will not remove all the restimulators by nine-tenths since the individual himself carries the bulk of these around with him or is compelled to contact them. One is reminded of a case which had severe asthma. He had received it in a very severe birth engram; his frantic parents carried him to every mountain asthma resort suggested and spent tens of thousands of dollars in these jauntings. When this patient was cleared and the engram refiled, it was discovered that the restimulator for his asthma was clean, cold air! The only certainty in the environment approach is that a sickly child will recover when removed from restimulative parents and taken where he is loved and feels safe – for his sickness is the inevitable result of restimulation of prenatal engrams by one or the other or both his parents. Somewhere along the line there is probably a husband or a wife who has descended chronically into the first two zones after marriage after having married pseudo-mother or pseudo-father or pseudo-abortionist.

This is long but interesting. Removing someone from a poisonous environment has its measurable benefits. Oh, and that "clean, cold air" bit? Such a plot twist!

In the educational field, new data or enthusiasms may very well key-out engrams by overbalancing the reactive mind in the light of a new analytical surge. If a man can simply be convinced he has been fighting shadows or if he can be persuaded to hang his fears on some indicated cause, whether that cause is true or not, he can be benefited. Sometimes he can be "educated" into a strong faith in some deity or cult which will cause him to feel so invulnerable that he rises above his engrams. Raising his survival potential in any way will raise his general tone to a point where it is no longer on a par with the reactive bank. Giving him an education in engineering or music, where he can receive a higher level of respect, will often defend him from his restimulators. A rise to a position of esteem is actually a change of environment, but it is also educational since he is now taught he is valuable. If a man can be made busy at a hobby or work by personal or exterior education that it is good for him, another mechanism comes into being – the analytical mind becomes so engrossed that it takes to itself more and more energy for its activity and begins to align with a new purpose.

Just like the previous quote, there are other ways to rise above engrams without Dianetics. In this example, one can build a distance between themselves and their reactive mind by finding purpose or increasing their self-worth. I doubt the current Church's ideology subscribes to this anymore.

On the physical therapy level anything as violent as surgery or exodontistry in the psycho-somatic plane is utter barbarism in the light of dianetics. "Toothache" is normally psycho-somatic. Organic illnesses enough to fill several catalogues are psycho-somatic. No recourse to surgery of any kind should be had until it is certain that the ailment is not psycho-somatic or that the illness will not diminish by itself if the potency of the reactive mind is reduced. Mental-physical therapy is too ridiculous, with the source of aberration now a science, to be seriously mentioned. For no thinking doctor or psychiatrist possessed of this information would touch another electrode for electric shock therapy or even glance at a scalpel or ice-pick to perform an operation on the pre-frontal lobes of the brain unless that doctor or psychiatrist is himself so thoroughly aberrated that the act springs, not from any desire to heal but from the most utter and craven sadism to which engrams can bring a man.

Another common theme of Dianetics is how dangerous these types of brain surgery/shock therapy practices are when the root of the problem is not physical. It's mental and can be addressed via other means. I believe in this.

This chapter also spent a lot of time emphasising how ridiculous punishment is, as the person being punished is only acting on engrams, and the act of punishment is only causing further engrams. Treat these problems as mental disorders.

CHAPTER TEN: PREVENTIVE DIANETICS

I found this chapter to be very readable and enjoyable, mainly teaching us about reducing the chance of prenatal engram development.

It is not true that emotion gets into a child through the umbilical cord as people always suppose the moment they hear of prenatals. Emotion comes on another (more electrical than physical) type of wave – what type is a problem for structure. Therefore, anyone who is emotional around a pregnant woman is communicating that emotion straight into the child. And mother's emotion is, in the same manner, so conducted to his reactive mind.

A baby in the wound is affected by everyone around, not just the mama.

Morning sickness, coughing, all monologuing (mother talking to herself), street noises, household noises, etc., are all communicated to the "unconscious" child when he is injured. And the child is very easily injured. He is not protected by formed bones and he has no mobility. He is there: when something strikes him or presses him, his cells and organs are injured. A simple experiment to demonstrate how mobility influences this is to lie down in bed and place one's head on a pillow. Then have somebody lean a hand on one's forehead. As there is no mobility, the pressure of the hand is far stronger than it would be if a hand were laid on the forehead when one was standing. The tissue and the water around the child form very slight buffers. In an injury amniotic fluid, as an incompressible medium, presses him, for it cannot compress itself. The child's situation is far from armored. Mother's act of tying her shoes, in the later stages of pregnancy, even may be severe on the child. Mother's strain when lifting heavy objects is particularly injurious. And mother's collision with objects like a table edge might well crush a baby's head. The repair facilities of the unborn child, as mentioned elsewhere, are far above anything ever before discovered. The child may have its head crushed but the blueprint is still there and the building materials and repair can be made. So it is not a case of the child being "all right" just because it can live through almost anything. It is a case of whether or not these injuries are going to have high aberrative value as engrams.

This is long but an interesting take on how easy it is to injure a baby without ever knowing.

Attempted abortion is very common. And remarkably lacking in success. The mother, every time she injures the child in such a fiendish fashion, is actually penalizing herself. Morning sickness is entirely engramic, so far as can be discovered, since clears have not so far experienced it during their own pregnancies. And the act of vomiting because of pregnancy is via contagion of aberration. Actual illness generally results only when mother has been interfering with the child either by douches or knitting needles or some such thing. Such interference causes the mother to become ill and, from an actual physical standpoint, is much harder on the mother than on the child. Morning sickness evidently gets into a society because of these interferences such as attempted abortion and, of course, injury.

Back to the abortion thing yet again. There's probably some truth in this, but I feel like abortions are generally quite successful now that the legality has changed since 1950 (when this book was published).

Preventing these engrams is the first consideration. Preventing them from having any content is the second. Women who lead peasant lives, doing heavy labor, are subject to all manner of accident. Perhaps such accidents cannot be prevented because of the purpose these women serve in the society. But when it is known that any injury to the mother can create an engram in the unborn child, it should be the concern of all those present during such an injury, including the mother, to maintain a complete and utter silence. Any remark is aberrative in an engram. Even such a statement as "You can remember this when in dianetic therapy," made toward an unborn child, installs an engram so that every word in this statement means a physical pain just where he received it at the time, and in the future "dianetic therapy" will be restimulative to him.

And I guess this is the 101 advice of preventing prenatal engrams right here: don't get injured as a mother. But if you do, remain completely silent. On that note, I wonder how many babies have an engram with the word "ow!" in there.

The mother, then, should be extremely gentle on herself during pregnancy and those around her should be entirely informed of the necessity for silence after any jar or injury. And in view of the fact that it is not possible to tell when a woman has become pregnant and in view also of the high potentiality of aberration in the zygote and embryo engrams, it is obvious that society must better its ways toward women if the future health of the child is to be preserved.

The woman has to some degree become considered less valuable in this society than in other societies and times. She is expected to be in competition with men. Such a thing is nonsense. A woman has as high a plane of activity as man. He cannot compete with her any more than she can compete with him in the fields of structure and vigorous activity. Much of the social maelstrom now in existence has as its hub the failure to recognize the important role of the woman as a woman and the separation of the fields of women and men.

I cautiously appreciate what is being said here. We need to treat women better in general because we don't know if they're busy growing another life miraculously within their own bodies. Furthermore, men and women are not equal or in competition. We are both better than one another in different categories. If this was not the case, there would be no need for the two genders to exist.

To do this is very easy. Maintain silence in the presence of injury. Do what has to be done for the injure ill and do it in silence. Maintain silence in the presence of birth to save both the sanity of the mother and the child and safeguard the home to which they will go. And the maintaining of silence does not mean a volley of "Sh's," for those make stammerers.

Once again, keep quiet in any time of injury or high intensity, and this includes childbirth. I also found it interesting that saying, "Shhh!" can produce stammers.

Say nothing and make no sound around an "unconscious" or injured person. To speak, no matter what is said, is to threaten his sanity. Say nothing while a person is being operated upon. Say nothing when there is a street accident. Don't talk!

Say nothing around a sick child or an injured child. Smile, appear calm, but say nothing. Actions do not speak louder than words but actions are all that can be done around the sick and injured unless one has an active desire to drive them into neurosis or insanity or, at best, to give them a future illness.

And above all, say nothing around a woman who has been struck or jarred in any way. Help her. If she speaks, don't answer. Just help her. You have no idea of whether she is pregnant or not.

So to reiterate: in times of injury, don't speak! Do not answer questions! Smile and help, but keep quiet! Otherwise, engram central.

And it is a remarkable fact, a scientific fact, that the healthiest children come from the happiest mothers. Birth, for one thing, in a cleared mother, is a very mild affair. Only birth engrams in the mother made it hard. A cleared mother needs no anaesthetic. And that is well because the anaesthetic makes a dazed child and the engram, when it reacts, makes him appear a dull child. A happy woman has very little trouble. And even a few engrams, which arrive despite all precautions, are nothing if the general tone of the mother is happy.

Woman, you have a right and a reason to demand good treatment.

This is a nice little piece of text. Be happy and your baby will be happy! It's also interesting that cleared women apparently give birth easy-peasy because all pregnancy/birth troubles stem from their mother's engrams, many of which I assume came from their own births, now being keyed-in during these similar circumstances, passed down from generation to generation, over and over again.

BOOK THREE
THERAPY

Now that we know everything there is to know about how messed up we all are, Book 3 is more focused on the ins and outs of the auditing (Dianetics therapy) process itself.

CHAPTER ONE: THE MIND'S PROTECTION

This chapter describes the role of an auditor in more detail.

Again, dianetics is not being released to a profession, for no profession could encompass it. It is insufficiently complicated to warrant years of study in some university. It belongs to Man and it is doubtful if anyone could manage to gain a corner on it for it does not fall within any legislation of any kind in any place and if dianetics were legislated into a licensed profession, then it is to be feared that listening to stories and jokes and personal experience would also have to be legislated into a profession. Such laws would put all men of good will who lend a sympathetic ear to a friend's troubles inside the barbed wire. Dianetics is not psychiatry. It is not psychoanalysis. It is not psychology. It is not personal relations. It is not hypnotism. It is a science of mind and needs about as much licensing and regulation as the application of the science of physics. Those things which are legislated against are a matter of law because they may in some way injure individuals or society.

In a funny way, this sounds like, "Auditing is not a real professional because we don't want it to be" styles. Sure! But it does have some points regardless.

CHAPTER TWO: RELEASE OR CLEAR

The differences between the two desired results.

The object of dianetic therapy is to bring about a release or a clear.

A release (noun) is an individual from whom major stress and anxiety have been removed by dianetic therapy.

A clear (noun) is an individual who, as a result of dianetic therapy, has neither active nor potential psycho-somatic illness or aberration.

Self explanatory.

There is a third goal which could be considered a sub-head of a release. This is an assist: it is done after injury, or illness following the injury, or illness just sustained, in order to promote more rapid recovery: to assist the body in its rehabilitation after injury or illness.

In times of injury, a quick slap of dianetics therapy is recommended for a faster healing time.

CHAPTER THREE: THE AUDITOR'S ROLE

The auditor is not there as the patient's driver or adviser. He is not there to be intimidated by the patient's engrams or be frightened by their aspects. He is there to audit and only to audit. If he feels that he is called upon to be lordly to the patient, then the auditor had better change chair for couch because he has a case of authoritarianism coming into view. The word auditor is used, not "operator" or "therapist," because it is a cooperative effort between the auditor and the patient, and the law of affinity is at work.

An auditor is just as the name suggests, nothing more, nothing less. This is refreshing when comparing these self-proclaimed characteristics to, say, that of a psychologist or a pastor. Dianetics is about the person who has the engram. They are attacking the engram. Not the auditor.

The auditor's job is to safeguard the person of the patient during therapy, to compute the reasons why the patient's mind cannot reach into the engram bank, to strengthen the patient's nerve and to get those engrams.

It's a nice, simple summary which feels reassuring.

There are three levels of healing. The first is getting the job done efficiently. Below that is making the patient comfortable. Below that is sympathy. In short, if you can do nothing for a man with a broken back, you can make him comfortable. If you can't even make him comfortable, you can sympathize with him.

The second and third echelons above are entirely unwarranted in dianetics. The job can be done efficiently. Making the patient comfortable is a waste of time. Giving him sympathy may snarl up the entire case, for his worst engrams will be sympathy engrams and sympathy may restimulate them out of place. The auditor who indulges in "hand-patting," no matter how much it seems to be indicated, is wasting time and slowing down the case. Undue roughness is not indicated. A friendly, cheerful, optimistic attitude will take care of everything. A pre-clear sometimes needs a grin. But he has already had more "hand-patting" than the analyzer has been able to compute. His chronic psycho-somatic illness contains sympathy in its engram.

Get the job done well with a happy demeanour. Don't waste your time trying to sympathise with the patient or making them feel comfortable.

The AUDITOR'S CODE should never be violated. Practice in dianetics has demonstrated that violation of the AUDITOR'S CODE alone can interrupt cases.

The auditor should be courteous in his treatment of all pre-clears.

The auditor should be kind, not giving way to any indulgence of cruelty toward pre-clears, nor surrendering to any desire to punish.

The auditor should be quiet during therapy, not given to talk beyond the absolute essentials of dianetics during an actual session.

The auditor should be trustworthy, keeping his word when given, keeping his appointments in schedules and his commitments to work and never giving forth any commitment of any kind which he has any slightest reason to believe he cannot keep.

The auditor should be courageous, never giving ground or violating the fundamentals of therapy because a pre-clear thinks he should. The auditor should be patient in his working, never becoming restless or annoyed by the pre-clear, no matter what the pre-clear is doing or saying.

The auditor should be thorough, never permitting his plan of work to be swayed or a charge to be avoided.

The auditor should be persistent, never giving up until he has achieved results.

The auditor should be uncommunicative, never giving the patient any information whatsoever about his case, including evaluations of data or further estimates of time in therapy.

So I guess this is kinda like the 10 Commandments of auditing or whatever.

If the auditor becomes frightened and pulls that error of all errors when a pre-clear begins to shake, "Come up to present time!" he can be sure that the pre-clear will have a couple of bad days and that the next time the auditor wants to enter that engram it will be blocked.

If an auditor assumes the state of mind that he can sit and whistle while Rome burns before him and be prepared to grin about it, then he will do an optimum job. The things at which he gazes, no matter how they look, no matter how they sound, are solid gains. It's the quiet, orderly patient who is making few gains. This does not mean that the auditor is trying for nothing but violence, but it does mean that when he gets it he can be cheerful and content that one more engram has lost its charge.

The task of auditing is rather much a shepherd's task, herding the little sheep, the engrams, into the pen for slaughter. The pre-clear isn't under the auditor's orders but the pre-clear, if the case runs well, will do whatever the auditor wants with these engrams because the analytical mind and the dynamics of the pre-clear want that job done. The mind knows how the mind operates.

When the shit hits the fan, then you're onto something good. Also interesting (and kinda creepy) that a pre-clear "will do whatever the auditor wants". This is probably what puts people off. Hypnotism much? But the rationale is sound. The brain as an organ wants to be fixed up, and so it will follow any healing orders.

Other noteworthy details from this chapter was where they stated that a patient will never resist therapy. Only their engrams will. So even if someone is trying to stop the session, the auditor must pay it no mind and continue, which is slightly unsettling. If the patient and auditor end up in some conflict, then that is a case of an engram vs engram. It is the auditor who is in the wrong if this occurs.

CHAPTER FOUR: DIAGNOSIS

The number of aberrations possible is the number of combinations of words possible in a language as contained in engrams. In other words, if a psychotic thinks he is God, he has an engram which says he is God. If he is worried about poison in his hash, he has an engram which tells him he may get poison in his hash. If he is certain he may be "fired" from his job any moment even though he is competent and well-liked, he has an engram which tells him he is about to be "fired." If he thinks he is ugly, he has an engram about being ugly. If he is afraid of snakes or cats, he has engrams which tell him to fear snakes and cats. If he is sure he has to buy everything he sees, despite his income, he has an engram which tells him to buy everything he sees. And in view of the fact that anyone not released or cleared has upwards of two or three hundred engrams and as these engrams contain a most remarkable assortment of language and as he may choose one of five ways of handling any one of these engrams, the problem of aberration is of no importance to the auditor except where it slows therapy.

Some examples of engrams, which should help you to pinpoint some of your own. You have at least 200 of these, apparently.

This is an example:
(In reverie – pre-natal basic area)

PRE-CLEAR: (Believing he means dianetics) I don't know. I don't know. I just can't remember. It won't work. I know it won't work.

AUDITOR: (repeater technique, described later) Go over that. Say, "It won't work."

PRE-CLEAR: "It won't work. It won't work. It won't work... etc. etc." Ouch, my stomach hurts! "It won't work. It won't work. It won't work..." (Laughter of relief.) That's my mother. Talking to herself.

AUDITOR: All right, let's pick up the entire engram. Begin at the beginning.

PRE-CLEAR: (Quoting recall with somatics [pains]) "I don't know how to do it. I just can't remember what Becky told me. I just can't remember it. Oh, I am so discouraged. It won't work this way. It just won't work. I wish I knew what Becky told me but I can't remember. Oh I wish..." Hey, what's she got in here? Why, God damn her, that's beginning to burn! It's a douche. Say! Let me out of here! Bring me up to present time! That really burns!

AUDITOR: Go back to the beginning and go over it again. Pick up whatever additional data you can contact.

PRE-CLEAR: Repeats engram, finding all the old phrases and some new ones plus some sounds. Recounts four more times, "re-experiencing" everything. Begins to yawn, almost falls asleep ("unconsciousness" coming off), revives and repeats engram twice more. Then begins to chuckle over it. Somatic is gone. Suddenly engram is "gone" (refiled and he cannot discover it again. He is much pleased.)

This is a good example which illustrates how a Dianetics session works. When a patient is in reverie (which we are assured is not hypnotism time and time again, but whatever) says a phrase which is commonly associated with an engram, then the auditor will get them to repeat said phrase over and over again. Eventually, this will uncover the root engram where the phrase comes from, and it can be released. The above example is the pre-clear remembering a failed abortion attempt.

It's also pretty cool that you can blame all of the irrational shit you do on your parents saying stupid stuff while you were in the womb.

CHAPTER FIVE: RETURNING, THE FILE CLERK, AND THE TIME TRACK

One of the prime sources of "bad memory" is Mother. Often enough Mother has been sufficiently panic-stricken at the thought of Junior's recalling just what she did to Junior that a Mankind-wide aberration seems to have sprung up. The standard attempted abortion case nearly always has an infanthood and childhood full of Mama assuring him that he cannot remember anything when he was a baby. She doesn't want him to recall how handy she was, if unsuccessful, in her efforts with various instruments. Possibly prenatal memory itself would be just ordinary memory and in full recall to the whole race if this guilty conscience in Mother had not been rolling along lo! these millennia. In the normal course of work the auditor will have his hands full of Mama screaming objections about her grown son's or daughter's entering into therapy because of what they might find out: Mama has been known, by auditors, to go into a complete nervous collapse at the thought of her child's recalling prenatal incidents. Not all of this, by the way, is based on attempted abortion. Mama often has had a couple of more men than Papa that Papa never knew about; and Mama would very often rather condemn her child to illness or insanity or merely unhappiness than let a child pursue the course of the pre-clear even though Mother avowedly has no recollection whatever of anything bad ever happening to the child. Under therapy herself, she usually volunteers the truth. Here is the source of why good memory is discouraged in a society and infant and prenatal memory overlooked, to say nothing of the ability to return and relive.

Pretty intense picking on poor mama here. Like, all mamas. Every mama. General mamas, throughout history, lol.

To make doubly sure, for we want no hypnotism, even by accident, the auditor installs a canceller. This is an extremely important step and should not be omitted even when you may be entirely certain that he is in no way influenced by your words. The auditor may inadvertently use restimulative language which will key-in an engram: he may, when he is especially new in dianetics, use such a thing as a holder or a denyer, telling the pre-clear to "stay there" when he is returned on the track or telling him, worst of all things, to "forget it," one of a class of phrases of the forgetter mechanism which is most severe in its aberrative effect, denying the data entirely to the analyzer. To prevent such things from happening, the canceller is vital. It is a contract with the patient that whatever the auditor says will not become literally interpreted by the patient or used by him in any way. It is installed immediately after the condition of reverie is established. A canceller is worded more or less as follows: "In the future, when I utter the word Cancelled, everything which I have said to you while you are in a therapy session will be cancelled and will have no force with you. Any suggestion I have made to you will be without force when I say the word Cancelled. Do you understand?"

To avoid causing engrams during dianetic therapy, this "canceller" is set up at the beginning of a session. Despite stating in no uncertain times that this is not hypnotism, doesn't this sound slightly similar to it?

Dianetics wakes people up. It is not hypnotism, which puts people to sleep. Dianetic therapy wakes them up. Hypnotism puts them to sleep. Can you ask for a wider difference in polarity? Dianetic therapy removes engrams. Hypnotism installs engrams. Further, dianetics is a science, an organized body of knowledge – hypnotism is a tool and an art and is such a wild variable that Man has suspected it as a dangerous thing for centuries and centuries, use it though he did.

Once again, it's really driving the point that this isn't hypnotism. Like, to the degree of overcompensating. Truthfully, if there is anything which scares me about this book, this might be it.

This is the reverie. This is all one needs to know about its actual mechanics. Experience will show him a great deal. But these are the basic processes:

1. Assure patient he will know everything that happens.
2. Count until he closes his eyes.
3. Install canceller.
4. Return him to a period in the past.
5. Work with file clerk to get data.
6. Reduce all engrams contacted so that no charge remains.
7. Bring patient to present time.
8. Be sure he is in present time.
9. Give him canceller word.
10. Restore full awareness of his surroundings.

Here is a nice simplified step-by-step breakdown of the dianetic therapy process. I still wasn't satisfied though.

FYI: What is referred to as the "file clerk" is a personified part of the brain which apparently works with the auditor to hand over the information requested. Don't ask.

CHAPTER SIX: THE LAWS OF RETURNING

Let us take an engram which comes from one of Mother's bowel movements. She is straining, which causes compression, which brings about "unconsciousness" in the unborn child. Then, if she habitually talks to herself (a monologist) as an enormous number of aberrated women do, she may say, "Oh, this is hell. I am all jammed up inside. I feel so stuffy I can't think. This is too terrible to be borne."

This may be in the basic area. The dream mechanism of the mind (which thinks in puns mostly, symbologists to the contrary) may bring forth a dream about hell-fire as the engram is approached. The pre-clear may be sure that he is going to descend into fire if he goes on his time track toward this engram. Further, he may think his time track is all jammed up. This will mean, perhaps, that the incidents are all in one place on it. So much for "This is hell," and "all jammed up inside." Now let us take a look at what happens with "I'm so stuffy, I can't think." The pre-clear sniffles because he thinks this means a cold in his nose. And as for "This is too terrible to be borne," he is filled with an emotion of terror at the thought of touching the engram, for this command says it is too painful to bear. Additionally, engrams being literal in their action, he may think that he was too terrible to be born.

In case this hasn't been clear up until this point: engrams are essentially saved language. Due to the ambiguous nature of similar sounding words with different definitions, these engrams often manifest in completely different ways than intended. Take this simple bout of constipation, for example. So much trouble just because mommy couldn't poop nice.

Mother: "I think I'm pregnant. I'm afraid I am."

Doctor punches her around for a while, knocking the unborn child, who is our pre-clear thirty years later, into an "unconscious" state.

Doctor: "I don't think so."

Mother: "I'm really afraid I am. I'm sure I'm caught. I just know it."

Doctor (more punching): "Well, it's hard to tell this early."

It says right there that this man patient of ours is pregnant. If we look, we'll see he has a paunch. That's good survival, that is.

Mommy says she's pregnant. Male child grows a big belly. Lol, we're all fucked.

The auditor is not much worried by the phrases which assist therapy. An engram received from Father beating Mother which says: "Take that! Take it, I tell you. You've got to take it!" means that our patient has possibly had tendencies as a kleptomaniac..

Another intense example.

Hopefully, the above-chosen pieces accurately represent this fascinating chapter. It highlighted the types of engrams an auditor is likely to face, and how to spot them. It's really as simple as recognising the key types of aberrated sentences which suggest an engram, and then asking the pre-clear to repeat them until they lose their power.

One lengthy case I didn't include but is worth mentioning was about a girl who took 75 hours of auditing until they uncovered a prenatal engram of her dad's dick pushing against her fetus face during sex. Riveting stuff.

CHAPTER SEVEN: EMOTION AND THE LIFE FORCE

And we can theorize that "life force" and what has been called a certain kind of "emotion" are either similar or the same thing. We may have the wrong theory, but so might James Clerk Maxwell. Indeed, Maxwell's theories may still be wrong: at least we have electric lights.

On the one hand, you have to respect L. Ron for admitting when he isn't sure about his theories. Furthermore, he has a point: James Clerk Maxwell (known for his electromagnetism formulas) could have been wrong in his calculations, but it doesn't change the fact that we use them in practice every single day. On the other hand, however, this concept seemed a little too hypothetical to me and didn't connect.

The "handling of human beings" and what people have been calling, roughly, "psychology" have been actually push-button handling of a person's aberrational phrases and sounds. Children discover them in their parents and use them with a vengeance. The clerk discovers that his boss can't stand a full waste basket and so always has one full. The bosun on a ship finds out one of his sailors cringes every time he hears the phrase, "fancy-pants" and so uses the word to intimidate the man. This is push-button warfare amongst aberrees. Wives may find that certain words make the husband wince or make him angry or make him refrain from doing something and so they use these "push-buttons." And husbands find their wives' push-buttons and keep them from buying clothes or using the car. This defensive and offensive dueling amongst aberrees is occasioned by push-button reacting against push-buttons. Whole populaces are handled by their push-button responses. Advertising learns about push-buttons and uses them in such things as "body-odor" or constipation. And in the entertainment field and the song-writing field push-buttons are pushed in whole racks and batteries to produce aberrated responses. Pornography appeals to people who have pornographic push-buttons. Corn-and-games government appeals to people who have "care for me" push-buttons and others. It might be said that there is no necessity to appeal to reason when there are so many push-buttons around.

This makes a lot of sense to me though. The world is full of people playing with your mental cross-wiring to exploit you for their gain. Fairly undeniably so, in fact.

The fundamental aspect of this is seen in a single reaction. Animals are content to survive in their environments and seek to adjust themselves to those environments. That very dangerous animal – or god – Man has a slightly different idea. Ancient schools were fond of telling the poor demented aberree that he must face reality. This was optimum conduct: facing reality. Only it isn't Man's optimum conduct. Just as these schools made the fundamental error of supposing that the aberree was unwilling to face his environment when he was actually, because of engrams, unable to face it, they supposed that the mere facing of reality would lead to sanity. Perhaps it does, but it does not lead to a victory of Man over the elements and other forms. Man has something more: some people call it creative imagination, some call it this or some call it that: but whatever it is called, it adds up to the interesting fact that Man is not content merely to "face reality" as most other life forms are. Man makes reality face him. Propaganda about "the necessity of facing reality," like propaganda to the effect that a man could be driven mad by a "childhood delusion" (whatever that is) does not face the reality that where the beaver down his ages of evolution built mud dams and keeps on building mud dams Man graduates in half a century from a stone and wood dam to make a mill wheel pond to structures like Grand Coulee Dam, and changes the whole and entire aspect of a respectable portion of Nature's real estate from a desert to productive soil, from a flow of water to lightning bolts. It may not be as poetic as Rousseau desired, it may not be as pretty as some "nature lover" would desire, but it's a new reality. Two thousand years ago the Chinese built a wall which would have been visible from the Moon had anybody been up there to look; three thousand years ago he had North Africa green and fertile; ten thousand years ago he was engaged upon some other project; but always he has been shaping things up pretty well to suit Man.

It's long but I kind of like this. It's refreshing. Go humans! We rock! Make nature your bitch! We own this planet!

The "child wonder" who early "burns out" is actually, via therapy, about as burned out as a banked furnace. Any "child wonder" is a forced affair: think of the dreams mama must have poured through his engrams. She's hurt: "Oh, I'll never forgive myself! If I have ruined my child, I will never forgive myself. My child, that's to be the world's greatest violinist!" or "Oh, you brute! You have struck me! You have injured our child. I'll show you. I'll make him the greatest child pianist in all Brooklyn! He's to be a beautiful child, a wonder child! And you've struck him, you brute. Oh, I am going to sit right here until you go away!" (Actual engrams.) The last computes that the way to get even with papa is to be the greatest pianist in all Brooklyn. The child is a great success – musical ear, practice and great "purpose." He gets this engram restimulated constantly by his mother. But then, one day he loses a contest, he knows suddenly he is no longer a child, that he has failed. His purpose wavers. He gets headaches (papa's blow) and is at last "neurotic" and "burned out." Cleared he went back to being a pianist, not as an "adjusted" person but one of the best paid concert pianists in Hollywood. Music aligned with basic purpose.

Sometimes engramic behaviour actually seems like a positive influence, but obviously, it's not. Regardless, I wouldn't mind a bit of that, gimme some of them sweet engramic ambition mmmm.

It happens that there is an additional specialization of the dynamics in everyone, a sort of built-in personal dynamic. It is a clinical fact that the basic purpose is apparently known to the individual before he is two years of age: talent and inherent personality and basic purpose go together as a package. They seem to be part of the genetic pattern. Anyone can be revivified dianetically in the age of two years and consulted about his purpose in life, and he will come forth with a very specific desire as to what he wishes to accomplish in life (and two year old activity as reviewed confirmed it). It will be discovered that his later life has followed this general pattern wherever he succeeded. Of fifteen persons examined the basic purpose was found formed at two years of age, and when cleared these persons used and pursued that basic purpose.

This was a footnote, but worth of the feature. Since we were two years old, we had an obvious "purpose", but due to all the troubles of life, many of us tend to lose sight of that. Once cleared, we go straight back to that, which sounds lovely.

The ally computation is severe enough that an auditor once said that a man is not victimized by his enemies, he is murdered by his friends. Engramically speaking, that is quite true.

There is a lot of info about the "ally computation" but basically, it's when a hardcore engram develops which hangs onto specific a individual. It believes that these people are imperative to the preclear's survival, for example, a mother or an aunt who helped them through a dire period of illness or injury. Apparently, these are particularly difficult for an auditor to release.

And in the case of the ulcers, here was baby poked full of holes (Mama is having a terrible time trying to abort him so she can pretend a miscarriage, and she uses assorted household instruments thrust into the cervix to do it) and some of the holes are through and through his baby's abdomen and stomach: he will live because he is surrounded by protein and has a food supply and because the sac is like one of these puncture-proof inner tubes that seals up every hole. (Nature has been smart about attempted abortion for a long, long time.) It so happens that Mama in this case was not a monologist, although most of Mama's activity on this line is a dramatization and has conversation with it; but it also so happens that Grandma lives next door and she comes over unexpectedly, shortly after the latest effort to make baby meet oblivion. Grandma may have been an attempted abortionist in her day but now she is old and highly moral and besides, this baby is not giving her any morning sickness: she therefore finds much to censure when she sees a bloody orangewood stick in the bathroom. Baby is still "unconscious." Grandma berates Mama: "Any daughter of mine who would do such a horrible thing should be punished by the vengeance of God (the principle of, don't do as I do, do as I say, for who gave Mama this dramatization in the first place?) and driven through the streets. Your baby has a perfect right to live: if you don't think you can take care of him, I certainly will. Now you go right on through with your pregnancy, Eloisia, and when that baby is born, if you don't want him, you bring him to me! The idea of trying to hurt that poor thing!" And so, when our bleeding ulcer case gets born, there is Grandma and there is security and safety. Grandma is here the ally (and she can become an ally in a thousand different ways, any of them based on the principle that she talks sympathetically to baby when he is out like a flounder, and fights Mama in his favor when he is "unconscious"), and when he grows to boyhood he can be found placing a large dependency on Grandma, much to the parental wonder (for they never did anything to little Roger, not they). And Roger will, when Grandma is dead, develop bleeding ulcers to get her back.

Ok, so this is a hefty chunk of text, but I do urge you to read it. It not only describes the ally computation perfectly but also does so with one intensely hardcore example, wow.

The ally computation is a little more than the mere idiot calculation that anyone who is a friend can be kept a friend only by approximating the conditions wherein the friendship was realized. It is a computation on the basis that one can only be safe in the vicinity of certain people and that one can only be in the vicinity of certain people by being sick or crazy or poor and generally disabled.

In summary: you become attached to certain people because they helped you in a time of serious need. Due to this, an engram develops which believes that it has to recreate those needy conditions in order to bring that person back to you, otherwise you won't survive.

This metering says that structure was so and such at the moment this sympathy pro-survival engram was received: in the case of an embryo engram, then, the reactive mind, in forcing the engram back into action, may also force the structural pattern back upon the body: this occasionally results in retarded development, embryo-like skin, embryo-type back curvature, and so forth. The glands themselves, being physical organs, are also sometimes so suppressed in the reactive mind's effort to approximate all conditions. The underdeveloped gonads, the sub-level thyroid, the wasted limb, all these things often come from sympathy pro-survival engrams. This is so observably the case that when an individual is being cleared, growth process begins to bring the body up to genetic blueprint even before the case is completed: the change which takes place in the physical being of the patient is sometimes so remarkable and so marked that it is far more startling than the mere disappearance of a catalogue of psycho-somatic ills such as coronary, ulcers, arthritis, allergies, and so on.

This is a hugely bold statement. Because of some "sympathy pro-survival engram" (i.e. ally computation, discussed above), the body may not develop properly and even deform. Dianetics therapy removes these engrams, and then those stunted body parts immediately start to grow back. How about you film that next time? That would shut the critics up.

The auditor who will listen to these "reasons" and "I remembers" in lieu of running the engram itself will not get his patient well and will waste valuable hours of therapy. An auditor who will do this belongs to the hand-patting school of thought which believes sympathy has value. He does not belong in an auditor's chair. It is wasted time, wasted valuable time, to listen to anything the patient thought or said or did or believed when the patient should be going into the engram and running it as an engram. Certainly there is a necessity to find out, from the patient's talk, where that engram is, but once it is located, all else is dross.

As we've covered before, auditors must not feel any sympathy. And if the patient attempts to back out, the auditor must not listen, because it is the engram talking. Eek!

The mind is like a fine piece of equipment: as itself and as a mechanism it is almost impossible to destroy except by removing some of its parts: engrams do not remove parts of the mind, they add unnecessary things to it. Envision a beautiful, stream-lined machine, operating perfectly – that would be the mind without the additions of pain and painful emotion. Now envision this beautiful machine in the hands of a crew of moronic mechanics: they start to work around it and do not know that what they do affects the machine at all. Now they see that something is wrong with the machine and are all unwitting that they have placed various assorted monkey-wrenches, hatpins, old cigar butts and yesterday's garbage into it and around it. Their first thought is to put something new on or in the machine to correct its operation and they add arbitrary gadgets to it in order to patch up the machine's operation. Some of these gadgets appear to help the machine (sympathy engrams) and can be used, in the presence of the remaining bric-a-brac, by the machine itself to help its stability. The morons interrupt the fuel supply (painful emotional engrams) or, like the Japanese captain who beat the car with a switch when it would not go, try to goad the machine (punishment drive) and so add more trouble. At last this machine appears to be a hopeless wreck, being almost hidden beneath everything added to it and thrust into it, and the moron mechanics shake their heads and say, "Let's put something else on it or it will stop!" They do and the machine appears to stop (goes insane).

In dianetics, a workmanlike job of clearing away the debris in and around the machine is performed. It is not done by adding any more debris. The moron mechanics (the content of the reactive mind) seem dismayed at this action, but the machine itself, suddenly aware that something is being done for it which will actually bring it into good running operation again, begins to help. The more debris which is cleared, the better it runs and the less force the moron mechanics have. The course of improvement should be and is rapid. We can stop when the machine is running at least as well as the "normal" machine (a release) or we can stop when we have all the debris out of the machine (a clear). When we have effected a clear, we behold something which has never been beheld before because it never before existed in a debris-free state: a perfect machine, stream-lined, powerful, shining, able to adjust and care for all its own operations without further therapeutic assistance of any kind.

Once again, a super long piece to include, but it's an excellent analogy and worth your time.

CHAPTER EIGHT: SOME TYPES OF ENGRAMS

As the title suggests, this was a cool little chapter with information on the common types of engrams people tend to have. It was a fun read because most of the subjects were told via an example, so it was like story time! Although it must be said, almost everything seems to lead back to a failed abortion attempt in this Scientology world.

Let us take a coitus engram: mother and father are engaged in intercourse which, by pressure, is painful to the unborn child and which renders him "unconscious" (common occurrence, like morning sickness, usually present in any engram bank). Mother is saying, "Oh, I can't live without it. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. Oh, how nice. Oh, do it again!" and father is saying, "Come! Come! Oh, you're so good. You're so wonderful! Ahhh!" Mother's orgasm puts the finishing touch on the "unconsciousness" in the child. Mother says, "It's beautiful." Father, finished now, says, "Get up," meaning she should take a douche (they do not know she is pregnant) and then begins to snore.

Obviously this is a valuable incident because one "cannot live without it." Furthermore, "it's beautiful," also, "it's wonderful." But it is also extremely painful. It cannot be followed because it has first something which beckons part of the mind back, "Come!" and then, later, tells it to "Get up." Things that are "beautiful" and "wonderful" can cause our patient, not in therapy, to have an orgasm when she looks at beautiful and wonderful things, providing they have been so labeled.

This is part of a "Pro-Survival Engram". I hope you enjoyed the sex scene. Also, note how the patient now has orgasms just by looking at things.

Masochistic and sadistic impulses often stem from coital engrams which contain those specific things, so the auditor is not to infer that merely because this coitus is painful to the child, it will make the child a masochist or a sadist. If masochism or sadism is present in the patient it is caused by engrams which contain rapes, beating for sexual gratification, enjoyment of pain, etc., and engrams which homonymically seem to state that sex and pain are alike such as a "normal" coitus which says, "It hurts so good! Hurt me again, Bill. Hurt me again! Oh, shove it in me, way up! Make it hurt so I can come." Dramatized by a boy, this might very well bring about sodomy because the engram is not an observed action but a series of commands, literally taken.

Another part of a "Pro-Survival Engram". More sex stuff, getting quite rough now. I like it. Wait, is that an engram of mine speaking?

CHAPTER NINE - PART ONE: MECHANISMS AND ASPECTS OF THERAPY

Finally, it's the chapter we've all been waiting for: how to audit! And it goes a little something like this:

First of all, you need to get the preclear into a state of "reverie". This sounds like hypnotism, but we are assured it's not, over and over. If this state is not possible, then just "fixed attention" will do.

You then install a "canceller", which is the suggestion that anything which happens during the session will be canceled and therefore cannot cause engrams. Once again, not hypnotism, nope.

Then you simply talk back through their life, seeking out painful memories or emotional charges to do with any incidents (especially in regards to family and/or death). You should also be very wary of phrases which are often repeated (such as "I can't remember" or "this isn't working"), as these are probably engrams and you should try to find their source.

Once you locate something, get the patient to repeat ("relive") the memory over and over until it loses its pain. Ideally, the memory should eventually amuse them.

It's important to note that Dianetics is not about "remembering" memories. It's about fully returning to them. To achieve this, ask questions about specifics, such as "what colour are the walls?" or "what can you smell?" etc.

The goal is to find an engram and then work backward from it, because engrams are usually built upon other engrams. The further back you can go, the better. Best case scenario, you discover the basic-basic engram, which is the first pain ever felt in a person's entire existence. This should help unravel everything.

Be chill. Never believe a word a patient is saying and do not argue with them, as you are probably talking to an engram.

Once it's all said and done, bring them back to the present time and send them on their merry way.

All of which sounds so ridiculously similar to regressive hypnotherapy to me, but ANYWAY.

Beyond these details, it does become slightly difficult to know what to explain and what not to. There are tons of tiny details, auditing tricks, terminology which we haven't covered etc, that I wasn't sure where the line of interest was drawn. So much of this would require lengthy explanations, and I became uncertain whether it was worth wasting anyone's time? In the end, the above is what you get. Read the book if you're hungry.

This rest of this chapter is all about recognising certain behaviours and getting around knotty obstacles.

Anyone who has a chronic psycho-somatic illness is definitely stuck somewhere on the time track. Snap questions about it get, "Three," or "Ten years," or some such answer quite ordinarily even when asked of people who suppose they are in good health. Reverie reveals to them where they are on the track. Sometimes, in the first session, a pre-clear shuts his eyes in reverie to find himself in a dentist's chair at the age of three. He has been there for the last thirty years or so because the dentist and his mother both told him to "stay there" while he was shocky with pain and gas – so he did, and the chronic tooth trouble he had all his life is that somatic.

The time track is the part of your "memory" you are currently "reliving". This example is an interesting one. The engramic influence of the dentist is often mentioned.

You will hear dreams from patients. Patients are hard to shut off when they start telling dreams. If you want to waste your time, you will listen.

Dreams are useless information. And, like, this goes for everyone. Not just in therapy. Stop telling people your dreams. No one cares but you.

MASTURBATION CHAIN. 1st incident embryo.
80 succeeding incidents. Mother masturbating with fingers, jolting child and injuring child with orgasm.

Kinda pulling this out of context here, but I thought it was funny to note that your mommy can fuck up your preborn brain just by fingerbanging herself.

In a very extreme engram – a prenatal electric shock which mother received – five hours of "unconsciousness" "boil-off" have taken place during therapy. The shock lasted for less than a minute but so close did it bring the individual to death that when the incident was first contacted in therapy, he swam and floundered and had strange dreams, muttered and mumbled for five hours. That is a record. Forty-five minutes of this "boil-off" is rare. Five or ten minutes of it are not uncommon.

"Boil-off" is when a particularly traumatic engram-causing moment is relived. The patient in the above case reacted very strongly because he essentially died.

Do not take on a Junior for your first case if you can avoid it. If father was named George and the patient is called George, beware of trouble. The engram bank takes George to mean George and that is identity thought de luxe.

Mother says, "I hate George!" "That means Junior," says the engram though mother meant father. "George is thoughtless." "George must not know." "Oh, George, I wish you had some sex appeal, but you haven't." And so go the engrams. A Junior case is seldom easy.

It is customary to shudder, in dianetics, at the thought of taking on a Junior case. An auditor can be expected to slave his hardest when he has a case with non-sonic, which is off the time track, and which is named after father or mother. Such cases resolve, of course, but if parents knew what they did to children by giving them any name which might appear in the engram bank, such as that of parents or grandparents or friends, it is certain the custom would vanish instanter.

I found this to be really fascinating! Don't name your child after the father! "Junior" is a guaranteed way to plant a landmine field of engrams.

Many, many marriages, for instance, are marriages not of love but of that shabby substitute, propitiation. People have a habit of marrying people who have similar reactive minds. This is unfortunate for such marriages are destructive to both partners. She has a certain set of aberrations: they match his. She is pseudo-mother, he is pseudo-father. She had to marry him because father tried to murder her before she was born. He had to marry her because mother beat him when he was a child. Incredible as it may seem, these marriages are very common: one or the other partner becomes mentally ill, or both may deteriorate. He is unhappy, his enthusiasms crushed; she is miserable. Either with another partner might be a happy person yet, out of fear, they cannot break apart. They must propitiate each other.

Take note, people getting married. You've probably just found someone crazy enough to feed your crazy.

CHAPTER NINE - PART TWO: MECHANISMS AND ASPECTS OF THERAPY

When the auditor gets into trouble with his pre-clear by some violation of the auditor's code, he can treat the violation as a painful emotion engram and reduce it, at which moment the effect of his blunder will be gone in the pre-clear. The auditor merely returns the pre-clear back to the blunder and runs the error itself as an engram. When the husband has quarreled with his wife or she has found out some unpleasant thing about his activities, he can treat the quarrel or the discovery as a painful emotion engram and release it with the result of no further worry about it by his wife. When the little boy's dog has just been run over, the incident can be treated as a painful emotion engram and released. When the pre-clear's wife has just left him, treat the leaving as a painful emotion engram and release it. Whatever the shock or upset, it can be reduced in an individual by regular reduction technique and the individual will cease to be troubled by it in the painful emotion sense. It does not matter whether the engram occurred two hours or ten years ago, painful emotion can be reduced from it. It is run exactly like any other engram, beginning at the beginning of the first shock with the patient returning to it and continuing far enough along it to adequately embrace its first impact.

This actually seems kind of dangerous. A mental edit-undo button.

If repeater technique does not work, although it is seldom necessary, one may request the patient to imagine "the worst thing that could happen to a baby" and so forth and from his conversation may be garnered new phrases for repeater work which will take the patient into an engram.

Jesus.

A lengthy detailed rape scene follows not long after this bit if you care to seek it out. I almost included the text just to highlight how unnecessarily weird it was, but I decided against it.

When this follows one thought only, such as a sweeping statement that "All cats are the same," it is either careless or insane since all cats are not the same, even two cats who look, act and sound alike. One could say, "Cats are pretty much the same," and still be dealing with rather irrational thought. Or one could recognize that there was a species felix domesticus but that within it cats were decidely different not only from breed to breed but cat to cat. That would be rationality, not because one used Latin but because he could tell the difference amongst cats. The fear of cats has as its source an engram which usually does not include more than one cat and that is a very specific cat of a specific breed with a certain (or perhaps uncertain) personality. The pre-clear who is afraid of all cats is actually afraid of one cat and a cat which is most likely dead these many years at that.

Can't argue with that logic whatsoever. I also appreciated the "Latin" joke.

Sanity is the ability to tell differences. The better one can tell differences, no matter how minute, and know the width of those differences, the more rational he is. The less one can tell differences and the closer one comes to thinking in identities (A = A) the less sane he is.

A man says, "I don't like dogs!" Spot it, auditor, he has an engram about one or two dogs. A girl says, "All men are alike!" Spot it, auditor, here's a real aberree. "Mountains are so terrible!" "Jewelers never go any place!" "I hate women!" Spot them. Those are engrams right out in broad daylight.

Once again, this all seems very logical to me.

"Men are all alike," she says. And they are too! To her. Poor thing. Like the fellow who raped her when she was a kid, like her detested father who said it.

Heavy, but worth thinking about.

Because they teach in terms of altitude and Authority, educational institutions themselves form a social "You must believe it" aberration. It is impossible to reduce an entire university education even if it sometimes appears desirable, but by addressing the moments when the patient was hammered into believing or accepting school, from kindergarten forward, many a fact-clogged mind can again be made facile which was not so before, for the facts will be re-evaluated automatically by the mind for importances, not accepted on monotone evaluation as is the case in "formal education."

I like this. We are driven to just swallow what we are taught and that can mess us up. Take that, educational system. Then again, what are we doing with this book right now?

The prize case in difficulty in dianetics is a patient who is a Junior named after either father or mother, who has not only shut-down pain, emotion, visio and sonic recall but also "dub-in" for them on a false basis, with a lie factory working full blast, who is uncooperative and who is a "Can't believe it."

I'm not sure this will make sense to everyone due to the uncovered terminology, but for future reference: this is pretty much the worst case you can be.

That is the fundamental effect of contemporary education which, through no particular fault of its own and despite every effort it has made to free itself, yet, through lack of tools, is forced to follow Scholastic methods. These, by contagion of aberration, persist against all efforts of advanced educators. The normal is taught on one hand to believe or else he'll fail and on the other to disbelieve as a scientific necessity: belief and disbelief cannot be taught, they must be personally computed. If a mind could be likened to a general served by his own staff, it could be seen to have a G-2 which, as a combat intelligence center, collected facts, weighed them for importance and formed an estimate of a situation or the value of a conclusion. As the intelligence officer would fail if he had a signed order to disbelieve everything, so does the mind fail which has a reactive command to disbelieve. Certainly a military organization would lose to every puny enemy if it had, conversely, a command to believe everything, and a man will fail if he has a reactive mind order to believe all information in the world around him.

Education in a nutshell: you must believe everything, but also challenge everything. And then you go crazy.

The auditor will find, when he is trying to enter a very strong "Can't believe it" case, that experience is disbelieved, the auditor is disbelieved, hope of results is disbelieved and that the most ridiculous and unreasonable insults and arguments may be presented. The patient may squirm in a veritable snake pit of somatics and still disbelieve that he is reexperiencing anything.

Somewhat convenient, would you not say? If the patient claims that the therapy is not working, he is wrong, it's an engram speaking.

A person "imagines" only pain he has actually felt. He cannot imagine pain he has not felt. He may "imagine" pain at sometime later than the actual incident but if he feels pain, no matter how psychotic he is, that pain will be found to exist somewhere on his time track.

Makes sense to me.

By the way, nothing in this dissertation about allies should be construed to mean that one should not show love to a child. Observers in the past have jumped at questionable conclusions when they felt that demonstrated affection aberrates a child. Lack of affection may kill him, but the reverse is not true. The only way an ally can aberrate a child is by talking to and sympathizing with a child who is very ill or "unconscious" from injury. If he does this he alloys the child's personality with his own, creates an eventual possibility of psycho-somatic illness and aberration and may generally disable the child for life (except for dianetics, of course). Love a child best and do for him best when he is well. Do anything you please with him when he is well, say what you please. When he is sick or hurt, it is best, as the bosun said, "Patch him up and keep God-damned quiet!"

Here's some good advice for parents, if you're so inclined.

Ether, chloroform and nitrous oxide, the "anesthetics," place the patient in a deep hypnotic trance: the reactive bank is wide open and all reception is sharp, clear and aberrative in the extreme. Of the three, nitrous oxide is easily the worst, being no anesthetic which would dull pain at all but a first class hypnotic. In nitrous oxide the pain is filed and the content is filed with high and brilliant fidelity. Some years ago some investigator wondered if nitrous oxide did not make the brain decay. Fortunately brains do not decay that easily; but nitrous oxide does bring into being particularly severe engrams. The serious late-life engrams which the auditor will encounter may include, at the list's top, a nitrous oxide dental or surgical or obstetrical engram. Nitrous oxide engrams are particularly bad when they involve exodontistry; they often form the most severe late-life engram. Aside from the fact that all exodontists have in the past talked too much and have offices which are far too noisy with street sounds, running water and flapping drill belts, nitrous oxide is not at all anesthetic and sharpens rather than dulls pain.

Bad news for dentists and nitrous oxide fiends alike. This shit is the worst.

There are some drugs which assist reverie, however. The commonest and most easily obtainable is plain, strong coffee. A cup or two of this occasionally alerts the analyzer enough so that it can reach through deeper layers of "unconsciousness."

Good news for caffeine junkies!

Here, with all this, must be included an important and vital fact. It should be on a page by itself and underscored. All patients in therapy should be given a dosage of vitamin B1 orally or by injection at the minimum of 10 mg. per day.

This is interesting and good advice regardless. Get all of your nutrients, people.

Alcohol has its uses: one can put specimens of frogs and such in it: one can clean the germs off needles with it: it burns well in rockets. But one would not consider preserving his stomach in a glass jar and, unless insane, does not think of himself as a needle. While some drunks think they act like rockets, few have been observed to reach an altitude of more than the floor. It is not only a poor stimulant-depressant, it is also an hypnotic in the finest sense: what is done to a drunk becomes an engram. The chronic alcoholic is physically and mentally ill. Dianetics can clear him or even merely release him without too much trouble for alcohol is apparently not physiological in its addictive effect. With the whole range of chemistry to choose stimulants and depressants from, why the government chooses a superiorly aberrative and inferiorly stimulative compound to legalize is a problem for the better mathematicians, possibly these who deal exclusively in tax income problems. Opium is less harmful, marijuana is not only less physically harmful but also better in the action of keeping a neurotic producing, phenobarbital does not dull the senses nearly as much and produces less after effect, ammonium chloride and a host of other stimulants are more productive of results and hardly less severe on the anatomy: but no, the engrams, contaging unpleasantly along from the first crude brew which made one of our ancestors drunk, decree that alcohol is the only thing which is to be drunk if a person wants to "forget it all" and "have a good time." There is really nothing wrong with alcohol save that it depends mainly on engrams and other advertising for its effect and is otherwise remarkably inferior in performance: that it makes such aberrative engrams is probably its main claim to fame and infame. Making one drug immoral and another one taxable is a sample of the alcohol engram in society. However, although it is immensely legal, it is doubtful if the auditor will find any use for it in therapy.

A good old rant against our friend alcohol. I enjoyed it. It's humourous but also says the things we've all thought a million times before. Would read again.

The length of time it takes to clear a person is quite variable. By blowing despair charges and working a few early engrams, an auditor can get a better state of being in the patient than in any past therapy in twenty or thirty hours: this is a release. It compares to two or three years of past therapeutic work. The length of time it takes to get a clear cannot be compared to any past standard because a clear is something no past standard ever dreamed about.

In a sonic case, where recall is in good condition, a clear can be obtained in a hundred hours. In a case which has thoroughly shut down recalls, anything can happen up to, in extremity, a thousand hours. Similarly, the imaginative case which has things which never happened, may be long.

This is a big question: how long does it take to get cleared? Obviously, the answer is "it depends". A hundred hours if you're in a good place, a thousand if not.

Look at it this way: we can get the results of two or three years of psycho-analysis in a score or two of hours of dianetics and what we accomplish with dianetics does not have to be done again, which is not true with psycho-analysis. This is the release. He can go about his business in a far more competent fashion, his emotional charges being largely freed. In the clear we are attempting and can achieve a supernormal state of mind.

Moving on from the previous paragraph, I find it a most intriguing (and bold!) claim that two hours of dianetics is the same as 2 - 3 years of other therapy. What's more, once you've released something, it's gone forever, no longer able to cause you any trouble. These are the most tempting statements from the book.

An incident will not lift unless the data in it is correct: this is automatic. Change just one syllable in the incident and it will stick. Or, if it seems to go away, it will be back. So there is no fear that any incident which decreases with recounting is incorrect. The data in it must be more or less correct or it would not so reduce. Thus the auditor who challenges incidents, data or otherwise plays god is going to have a thoroughly fouled up case on his hands before he goes very far, and he is going to have a subject who is not progressing. If the subject begins to run an engram where Mama is having intercourse with five Eskimos, let him run it and never, never, never, never tell him that you feel it was untrue. If you tell the subject you think he is imagining things, you may give him a serious set-back. Tell him you think Mama had her reasons and you have sided with the opposition: you are not attacking the engram, you are helping Mama attack the subject. To criticize, correct or otherwise judge the pre-clear has no slightest part in dianetics and will do more to slow up a case than any other single action. An auditor who challenges the material given him may be practicing witchcraft or Chinese acupuncture or shamanism or voodoo, but he is not practicing dianetics. And he will not get results. One remark to the subject such as, "I think that you are mistaken in believing your mother would try to abort you," or "I feel that you are imagining it" may set your pre-clear back fifty hours. The auditor does not criticize or judge the pre-clear, nor does he evaluate for the pre-clear that person's material.

An auditor must take any data given without question and run with it, otherwise, you'll ruin all of your hard work.

Don't crow. If the pre-clear is your wife, or husband, or child, don't rub it in that the favorite argument phrase was out of an engram. Of course it was!

For some reason, this really stuck with me. I could see people doing this. It's nice that Ron got rid of that argument right way.

This chapter also includes the five classes of engrams and how to spot them via what the preclear is saying. As follows:

Denyers - When an engram convinces the patient that it doesn't exist ("Leave me alone", "I can't tell", "Forget it" etc).
Holders - When an engram refuses to let the patient move or come back to present time ("I'm stuck", "That's fixed it", "I'm caught" etc).
Bouncers - When an engram pushes a patient away ("Get out", "Can't go back at this point", "I must go away" etc).
Groupers - when an angram tangles up the time track "memories" so it's all wrong ("I have no time", "Screwed up", "Nothing makes a difference" etc).
Misdirections - When an engram gets a patient to move somewhere else, different to what the auditor is telling it to do ("You're doing it backwards", "We can't get the to bottom of this", "I can't tell you how it began" etc).

CHAPTER TEN - DIANETICS – PAST AND FUTURE

Plan A included the perfection of the science, its testing on patients of all kinds and, finally, the dissemination of dianetics as pertaining to therapy. That plan ends with the release of this book.

Plan B includes a further research into life force, an attempt at resolution of some of the ills not yet embraced such as cancer and diabetes, and the perfection of techniques discovered and their dissemination. That will end Plan B.

Plan C includes an effort to discover a higher echelon of universal origin and destination, if the problem is one of origin and destination, and the factors and forces involved to the end of securing a better understanding and useful application of the knowledge so gained, if gained, and if so gained, its dissemination.

A portion of Plan B is the organization of a foundation so that the research can be more swiftly accomplished.

The history of dianetics has just begun. What other things begin with the origin of a science of mind only tomorrow can tell.

So I guess this is the "cliffhanger", in a way. It kinda shoes L. Ron had his sights on bigger fish all along, and that this book was only a small step of what he wanted to achieve. Safe to say he got a lot of what he aimed for, depending on who you ask.

No self-interest can be so great as to demand the slaughter of Mankind. He who would demand it, he who would not by every rational means avert it, is insane. There is no justification for war.

There is actually a lengthy section here all about how terrible and nonsensical war is. It's quite a refreshing stance on the matter. A lot of religious texts are quick to condone violence against non-believers. And yet somehow, people call Scientology the enemy?


This book generously ends with some lists of commonly used terms, fundamental concepts, and a massive glossary for easy reference.

It's also quite satisfying that the core contents of my edition ended on the 500th page exactly. That's got to be on purpose. And I appreciated it.

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