BY L. RON HUBBARD
Part One
FOR CENTURIES MANY SCIENTISTS and philosophers have been studying the convolutions of human thinking. The longer the study, the greater their reassurance that we are the possessors of a most complex and challenging instrument called the mind. What they refer to is now called the analytical mind.
But describing its behaviour did not make the ways of the mind any less baffling. Our knowledge of how its functions continued to be only approximate at best. There were still unknown stimuli and unaccountable factors – until the theory of Dianetics was applied.
Dianetics is from the Greek origin meaning “to resolve in the mind; or of or pertaining to reasoning, especially digressive or cursory reasoning,” wherein the mind hops and skips from one thought to another or from clarity to confusion without apparent cause and as if under some strange and seemingly uncontrollable compulsion. That obviously was the unknown stumbling block to a fuller understanding of how the mind functions.
The stumbling block, Dianetics proved after years of experimentation, is in fact that we are also the possessors of another mind, a reactive mind, which has far greater force and compulsion upon us than the so-called analytical mind. In fact, when brought into play, the reactive mind can and does overpower the analytical mind.Worse, the reactive mind badgers and bedevils us throughout our entire life span.
THE REACTIVE MIND
Like the analytical mind, the reactive mind is also a mental function of the brain. It is a kind of primitive function in that it is a vicious and violent survival mechanism in the brains of all living organisms.
But the reactive mind does not analyze. It thinks in terms of identities and similarities, but not in difference like the analytical mind. It is strictly a literal mind that responds defensively every time something reminds it of a similar painful incident.
The animal mentality, being largely reactive, is a good illustration of this. Suppose a deer walked under a tree and a snake dropped down upon it and terrified it (threatened its survival). The terror would cause its meager analytical faculties to become attenuated or partly unconscious, whereupon its strong reactive mind would take over. The impression would be recorded, filed away for future survival use. Thereafter that tree and all others resembling it would be associated with the snake threat in the deer’s min. Every time the deer saw such a tree, the fearful incident would cause it to shy away on pain of death. For to the reactive mind, pain means death and pleasure means survival.
To civilized human beings, however, the reactive mind has become a leech upon rational behavior. It is the hypothetical cyst which occludes the proper psychosomatic ills and the barrier which prevents us from attaining the optimum of our thinking abilities and aspirations.
NONANALYTICAL REACTION
It is remarkable what powerful pressures the reactive mind can exert upon the individual in order to make him obey its commands. Even though it is presumably a pro-survival monitor, you must remember that it cannot analyze and know the difference between things.
Thus if a brindle cow kicked you and inflicted pain while you were getting yourself a case of sunstroke out in the pasture one day, thenceforward all brindle cows would become hateful creatures to you and all sunny pastures would restimulate the unconsciousness. You would even reexperience the pain of the kick each time you were restimulated.
Of course it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way the reactive mind works. It can’t think things out. And yet by means of Dianetics we have discovered that hundreds of other psychosomatic ills are imposed upon the human body in exactly that crazy way.
What does this reactive mind consist of? It is a kind of storage bank of memory, mostly of unpleasant things done to us from the very first moment of cellular life, but only of those events which happened while we were unconscious or in pain. As such, it differs from our previous understanding of the meaning and uses of memory.
Here it is necessary to define memory as a process of recalling, at will or in response to appropriate stimuli, impressions previously made on the senses and recorded in the mind. The process of recall is essentially one of perceiving those impressions and understanding them. It is an analytical process.
What was not before understood by the mental sciences, but can now be demonstrated conclusively by Dianetics, is that yet another file of impressions exists. This other file is one in which impressions are recorded by the reactive mind and held prisoner there until such times as that functional apparatus has occasion to call them into play.
In other words, the reactive mind reacts to certain stimuli but in a manner so incapable of rational explanation, so random and erratic, that it frequently does incalculable harm to the human body and impedes its maximal performance.
Part Two
IN THE FIRST ARTICLE, I tried to make clear that the main concern of Dianetics is the reactive mind, as discovered by the new science, and that it has far greater compulsion upon us than our so-called analytical mind.
As previously indicated, the reactive mind records all impressions experienced during moments of unconsciousness or of pain sufficient to lower the perceptive abilities of the analytical mind to a point less than full consciousness. Therefore it is a condition that, before any of these data can affect the individual adversely, it must be activated or keyed-in by an occurrence in the life of the individual similar to the one originally recorded. From then on, the occurrence is capable of being reactivated by every such occurrence of restimulator.
We have said that the reactive mind records with the implication that the data are filed as obtained, without regard for system or original context. Similar results would be obtained were a tape recorder to be placed in operation upon a busy street corner. Auto horns, crashes, whistles and snatches of conversation would all be found on the tape in replay. No selective mechanism could be devised which would do more than play off that which was recorded.
This is the activity of the reactive mind – recording and replay in response to restimulation. Therefor when any recording in the reactive mind is caused to replay, the individual responds with a literal interpretation of the amount of that particular recording.
It will be appreciated, then, what startling, ludicrous and even disastrous results may be observed when this nonanalytical, strictly literal mind is restimulated. For example, a pregnant woman trips, falls heavily to the floor. Her unborn child is momentarily stunned (unconscious). In her terror and concern she cries out, “My baby! I have harmed him, given him a terrible setback! He will never be like other children!” Even though the child is born without mishaps or disfigurement, yet when in his childhood someone remarks in a manner intended to be complimentary, “He is not like other children,” the prenatal incident, keys-in and thereafter he unconsciously seeks to be different, sulking in corners, refusing to join in with other children in their play and various normal activities.
This does happen, and can be and has been demonstrated.
A SOLUTION
Now, a true science not only recognizes the problems in its field, it offers a method for their solution. As a true science, Dianetics has evolved a method for recognizing and solving its peculiar problems. The method is Dianetic processing. The mode is reverie. The solution is erasure of those recordings which, when restimulated, cause reactive behavior in the human being. The individual whose reactive mind bank no longer contains any unerased incident is known in Dianetic terminology as a Clear.
The state of reverie is induced by an astonishingly simple process. The preclear is asked to make himself comfortable and close his eyes. He is then asked to return to a past moment of pleasure. the moment of pleasure is recounted. His auditor endeavors by adroit questioning to elicit all possible details. This has the effect of acquainting the person with the practicability and process of going back or returning. It also sharpens his powers of recall and at the same time allays any doubts or misgivings he may experience.
DIANETIC AUDITING
He is next asked to go back or return to the first moment of pain or unconsciousness available at the time. What he contacts is called an engram, which is the scientific name for an impression upon the organism. Again, adroit questioning aids him to recall details. Several recountings of the incident serve to remove what may be called the charge on this incident, thus restoring to the analytical mind that vital energy theretofore required to endure or live with the disruptive content.
From here the preclear is led by the auditor into further, more deeply embedded incidents, the ultimate aim of which is to contact and erase all such aberrative incidents present in the bank. These data in the reactive mind are actually contacted with the aid of the auditor, whose assistance is required for more reasons than can be explained here.
It may be surprising, but the data are all there in the reactive mind, recorded and waiting to be contacted, erased and placed by the auditing process into standard or nonaberative memory. The process thus releases vital energy needed for the better functioning of the analytical mind. it is obvious, then, that with every such release the analytical mind recovers more and more of its original, endowed potential for clear and rational thinking.
The term Clear is aptly chosen, for once Cleared, our former preclear is, forever after, able to make up his mind in a fraction of the time formerly required. And his decisions will be unbiased by emotion or past disruptive experience: in a word, rational.
L. RON HUBBARD
DIANETICS: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard
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GLOSSARY
attenuated: weakened or reduced as in force, intensity, effect or the like.
adroit: cleverly skillful; expert.
allays: puts something (such as doubts, concerns or the like) to rest; calms; quiets.
bedevils: troubles, harasses or torments in a way that seems caused by a devil.
brindle: having a colour that is brown or gray marked with darker streaks or patches.
brought into play: put into operation; cause to come into force or activity.
cellular: having to do with a cell, the smallest structural unit of an organism that is capable of independent functioning. All plants and animals are made up of one or more cells that usually combine to form various tissues.
convolutions: complexities or intricacies, as of form, pattern etc., likened to something having too many folds, turns or twists.
cursory: (in thought, reasoning or the like) touching on something broadly or generally, or passing rapidly over something without review of details.
cyst: something in the mind that is separated off, likened to a physical cyst, a protective sac enclosing fluid or semisolid material, that develops abnormally in the body and that can block normal flows or even become cancerous.
digressive: tending to digress, deviate, wander away or depart from the main topic or the principal line of reasoning, argument or the like.
disfigurement: the fact or condition of being disfigured, made less attractive in appearance, deformity.
faculties: mental powers or abilities, such as reason, memory, etc.
hypothetical: based on an idea that is possible and imagined rather than real or true.
incalculable: too great to be measured.
leech: something that clings to and takes advantage of someone or something, with the implication or effect of exhausting the other’s resources; parasite. Likened to a leech, a freshwater worm that sucks blood or eats flesh of other animals.
maximal: the highest or greatest possible.
peculiar: distinctive in nature or character from all others; unique or specific to a person or thing or category.
play, brought into: put into operation or motion; caused to come into force or activity.
play, call into: cause or put into operation, cause to come into force or activity.
resolve: think over; consider.
snatches: small parts or bits of something; fragments.
thenceforward: from that time onward; after that; thereafter.