TERRA INCOGNITA – THE MIND
BY L. RON HUBBARD
Originally published by the Explorers Club in the Explorers Journal edition of Winter-Spring, 1950.
Here is an excerpt from this 24 page booklet:
It was discovered that the human mind has not been too well credited for its actual ability. Rather than a weak and capricious organ, it was found to be inherently capable of amazing strength and stamina and that one of the primary purposes was to be right and always right. The normal mind can be restored to the optimum mind rather easily, but that is again beside the point.
The Focus of infection of mental and psychosomatic ills was discovered in a hidden but relatively accessible place. During moments when the conscious mind (Dianetically, the “analytical mind”) is suspended in operation (by injury, anesthesia, illness such as delirium), there is a more fundamental level still in operation, still recording. Anything said to a man when he is unconscious from pain or shock is registered in its entirety. It then operates, on the return of consciousness, as a posthypnotic suggestion, with the additional menace of holding in the body the pain of the incident. The content of the moment or the period of unconsciousness is called, Dianetically, an “engram.” The words contained in the engram are like commands, hidden but powerful when restimulated by an analogous situation in later life. The pain in the engram becomes the psychosomatic illness. Any perceptic in the engram is capable of reviving some of the strength of that engram when it is observed in the environment. The engram so planted in the mind has its content of perceptics – smell, sound, sight, tactile, organic sensations. It has them in a precise order. the engram can be played off like a drama when awake life perceptics restimulate it, which is to say that for every perceptic in the engram there are a variety of equivalents in awake environment. A man becomes weary, sees one or more of the perceptics in his surroundings and becomes subject to the engram within him.
For example, a man falls into a crevasse and is knocked out. His companions haul him forth. One is angry and comments over the unconscious man that he was always a clumsy fool and the party would be better off without him. Another member defends the unconscious man, saying he was a good fellow. The unconscious man, received a blow on the head in his fall, and his arm was slightly injured in the recovery.
After regaining consciousness the injured man has no “memory” of the incident, which is to say, he cannot recall it consciously. The incident may lie dormant and never become active. But for our example, the man who criticized him one days says, at the moment when the formerly injured man is weary, that somebody is a clumsy fool. Unreasonably, the former injured man will become intensely antagonistic. He will also feel an unreasonable friendship for the man who spoke up for him. Now the engram is keyed-in for it has become a part of the subject’s behaviour pattern. The next time the injured man is on ice, the sight of it makes his head ache and his arm hurt in dwindling ratio to how tired he gets. Further, he may pick up a chronic headache or arthritis in his arm, the injuries being continually restimulated by such things as the smell of his parka, the presence of the other members etc. etc.
The engram, a period of unconsciousness which contained physical pain and apparent antagonism to the survival of the individual, has been isolated as the sole source of mental abberations. A certain part of the mind seems to be devoted to their reception and retention. In Dianetics, this part of the mind is called the “reactive mind.” From this source, without otherwise disclosing themselves, the engrams act upon the body and cause the body to act in society in certain patterns. The reactive mind is alert during periods when the analytical mind (or conscious mind) is reduced in awareness.
It is a matter of clinical proof that the persistency, ambition, drive, willpower and personal force are in no degree dependent upon these engrams. the engram can only inhibit the natural drives. The value of this unconscious experience is valuable to an animal. It is a distinct liability to Man, who has outgrown his animal environment. The reactive mind, so long as it limits its activity to withdrawing, instinctively, a hand from a hot stove, is doing good service. With a vocabulary on it, it becomes deadly to the organism.
DIANETICS: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard
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