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Plato introduced the idea of the mind as being completely separate from the physical body. Wundt, Freud and other psychologists continued this convenient concept. It has been the subject of massive tomes and has certainly become the dumping ground for all the perverse and inexplicable phenomena of human conduct.
None of the people who spoke of the mind bothered to explain where or what it was. With Dianetics and later with Scientology, there has been an attempt to state in more than meaningless abstractions the composite of the mind.
The mind exists as a measurable entity. It consists of energies and masses that are part of and obey the same laws as the physical universe. Under ideal conditions, it can also obey the laws of the Thetan. It is a halfway house between the Thetan and his body. It is at once coarser than the Thetan and finer than the gross composition of the brain. It occupies space but not necessarily in the brain or the body since it extends from the body for anything up to twenty-five feet. It is the property of the Thetan and not an extension of the body, since in his mind the Thetan stores all memories of his experiences. The energies of which the mind is composed are of the same family as 230-volt alternating current or sunlight but they are of such fine wavelength as to be unmeasurable at this time.
Four bands of mental energy have been discovered by Hubbard - Aesthetic, Analytical Thought, Emotion and Effort. Aesthetic wavelengths are estimated at 0.00000000000000000000000002 cm.; which is very fine indeed and certainly not measurable, with any accuracy, by normal means, (Hubbard does not specify how he came to measure it); Analytical Thought is given as 0.0000002 cm.; Emotion is given as 0.02 cm.; and Effort would appear to be either 0.0 cm. or Infinity, which is curious.
The conclusion to be drawn is that the Aesthetic wavelengths are nearest to the Thetan in being so tiny and Effort being an obvious part of the physicality of the universe is gross and therefore 0.0 cm. (which is non-existent) or Infinity (which is meaningless as a wavelength except as a mathematical convenience) are, by some odd quirk, opposites. To further confuse things, Hubbard states: "What most closely approximates Theta? It would be one of nearly infinite length, and that wave is found to be Aesthetic, the wavelength of the arts." Nearly infinite length would hardly be 0.(25 noughts)2 cm.; or would it in Hubbard mathematics?
Leaving aside these discrepancies, the Axioms state energy to consist of postulated particles and objects to consist of grouped particles. In just such a way does the energy of the mind condense into matter or masses under certain conditions. The mind is a collection of masses.
The energy of the Thetan is used in the main to make Facsimiles (a mental copy of one's perceptions of the physical universe sometime in the past, and also known as a mental image picture). These mental image pictures contain much more than would normally be understood by memories. They are precise mirror images containing over sixty sense impressions (Hubbard does not list what they all are), together with the emotions, thoughts and conclusions of the Thetan. They are recorded at high speed rather after the style of cine film and have limitless durability. Presumably, the very earliest facsimilies are some 320 Trillion years old!
There are three divisions of the mind - the Analytical Mind, the Reactive Mind and the Somatic Mind.
"Analytical Mind - The 'Computer', or the part of the mind which perceives and retains data, analyses them, and uses the answers thus received to resolve problems and direct the organism along all the dynamics. The analytical mind, as a computer, is incapable of error as it thinks in differences and similarities; given accurate data, there would be perfection in every conclusion. Each iota of information picked up by any of the senses is filed in the memory banks, where it is accessible to the analytical mind.
"All these data are scanned by the analytical mind before it makes a computation on any problem, no matter how minor that problem may be. When not aberrated by false data, the analytical mind, which has full charge of the organism's functions, can control or change all muscular, glandular, rhythm and fluid functions of the body instantly and for the optimum benefit of the organism concerned."
By contrast with the Analytical Mind -
"Reactive Mind - This was once called the 'subconscious mind'. It is alert during any moment of life, even when pain or emotion is so great that the analytical mind temporarily is not functioning. The analytical mind reasons; the reactive mind acts only on a stimulus response basis. The analytical mind records the fact that a pain exists; the reactive mind records the pain itself, together with all perceptics of the environment.
"When a person is below 2.0 on the Tone Scale, he is a product of his aberrations, constantly stimulated by his engrams, and under the command of his reactive mind. Man at this stage is operating under a decision to succumb, because his mind no longer considers him to be a proper tool for Theta's conquest of the Physical Universe."
The Somatic Mind is that portion of the mind in closest contact with the physical organism. It is subservient to the Thetan and to the other sections of the mind and holds automatic psycho-physical mechanisms within it. These can be either pro- or anti-survival. The Somatic Mind contains no ability to reason. It translates mental instructions into physical actions.
The human mind is thus comparable to an electronic computer of vast and specific functions. Each of the three divisions has memory storage banks but the only one which has consciously accessible memories is the analytical mind. It is the unconscious or semi-conscious memories which cause all the trouble. These are recorded in the Reactive Mind and, as with conscious memories, can be restimulated by analogous stimulations occurring in the environment in present time.
If one sees a green car, one is reminded of other green cars and may compare with, or differentiate from, other information already held on green cars to form an opinion. These will be conscious analytical observations. At the same time, memories may be restimulated from the Reactive Memory Bank of the time when one was knocked unconscious by a green car. If the present time situation is sufficiently analogous to the reactive memory, ie: wet roads, smell of exhaust fumes, humid atmosphere, traffic noises, etc., then the reactive restimulation may be so great, even though completely hidden from conscious awareness, as to cause the PAIN of the accident to recur. One could get a headache or other pains corresponding to the experiences of the accident. Even more seriously, one could start to obey or feel the command phrases of the accident. People would have gathered around: "He's dead", "Don't move him", "Careful now", could well have been said. Such phrases are accepted as sounds only by the Reactive Bank. They are not understood or analysed by the Reactive Mind - they are items of information to be met with during serious threats to survival.
Essentially, the Reactive Mind is a survival mechanism since it was designed to contain data on traumatic situations in order to protect the organism from getting into similar situations. Because of its uncontrolled ability to affect the organism, it very often becomes a threat to survival. The areas of its reference are extremely wide for it doubtless would be able to dredge up data on any subject and to thereby "warn" the organism against anything.
Hubbard considers the entirety of the human race to be permanently under the influence of the Reactive Mind to a greater or lesser degree and it is the command phrases such as "He's dead", "Don't move him", "Careful now", which cause the greatest contra-survival effect.
These sounds are brought forward as part of the incident unanalysed for meaning. Therefore, by seeing a green car, the individual could unaccountably feel he is dead and not want to move - he may say he wants to go and lie down for a while - and he may start to be very careful. Analytically, he will rationalise these feelings: "The day is so muggy, I've got my headache back again and I think I'll just go and lie down for a few minutes" Unwittingly, he gives in to the restimulation.
The memory recording of the period of unconsciousness is the Engram - "A recording of what occurs during a period of pain and unconsciousness, which is not available to the analytical mind as experience or memory that can be contacted and resurveyed at will. Engrams, since they are stored only in the reactive mind, act like hidden command posts, and force the individual into patterns of thinking and acting unguided by reason."
However, to make the Engrams operable, there must also be a Secondary Engram - "Mental image pictures containing misemotion (encysted grief, anger, apathy etc.) and a real or imagined loss. They contain no pain - they are moments of shock and stress depending for their force on earlier engrams which have been restimulated by the circumstances of the secondary".
The Primary and Secondary Engrams make a core upon which other lesser incidents build. There can be an indefinite time lapse between the formation of the Primary Engram and the addition of the Secondary. Once the Secondary occurs, the chain can be built up by a "Key-In" - "The first time a similarity or duplication of environment activates a period of unconsciousness which was brought about by pain or emotion is called a Key-In. An engram never enforces itself upon the body until it has been keyed in; therefore, a person might live a lifetime and never have cause to know he has an engram, or if his environment is sufficiently restimulating, he could live in a constant state of semi-consciousness ('dopey' or 'dull'). This shutting down of the analyser permits other engrams to be keyed in more easily, and a decline may be so rapid and sure that the person suddenly may find himself seriously ill, dead or in an institution".
With each Key-In, of which there could be millions in any Engram chain, a reactive memory recording is made called the Lock - "An experience during consciousness that approximates the perceptics of an engram can cause one of two types of locks: those that merely restimulate and cause the individual to dramatise the engram, or those which break the dramatisation demanded in the engram. The second is more severe, since it causes a physical pain to turn on and results in psychosomatic illness. A third type of lock is formed any time affinity, reality or communication has been inhibited or enforced.
"Locks can be received only when the person is in non-optimum condition, such as weary or upset by reverses or emotion. During a lifetime a person picks up thousands of these locks, but they are not aberrative in themselves, only as they encyst the underlying engrams, usually, it is necessary to remove some of this encystment before the engram itself can be contacted, but on a real low-toned person, the lock itself must be run as an engram".
The Locks diversify the scope of the underlying Engram. Whereas the original Engram contains a specific number of elements which can cause restimulation, ie: Green Car, Wet Road, Exhaust Smell, Humid Atmosphere, Traffic Noises, etc., the Locks may be created by only one or two of these being similar and may also introduce elements which were not present in the original incident thus widening the overall scope. For instance, on a day when the roads are wet and there is a strong smell of exhaust fumes, one may see a red bus and a beautiful blonde. One could thus get a beautiful blonde involved in the Engram.
The Engram group becomes encysted energy - matter or mass of an admittedly minute energy potential but capable of wreaking a strong psychological and/or psycho-physical effect on the organism. Many millions of such groups exist within the mind. A few are in constant restimulation producing the adverse effects of most human illnesses, general low emotional state and awareness, neuroses, psychoses, marital breakdown, discontent, wars and accidents. Someone classified as accident-prone, and there are such people, denies and is totally unaware of causing his accidents since he is not aware of causing them, they stem from his Reactive Mind.
Chronic psycho-somatics are caused by the incessant restimulation of an Engram. Acute psycho-somatics are caused by the sudden and heavy restimulation of an Engram.
The attempt to free the individual from these stimulus-response influences is what Dianetic and Scientology auditing is all about. All contra-survival actions on the part of human beings, no matter how reasonable the justifications may be, are directly blamed on the content and hidden nature of the Reactive Mind. When the entire content of the Reactive Mind is examined and thereby transferred from the Reactive to the Analytical Mind, then the individual is dependably rational at all times and free of auto-generated limitations.
Since Hubbard discovered that Engrams could be produced as early as conception many of the most destructive phrases concern references to sexual intercourse, rape, sexual deviations and attempts at abortion. Pain, unconsciousness and general stress on the foetus is caused by its mother belching, suffering from constipation and banging herself and "junior" against furniture. Extraordinary powers of hearing and sight are even accorded to a foetus of a few weeks old. From its mother's womb, a foetus is reported to see and hear the unwelcome advances of its father and to pick up the revulsion of its mother. Hubbard's ideas on this subject appear to stem directly from Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey's Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male.
The Birth Engram was regarded for a while as the basic-basic - the resolution of which would resolve the entire structure of the Reactive Bank. Every Dianeticist tried to "Run Birth" - a Scientologist expression for erasing memories of birth.
An Engram phrase: "Don't look at me" could make it very difficult to contact and examine the Engram. "You're just like your father (mother, brother, aunt Cynthia, an elephant, etc., etc.)" could cause a "Valence" - "the unwitting assumption by one individual of the characteristics of another individual". Such phrases are known as Valence Shifters - they shift the individual from his own identity or valence to another.
Until 1952, Dianetics was concerned with trying to resolve the Reactive Mind and its recordings of this life. With the advent of Scientology and the discovery we had all had an endless stream of lives going far back to the beginning of the physical universe, the problem expanded enormously. Since unfortunately we had all carried our Reactive Banks with us from life to life, the total number of Engrams and the impossibility of examining each made it necessary to develop other techniques. Now there were untold millions of lives incarnate, robot, doll, spider, cat, snake and other mysterious and bizarre bodies. The mundane incidents of this life were as nothing to the impact on our personalities of all these lives which, according to Hubbard, were like an incredible science-fiction adventure with Zapp guns, 5th Invaders, Cavemen, Weepers, Galactic Federations, Flying Saucers, Space Wars and everything else possible to an uncontrolled imagination.
There were Implant Stations, and still are - one is in the Pyrenees, another in Northern Sweden, yet another on Venus. These are run by Thetans who have become so degraded and tricky as to be incapable of running a body. When a body dies, the Thetan often gets drawn to these Between Lives Implant Stations and is given a very vicious form of mental conditioning. The mental image pictures of his just-ended life are taken by the Implanters and jumbled about and made to appear worse than they actually are. In their place are put images of angels complete with wings and Irish harps, Athenian columns holding up the roofs of marbled halls, choruses singing hosannas and the panoply of primitive Christian symbolism. This imparts the belief in a benign God with the overlay that the individual is not obedient enough to join the righteous host and must return to the worldly vale of tears to work out his own salvation. Aleister Crowley first thought up a theory very like this.
The Thetan returns and takes over a baby body at about the time of birth and generally feels the sooner he forgets even to think of himself as an immortal being, the healthier for everyone. This is one of the main reasons why the subject of reincarnation is taboo. Whether the 1,000 million-odd humans who believe in Hinduism and Buddhism and therefore openly subscribe to reincarnation, do not for some incomprehensible reason go to Implant Stations is not explained. Precisely why these Stations exist and why Thetans, no matter how degraded, should bother to run them is also not explained.
However scarey these Implanters may seem they are as cuddly as teddy bears by comparison with some of the ghoulish characters "down the Track" ("Time Track - The consecutive mental image pictures or facsimiles recording the consecutive moments of 'now' through which the individual has lived"). These playful individuals would scramble and destroy the whole mind by bringing super-cold objects into contact with it. The intense cold - absence of heat and energy - would suck all of the mental energy away from the Thetan, leaving him a mindless zombie who could be manipulated for devious ends. Only with the aid of Scientology can the individual overcome such traumatic experiences and regain the memories rightfully his; though if all the energy has disappeared into a super-cold object, it is difficult to see how they can be regained, remarkable though Scientology be. Hubbard explains this by claiming that the Thetan is superior to the mind and is capable of anything no matter how wondrous and no matter how much it contradicts other statements.
However, of much greater impact than all of the foregoing is the major cause for the Thetan ever to have got himself into a state where be could be implanted, receive Engrams or any of the other grim things that have caused him to devolve from a shining superman to his present level of inability.
The Thetan started his career through the physical universe with basic goals. These goals were creative and well-intentioned. Good intentions are a mark of a Thetan and only become bad by the influence of the Reactive Mind. Analytically, the Thetan will justify his reactive and bad actions in an attempt to make them good. Perpetrators of the most heinous crimes justify their actions to themselves if no one else. The Nazi ideology was justified in the eyes of its followers since the purity of the Aryan race could only be preserved by the "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" at Auschwitz and such camps. The path to Hell is paved with good intentions.
The Thetan, full of happy and buoyant goals early in his career through the universe, and potentially capable of achieving his goals, lacks experience of the wrinkles and pitfalls to be met. Hubbard uses as an example of a goal "To catch a Catfish", not that it is one of the basic goals but since it is a non-restimulative subject. The actual goals would obviously be more comprehensive but if he gave them out to uninitiates, the degree of restimulation would be so great as to cause violent sickness, and possible insanity in many cases, so "hot" are they.
Thus our Thetan starts out into the physical universe in the role of a catfish catcher. Such roles are known as Terminals - "anything that can receive, relay or send a communication (most common usage); also, anything with mass and meaning." Eventually he fails in some way to come up to his own expectations as a catfish catcher and due to the quantity of encysted energy which has built up on the subject of this goal in the form of Engrams and opposition, he finds it expedient to join the opposition. He then becomes an opposition terminal or OpTerm in Scientologese and assumes the role of, perhaps, a catfish protector. After a while, he fails at this too and adopts the role of an opposer to his catfish protector but does not revert to the original role of catfish catcher since the mass or aberration remains on this original goal and prevents him from reusing it. He becomes, maybe, a catfish hook maker; this goal being similar to but much less than the original goal. When he fails at making catfish hooks, he again opposes this by, say, becoming a catfish line cutter, and so on. Each switch from Terminal side to OpTerm side, reduces the strength of the goals. It is comparable to sliding down a spiral.
The masses acquired reactively in trying to achieve these goals are called GPM's - "Means Goals Problem Mass. A GPM is composed of mental masses and significances which have an exact pattern, unvarying from person to person, whose significances dictate a certain type of behaviour and whose masses, when pulled in on the individual, cause psychosomatic effects, such as illnesses, pains or feelings of heaviness and tiredness".
Thus the Engram of Dianetics has expanded in Scientology to the GPM. It is larger and involves multiple incidents over a long span of time. The real difference lies in the goal at its core. This goal being of immense value to the Thetan it is of immense significance when it becomes invalidated. Just as the goals shrink in importance and buoyancy so the confidence of the Thetan in his approach to the universe shrinks. He starts to lose the game of life. Everyone is currently enacting a portion of a goal chain - trying to achieve something of which he has no conscious awareness at this time.
This theory is obviously based upon the observation, albeit cursory, of children who set up goals, e.g. to be a fireman, to be a nurse, and who then, through invalidation from adults and the environment, turn these goals into less hopeful ones. It is not very often that they become anti-firemen or anti-nurses, but they certainly change their goals and very often they end up doing something less satisfying. The child plays out his tragic life in the micro-existence of threescore years and ten. This is only an insignificant part of the whole existence of the Thetan which stretches over a span of hundreds of trillions of years.
Though no one has ever had the opportunity to question Hubbard on this theory or any other, he would explain the fact that some people who are very successful, happy and stable are still caught up in this depressing downward spiral but they lacked the wit and awareness to realise success, happiness and stability are just illusion and quite impossible without having been freed by Scientology.
Hubbard's view of the mind started off being not too different from the standard psychological view - he describes Dianetics as being only a psychotherapy. As Scientology has progressed, his view has changed very radically. Certainly the results obtained by the more standard and acceptable mental sciences - psycho-analysis, various other psycho-therapies and psychiatry - do not give much confidence as to the validity of their view of the mind.
If one adopts an objective view of humans, life, the universe and all the other incredibilities, one is forced to conclude that there must be explanations for it all that are so "unacceptable" at this time that perhaps a fertile imagination is the best way to arrive at some sort of answer. Hubbard does not lack imagination but his claim to know the totality of the human mind and the position of sentient life in the entire universe would hold more validity if he explained HOW he had arrived at it.
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