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A study of basic personality in a multi-valent subject who had poor memory, no good recalls and scant imagination disclosed the information that BP (the attention units called basic personality) was more able to select out data than AP (aberrated personality as represented by the awake subject). It was further discovered that AP could ordinarily return better than BP so far as time-distance went but that when AP arrived at the earliest place it was unable to manage recall. But if AP had gone back and established a vague contact with an incident, drug hypnotism or standard hypnotism used on him when he was in present time (no longer returned would then permit BP to return. Drug hypnotism has seldom been able to force back very early into a patient’s life. But by making the strength of AP go back and then using BP for the recall, some very early incidents could be reached. This trick was invented to overcome some of the difficulties which had made drug hypnosis relatively uncertain in results.
Then another factor was discovered. All those patients who had been treated by narcosynthesis had become worse every time the people doing the work had crossed over but left (because “everybody knew” an “unconscious” person didn’t record) a period of
“unconsciousness.” When one of these “unconscious” periods was so probed -- by the drug hypnosis called narco-synthesis -- the patient usually became worse, not better. Doing a little more probing than had been done by the usual practitioners, dianetic research entered some of the late life “unconscious” periods and, with much labor, laid them bare.
Now all drug hypnosis, whether it is called narco-synthesis or a visit from the god Aesculapius, is still hypnosis. Whatever is said to a hypnotized subject remains as a positive suggestion, and these positive suggestions are simply engrams with a somewhat lighter effect and a shorter duration. When a drug is present the hypnotism is complicated by the fact that hypnotic drugs are, after all, poisons; the body is then possessed of a permanent (at least until dianetics was discovered) somatic to go along with the suggestion. Drug hypnotism invariably creates an engram. Whatever a practitioner says to a drugged subject becomes engramic in some degree. In the course of dianetic research it first was supposed, playing back the careless chatter of practitioners out of the minds of patients they had placed under drug hypnosis, that this carelessness in saying so many aberrative things was responsible for some of the failure.
But this was found to be true in a very limited sense. Then it was discovered that when the
“unconscious” periods were reached by drug hypnosis they refused to lift even when the patient recounted them scores of times. This was blamed on the drug character of the hypnosis.
Straight hypnotism was then used to reach these late “unconscious” periods and these periods still failed to lift. Therefore it was adjudged safe to continue drug use on those patients who refused hypnosis. And the AP-BP alternate trick began to be employed.
It was discovered by drug hypnosis where it was necessary and straight hypnosis where that was possible that the “schizophrenic” (the multi-valent aberree) could be made to reach very early periods in every case. And it was further found that an early period of
“unconsciousness” would often lift. Experimentation brought about a scientific axiom: The earlier the period of “unconsciousness” the more likely it is to lift. That is a fundamental axiom of dianetic therapy.
Manic-depressives who had sonic recall were worked upon, most of them by straight hypnosis, and it was discovered that they also followed this rule. But it was most dramatic in the multi-valent aberree: for when the engram did not lift it impinged against his analytical mind when he was awakened and created a variation in his psychoses and brought with it psychosomatic illnesses as well.
This brought about an understanding of why the multi-valent aberree, under narcosynthesis, was made worse whenever some practitioner had glided over (but not entered, of course) a late-life period of “unconsciousness.” Now came the problem of applying the axiom.
It was postulated that the primary engram must in some way suppress later engrams. In view of other data and postulates, this was an entirely reasonable assumption. The earlier a person went in the life of a multi-valent aberree the less likelihood there was of restimulating him 85
artificially. Often an engram at around two or three years of age would lift entirely and give him a great deal of relief.
The problem of this research was very far from the same problem of those who, not knowing about the reactive mind and “unconsciousness,” tried merely to find computing factors on a rational level or incidents of everyday life as aberrative factors in a patient.
When an engram is touched, it is very resistive, particularly above the age of two years.
Further, the whole reactive bank was buried deeply under foggy layers of “unconsciousness”
and was further safeguarded by a mechanism of the analytical mind which tended to prohibit it from touching pain or painful emotion. The reactive bank was protecting itself all the way through the research but it was obviously the answer. The problem was how to achieve its relief, if it could be relieved.
Having made several multi-valent personalities intensely uncomfortable, a new necessity level was reached whereby something had to be done about the problem. But there was this shining hope, the above axiom. A bridge between insanity and sanity had to be built and there, in the axiom, one had at least a glimmer of a plan. The earlier one had experienced this fog and pain, the lighter these engrams seemed to be.
Then, one day, a multi-valent patient, under drugs, went back to his birth. He suffered the pain -- and it was very painful with this crude technique, for dianetics had not yet smoothed down to a well-oiled piece of machinery -- and he floundered through the “unconsciousness”
of the period and he fought the doctor who had tried to put drops in his eyes and he generally resented the entire proceedings. AP had been sent down first, then later, under drugs, BP had contacted the incident.
This seemed a remarkable day for dianetics. After twenty runs through birth the patient experienced a recession of all somatics and “unconsciousness” and aberrative content. He had had asthma. It seemed that this asthma had been caused by the doctor’s enthusiasm in yanking him off the table just when he was fighting for his first breath. He had had conjunctivitis. That came from the eye-drops. He had had sinusitis. That had come from the nose swabs used by the pretty nurse.
Rejoicing was held for he seemed to be a new man. A primary psychosis about being
“pushed around” had vanished. The subjective reality of this incident was intense. Objective reality did not matter but this patient had a mother near at hand and objective reality was established simply by returning her in therapy to his birth. They had not communicated about it in detail. The recording of her sequence compared word for word with his sequence, detail for detail, name for name. Possibility, even if they had communicated, of such duplication, outside the dianetic situation, was mathematically impossible. And she had been “unconscious”
during his birth and had always supposed that the affair had been quite different and the return data collapsed her awake description of it as being so much fable.
In order to make sure that this was no freak (for it is a very poor research man who will base conclusions on a series of one) two manic-depressives were returned to their births and both completed the experience. But one of these two birth engrams would not lift!
The postulated axiom was called into play again. If one could find the earliest engram, then the others would lift each in turn. That was the hope.
The manic-depressive whose birth had not lifted was returned to a period before birth in an effort to find an earlier engram.
Structural theories, as fondly held for ages, had thoroughly collapsed already when
“unconscious” fog and pain had been penetrated to discover the engram as an aberrative unit.
Tests had held up the discovery that all data, awake, asleep and “
unconscious,” from the moment of conception on was always recorded somewhere in the mind or body. The little 86
matter of myelin sheathing, since it had already been disproven by laboratory research which included the reaching of birth, was discarded. The theory that no recordings can take place in the mind until the nerves are sheathed depends upon a theoretical postulate, has never been subjected to scientific research, and depends for its existence upon Authority alone -- and a
“science” which depends on Authority alone is a breath in the wind of truth and is therefore no science at all. That babies cannot record until the myelin sheathing is formed has about as much truth, on investigation, as the fact that penis-envy is the cause of female homosexuality.
Neither theory, when applied, works. For the baby, after all, is composed of cells and it is evidenced now by much research that the cell, not an organ, records the engram.
Thus there was no inhibition about looking earlier than birth for what dianetics had begun to call basic-basic (the first engram of the first chain of engrams). And an earlier engram was reached.
It has since been discovered that a great deal of recording is done by the child in the womb which is not engramic. For a time it was thought that the child in the womb records on the proposition of “extended hearing,” where hearing tunes up in the presence of danger and particularly during “unconsciousness.” But the first research discovered prenatal engrams to be most easily reached when they contained a great deal of pain. Cells, not the individual, are evidenced to record pain. And the reactive engram bank is composed only of cells.
Recourse to nature rather than recourse to Authority is the very building block of modern science. So long as Galen remained an Authority on blood, none but “madmen” like Da Vinci, Shakespeare and William Harvey even thought to experiment to find out what truly was the action of blood! So long as Aristotle remained the Authority for All, the Dark Ages reigned. Advance comes from asking free-minded questions of nature, not from quoting the works and thinking the thoughts of by-gone years. Recourse to precedent is an assertion that yesterday’s mentors were better informed than today’s: an assertion which fades before the truth that knowledge is compounded of the experience of yesterdays, of which we have more, most certainly, than the best-informed mentor of yesterday itself.
In that dianetics was based on a philosophy that used the cell as the basic building block, the fact that recording of engrams was done by cells came with less surprise than it otherwise might have. The engram is not a memory; it is a cellular trace of recordings impinged deeply into the very structure of the body itself.
The experience of which cells themselves were capable had already been tested. It had been found that a monocell divided not only its substance but gave its total experience, as a master disc will make duplicates, to its offspring. Now this is a peculiarity of monocells: they survive as identities. Each is personally its fore-bearer.
Cell A divides to a first generation; this generation is also Cell A; the second generation, the second division, creates an entity which is still Cell A. Lacking the necessity of such laborious processes as construction and birth and growth before reproduction, the monocell simply splits. And everything it has learned could be postulated to be contained in the new generation. Cell A dies but through generations from it, the latest generation is still Cell A.
Man’s belief that he is to live in his progeny might possibly derive from this cellular identity of procreation. Another interesting possibility lies in the fact that even neurons exist in embryo in the zygote and neurons do not themselves divide but are like organisms (and may have the virus as their basic building block).
Dianetics, as a study of function and the science of mind, does not need any postulate concerning structure, however. The only test is whether or not a fact works. If it does work and can be used, it is a scientific fact. And the prenatal engram is a scientific fact. Tested and checked for objective reality, it still stands firm. And as for subjective reality, the acceptance of the prenatal engram as a working fact alone makes possible the clear.
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At the end of a series of 270 clears and alleviations a short series of five cases was taken to finally settle the argument. These five cases were not permitted to admit anything before birth. They were treated with everything dianetics, hypnotism and other therapeutics could offer, and no clear was obtained. This ruled out the “personality of the operator” or
“suggestion” or “faith” as factors in dianetics. These five cases had never been informed of prenatal engrams. Each swerved in toward them but was restrained without informing him that engrams existed that early. The five were alleviated as to some variety of psycho-somatic ills but the ills were only alleviated, not completely cured. The aberrations remained but little changed. They are extremely disappointed since each had heard something of “the miracles dianetics could perform.” Before then 270 cases had been worked and 270 cases had reached prenatal engrams. And 270 cases had been cleared or alleviated as the dianeticist chose and time permitted. All could have been cleared with an additional average of 100 or so hours for each of the persons who were alleviated. In short, on random cases -- and selected cases so that at least two of each classification of neurosis or psychosis was included in the clearing -- when prenatal engrams and birth were taken into account and used in therapy, results were obtained.
When these factors were not taken into account, results were no more favorable than those attained in the best successes of past schools -- which is not nearly good enough for a science of mind.
Dianetics had prenatal and birth engrams wished off on it as facts existing in the nature of things. That past schools have been passing over these engrams and into the prenatal area without success does not mean that prenatals could not be found any more than it means that these past schools found much value in prenatal experience when they considered it at all. The problem is slightly more complex: the difficulty lay in finding the reactive bank which was occluded by “unconsciousness” which had never before been penetrated wittingly as
“unconsciousness.” The discovery of this reactive bank led to the discovery of prenatal engrams, which are quite different from “prenatal memory.”
After a few cases had been examined as to objective and subjective reality dianetics was forced to accept, if it wished a clear, the fact that the cells of the foetus record. A few more cases and a little more experience discovered that the embryo cells record. And suddenly it was discovered that recording begins in the cells of the zygote -- which is to say, with conception.
That the body recalls conception, which is a high level survival activity, has little to do with engrams. 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.
Anyone postulating that “return to the womb” was an ambition should have examined life in the womb a little more carefully. Even a poor scientist would have at least tried to find out if anybody could recall it before he made a statement that there was a memory of it. But life in the womb does not seem to be the Paradise it has been poetically, if not scientifically, represented. Actuality discloses that three men and a horse in a telephone booth would have but little less room than an unborn baby. The womb is wet, uncomfortable and unprotected.
Mama sneezes, baby gets knocked “unconscious.” Mama runs lightly and blithely into a table and baby gets its head stoved in. Mama has constipation and baby, in the anxious effort, gets squashed. Papa becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put into a running washing machine. Mama gets hysterical, baby gets an engram. Papa hits Mama, baby gets an engram. Junior bounces on Mama’s lap, baby gets an engram. And so it goes.
People have scores of prenatal engrams when they ar
e normal. They can have more than two hundred. And each one is aberrative. Each contains pain and “unconsciousness.”
Engrams received as a zygote are potentially the most aberrative, being wholly reactive.
Those received as an embryo are intensely aberrative. Those received as the foetus are enough to send people to institutions all by themselves.
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Zygote, embryo, foetus, infant, child, adult: these are all the same person. Time has been considered the Great Healer. That can be filed with the things “everybody knew.” On a conscious level it may be true. But on a reactive level Time is nothing. The engram, whenever received, is strong in proportion to the degree it is restimulated.
The mechanism of an engram has an interesting feature. It is not “reasoned” or analyzed nor does it have any meaning until it has been keyed-in. A baby before speech could have an engram in restimulation but that engram must have been keyed-in by the analytical data the baby has.
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health Page 17
