DMSH 1950 Book 3 Chapter 6

← Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950)

The Laws of Returning

The engram has the aspect of — and is not — a live entity which protects itself in various ways. Any and all phrases in it can be considered commands. These commands react on the analytical mind in such a way as to cause the analytical mind to behave erratically. Dianetic therapy is parallel to the methods of thought and thinking itself. Anything which reacts against dianetics and the auditor can uniformly and without exception be found to react in just that way on the patient’s analytical mind. Conversely, the patient’s problems of thinking in his usual activities are the auditor’s problems in therapy.

The bulk of these “commands” the engrams contain are not computable in any way, since they are contradictory or demand unreasonable acts. It is the impossibility of computing them and reconciling them to thought and existence which makes the patient aberrated. 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.

The emotional reaction to hell, from some other place on the track — as contained in some other engram — may say that “going to hell” is loud sobbing. Hence he does not “want” to recount this engram. Further, he is terrified of it because it is “too terrible to be borne.” That Mother was only discussing with her ambivalent self the necessity of laxatives is never entered into the computation. For the reactive mind does not reason, it thinks in identities, seeking to command the analytical mind.

There is only as much data as is in the engram and the analytical reaction to this unthinking thing is utterly literal.

Let us look at another. This is a coitus experience. It has, as its somatic, varying pressure. It is not painful and, by the way, no matter how painful these engrams may be in present time when restimulated, no matter how forceful, when they are actually contacted, their reexperienced pain is very mild, no matter what it was when received. So this is a shaking up of the unborn child, that is all. But it says, “Oh, darling, I’m afraid you’ll come in me. I’ll just die if you come in me. Oh please don’t come in me!”

What does the analytical mind do with this? Does it think about coitus? Does it worry about pregnancy? No, emphatically not. The engram that would make one think about coitus would say, “Think about coitus!” and the engram that contained a worry about pregnancy would say, “I am worried about pregnancy.” The pain is not severe in this coitus experience but it specifically states that the engram is not to be entered. “Do not come in me!” He would die if he did, wouldn’t he? It says so right there. And the patient finds himself wandering around the track until the auditor uses repeater technique (as will be covered).

How about another type of engram? Let us suppose that our poor patient has been unlucky enough to get a Junior tagged on him. Let us suppose his name is Ralph and his father’s name is Ralph. (Be careful of these Junior cases, they are unusually complex sometimes.) Mother (see the Kinsey report, if you’ve any doubts) is having a quiet affair on the side with Jim. This coitus somatic is no more painful than being gently sat upon, but the patient has a terrible time with it. Mother: “Oh, honey, you are so wonderful. I wish Ralph were more like you but he isn’t. He just doesn’t seem to be able to excite a girl at all.” Lover: “Oh, Ralph isn’t so bad. I like him.” Mother: “You don’t know his pride. If Ralph found out about this, it would kill him. He would just die, I know.” Lover: “Don’t worry, Ralph’ll never hear.”

This little gem of an engram is more common than one would suppose before he begins to get an embryo-eye view of Mother. This won’t compute in the analyzer as data. Therefore it is a worry. (A worry is contradictory engram commands which cannot be computed.) Ralph, Junior, finds that he is very shy sexually. That is the aberrative pattern. Approaching it in therapy we find we have a sympathy computation with the lover. After all, he said Ralph wasn’t so bad, that he liked Ralph. Well, the only Ralph is, of course, to the reactive mind, Junior. This keeps our patient from approaching this engram because he thinks he will lose a friend if he touches it.

Further, on the aberrative side, Junior has always worried about people’s pride. As we contact this in therapy, he shies violently from it. After all, if he found out about it it would “kill him dead right where he lies.” And there is another thing here, a sonic shut-off. It says right there that Ralph will never hear. This is survival stuff. That is what the cells believe. Therefore Ralph never hears in recall. There will be more sonic shut-offs; Mother is promiscuous and that generally means blockage on the second dynamic. Blockage on the second dynamic often means she dislikes children. In short, this would be an attempted abortion case which stabbed Junior full of enough holes to supply a cheese factory for some time.

Junior, now a man, may have extended hearing because he is frightened in general of “life.” But his sonic recall is zero. This engram, then, would have to be sorted out through the demon circuits as “impressions” which come to the mind. The auditor, taking what the patient says about this, may very soon guess its content and explode it by repeater technique.

Now take the case of the mother who, a soul of propriety if a little on the whiny side, discovers she is pregnant and goes to the doctor. 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. And in therapy we find he is afraid he exists: I am afraid I am. And suddenly he isn’t moving on the time track. Why? He’s caught. That doesn’t mean he’s pregnant, that means he is caught. Further, he won’t be able to recount it. Why? Because it is hard to tell this early. Consequently he doesn’t speak about it. We free him on the track with repeater technique.

Oh, this language of ours which says everything it doesn’t mean! Put into the hands of the moronic reactive mind, what havoc it wreaks! Literal interpretation of everything! Part of the aberrative pattern of the person who had the above engram was great cautiousness about advancing any opinion. After all, it was hard to tell, this early.

Now let us take an engram from a girl patient whose father was badly aberrated. He strikes Mother because he is afraid Mother is pregnant and Father is blocked on Dynamics One, Two, Three and Four. Father: “Get out! Get out! I know you haven’t been true to me! You

were no virgin when I married you. I should have killed you long ago! Now you’re pregnant. Get out!”

The girl, some five weeks after conception, is knocked “unconscious” by the blow to Mother’s abdomen. She has a severe engram here because it has painful emotional value which she will never be able to dramatize satisfactorily. The aberrative pattern here demonstrates itself in hysterics whenever a man might accuse her of not being true. She was a virgin when she was married twenty-one years after this engram was received, but she was sure she was not. She has had a “childhood delusion” that her father was likely to kill her. And she is always afraid of being pregnant because it says now she is pregnant, which means always, since time is a march of “nows.” In therapy we try to get near this engram. We return the patient to basic area and suddenly find her talking about something which happened when she was five years of age. We return her again and now she is talking about something which happened when she was ten years of age. The auditor, observing any such reaction as this, knows he is handling a bouncer. It says, “Get out!” and the patient gets out. The auditor recognizes what is wrong, uses repeater technique, and reduces or erases the engram.

Always and invariably, the analytical mind reacts to these engrams as though commanded. It performs on the track as these engrams state. And it computes about the case or about life as these engrams dictate. Healthy things to have around, engrams! Real, good survival! Survival good enough to lay any man in his grave.

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. (Such things are the whole source of the impulses of a thief, the test being that when an auditor erases all such engrams in a patient, the patient no longer steals.) The auditor will find it eagerly recounted because its content offers it to the analytical mind.

The whole species of engrams which say, “Come back here! Now stay here!” as Fathers are so fond of saying, account for a snap back to an engram when therapy is entered. The patient goes straight back to it the moment it is exposed. When recounted the command is no longer effective. But while that engram existed, unentered, it was fully capable of sending people to an institution to lie in a foetal position. Anyone left in institutions who has not been given shocks or pre-frontal lobotomy and who suffers from this type of insanity can be released from such an engram and restored to present time simply by use of repeater technique. It sometimes takes only half an hour.

Traveling on the track, then, and wandering through the computations the analyzer is compelled by these engrams to attempt is something like playing a child’s game which has a number of squares and along which one is supposed to move a “man.” A game could actually be composed on the basis of this time track and engram commands. It would be similar to parchesi. Move so many squares, land on one which says, “Get out!” which means one would go back to present time or toward it. Move so many squares and then lose a move because this square on which we now land says, “Stay here!” and the “man” would stay until the auditor let him out by technique (but because this is struck by therapy, it would have no power to hold long). Then move so many squares to one which said, “Go to sleep,” at which the “man” would have to go to sleep. Move so many squares until one was hit which said, “Nobody must find out,” and so there would be no square. Move so many until one was reached which said, “I’m afraid,” at which the “man” would be afraid. Move again to a square which said, “I must go away,” so the “man” would go away. Move once more to a square which says, “I’m not here,” and the square would be missing. And so forth and so forth.

The classes of commands which particularly trouble the auditor are only a few. Because the mind actually does some part of its thinking, especially when remembering, by return, even when the individual is not returning, all these commands also impede the thought processes of the mind. In therapy they are particularly irksome and are the constant target of attention of the auditor.

First is the patient-ejector species of command. These are colloquially called “bouncers.” They include such things as “Get out!” “Don’t ever come back,” “I’ve got to stay away,” etc. etc., including any combination of words which literally mean ejection.

Second is the patient-holder species of command. These include such things as “Stay here,” “Sit right there and think about it,” “Come back and sit down,” “I can’t go,” “I mustn’t leave,” etc.

Third is the engram-denyer species of command which, literally translated, means that the engram doesn’t exist: “I’m not here,” “This is getting nowhere,” “I must not talk about it,” “I can’t remember,” etc.

Fourth is the engram-grouper species of command which, literally translated, means that all incidents are in one place on the time track: “I’m jammed up,” “Everything happens at once,” “Everything comes in on me at once,” “I’ll get even with you,” etc.

Fifth is the patient-misdirector which sends the pre-clear in the wrong direction, makes him go earlier when he should be going later, go later when he should go earlier, etc. “You can’t go back at this point,” “You’re turned around,” etc.

The bouncer sends the pre-clear soaring back toward present time. The holder keeps him right where he is. The denyer makes him feel that there is no incident present. The fourth, the grouper, foreshortens his time track so that there is no time track. The misdirector reverses the necessary direction of travel.

Contacting any engram causes the pre-clear to react “analytically.” Just as in the case of an engram being restimulated, the commands are impinged upon his analyzer, and although the analyzer may firmly believe it has just computed the reaction all of its own accord, it is actually speaking straight out of the content of an engram or engrams.

This is the method of repeater technique.

As he goes back along the track contacting engrams, the pre-clear runs into areas of “unconsciousness” which are occluded by “unconsciousness” or emotion. In most early engrams the pre-clear can be expected to yawn and yawn. It is not the command “to sleep” which is responsible for this: the “unconsciousness” is releasing (boiling off, the auditors call it). A pre-clear may, for a space of two hours, fumble around, drop off into “unconsciousness,” appear doped, start to go to sleep, without any such command being present.

Part of the engram bundle of data is the analyzer shut-off. When he is returned and an engram is contacted, the pre-clear then experiences an analyzer attenuation, which means he is much less able to think in the area.

Boiling-off “unconsciousness” is a process very necessary to therapy, for this “unconsciousness” could be restimulated in the everyday life of the individual and, when restimulated, make his wits shut off just a little or a very great deal, slowing down his thought processes.

The aspect of “unconsciousness,” then, reduces the pre-clear’s awareness whenever it is contacted. He has dreams, he mumbles foolish things, he flounders. His analyzer is penetrating the veil which kept him from the engram. But it is also highly susceptible, when in this state, to an engram command.

When urged by the auditor to go through the engram and recount it (although the auditor knows it may take minutes for this “unconsciousness” to boil off enough to let the patient through) the pre-clear may complain that “I can’t go back at this point.” The auditor promptly takes note of this. It is an engram command coming through. He does not apprise the patient of this knowledge; the patient usually doesn’t know what he’s saying. If the patient then continues to have trouble, the auditor tells him, “Say, ‘I can’t go back at this point.’” The patient then repeats this, the auditor making him go over it and over it. Suddenly the somatic turns on and the engram is contacted.

In interviewing a patient, the auditor notes carefully without appearing to do so, what phrases the patient chooses and repeats about his ills or about dianetics. After he has placed the patient in reverie, if he discovers the patient, for instance, insists he “can’t go any place,” the auditor makes him repeat the phrase.

Repetition of such a phrase, over and over, sucks the patient back down the track and into contact with an engram which contains it. It may happen that this engram will not release — having too many before it — but it will not release only in case it has that same phrase in an earlier engram. So the repeater technique is continued with the auditor making the patient go earlier and earlier fur it. If all goes on schedule the patient will very often let out a chuckle or a laugh of relief. The phrase has been sprung. The engram has not been erased, but that much of it will not thereafter influence therapy.

Anything the patient does about engrams and any words he uses to describe the action are contained, usually, in those engrams. Repeater technique takes the charge off the phrases so that the engrams can be approached.

This technique, of course, can very occasionally land the patient in trouble, but the kind of trouble into which one can get in dianetics is not very severe. The engram, restimulated in everyday life, can be and is violent. Murders, rapes and arsons, attempted abortions, backwardness in school, — any aberrated aspect of life — stems from these engrams. But the act of approaching them in dianetic therapy goes on another channel, a channel closer to the source of the engram. Ordinarily, acting on an unsuspecting individual, the engram has enormous motor and speech power, ties up great numbers of circuits in the mind which should be used for rationality, and generally effects havoc: its contacts are “soldered-in” and cannot be thrown out by the analyzer. In therapy the patient is headed toward the engram: that act alone begins to disconnect some of its “permanent leads.” A patient can be gotten into an engram which, unless approached on the therapy route, might have made him curl up like a foetus and get shipped off to the nearest institution. On the therapy route, which is a return down the time track, the most powerful holder has its force limited: a patient can get into a holder which in normal life might be a psychosis: his only manifestation, perhaps, is that when he is told to “Come up to present time,” he simply opens his eyes without actually traversing the interval up the track to present time. He does not suspect he is in a holder until the auditor, watchful for such a manifestation, feeds him repeater technique.

AUDITOR: Are you in present time?

PRE-CLEAR: Sure.

AUDITOR: Howdoyoufeel?

PRE-CLEAR: Oh, I’ve got a slight headache.

AUDITOR: Close your eyes. Now say: “Stay here.”

PRE-CLEAR: All right. Stay here. Stay here. Stay here. (Several times)

AUDITOR: Are you moving?

PRE-CLEAR: No.

AUDITOR: Say “I’m caught. I’m caught.”

PRE-CLEAR: I’m caught. (Several times)

AUDITOR: Are you moving on the track?

PRE-CLEAR: Nope.

AUDITOR: Say, “I’m trapped.”

PRE-CLEAR: I’m trapped. I — Ouch, my head!

AUDITOR: Keep going over it.

PRE-CLEAR: I’m trapped. I’m trapped. I’m trapped, Ouch! That’s worse! (His somatic is getting stronger as he approaches the engram holding him on the other side of the “unconsciousness” veil)

AUDITOR: Keep going over it.

PRE-CLEAR: I’m trapped — “Oh, God, I’m trapped. I’ll never get out of this place. I’ll never get out. I’m trapped!”

AUDITOR: Contact it closely. Make sure there is nothing more in it. (A trick to keep the pre- clear from replaying what he himself has just said and keep running the engram)

PRE-CLEAR: My head hurts! Let me come up to present time!

AUDITOR: Go through it again. (If the pre-clear comes up with this much charge, he’ll be unhappy and the incident may be hard to enter next time)

PRE-CLEAR: “Oh, God, I’m trapped. I’m afraid I’m trapped (new word showed up). I’ll never get out of this place as long as I live. I’m trapped. I’ll never get out. I’m trapped.” (aside) She’s crying. “Oh, why did I ever have to marry such a man!”

AUDITOR: How’s your head?

PRE-CLEAR: Hurts less. Say, that’s a dirty trick. She’s pounding herself on the stomach. That’s mean! Why, confound her!

AUDITOR: Re-experience it. again. Let’s make sure there isn’t more in it. (Same mechanism to keep the pre-clear from replaying what he said before rather than what he now gets from the engram. If he replays rather than re-experiences, the engram won’t lift)

PRE-CLEAR: (Does so, getting some new words and several sounds including the thud of the blows on her abdomen and an auto horn (bulb type) in the street outside) Don’t tell me I have to run this thing again.

AUDITOR: Recountit,please.

PRE-CLEAR: Well, so this dame tries to bust my head in and get rid of me. And so I jumped out and beat hell out of her.

AUDITOR: Please re-experience the engram.

PRE-CLEAR: (Starts to do so, suddenly finds out that like a piece of string with a loop in it, this engram has straightened out and contains more data where the loops were). “I’ve got to think of something to tell Harry. He’ll jump all over me.” ( This was the source of his joking — “jumped out, etc.”)

AUDITOR: Please go over it again. There may be more in it.

PRE-CLEAR: (Does so, old parts of it reduce, two new sounds appear, her footsteps and running water. Then he is happy laughs at it. This engram is released because it may not have entirely vanished. Such an engram is in this shape only when it is contacted prior to basic- basic.)

This is both repeater technique and an engram talked into recession. This engram may appear again with a very faint additional charge after basic-basic is contacted, but it has lost all power to aberrate or give out a psycho-somatic headache or other illness. Yet this engram, not contacted by therapy, was quite enough to make this patient, when a boy, scream with terror every time he found he could not get out of some closed space (claustrophobia).

The repeater technique is the one particular phase of dianetics which requires cleverness from the auditor. Given persistency and patience, any auditor can succeed in the other phases of the science with minimal intelligence. In the repeater technique he must learn how to think — for therapy purposes — like an engram. And he will have to observe how the subject is conducting himself along the time track. And he will have to observe the type of reaction the subject has and draw from this the conclusion as to what sort of command is troubling the subject when the subject himself either does not cooperate or does not know.

This is not to say that the repeater technique is hard: it is not. But the ability of the auditor to use it is the principal reason why a case takes longer with one auditor than another. It is a definite ability. It is playing the game mentioned earlier with cleverness. Where is the pre- clear stuck and with what command? Why has the pre-clear suddenly stopped cooperating? Where is the emotional charge which is holding up the case? With the repeater technique the auditor can resolve all these problems and a clever auditor resolves them much faster than an unclever one.

How does one think like an engram? Ronald Ross, discovering that insects carried germs, considered it necessary to think like a mosquito. Here is a similar menace, the engram. One has to learn to think, for therapy purposes, like an engram.

The auditor could not and does not have to be able to look into a patient’s eyes and guess why the patient won’t eat anything but cauliflower on Wednesdays. That is an aberration and the auditor does not have to guess at either aberrations or psycho-somatic illness sources; they all come out in time and he will learn much about them as he goes. But the auditor must be able to keep his patient straightened out on the track, moving earlier into the basic area, moving upwards from there for a reduction. The current answer to this is the repeater technique. Understand that a whole new art of practice, or many arts of practice, could be evolved for dianetics: one would be unhappy with his fellow man if such evolution and betterment did not take place. Just now the best that has come forward — and the criterion of best is that it works uniformly in all cases — is the repeater technique. The auditor must be able to use it if he expects anything like results from a case at this time. When the auditor — or some auditor — has run a few cases and knows the nature of this beast, the engram, he may — and better had — come forward with improved techniques of his own. The real drawback which repeater technique has is that it requires the auditor to be clever.

Being clever does not mean talking a lot. In dianetics, when one is auditing, that is being very unclever. Indeed auditors, when they begin to work cases, almost invariably so love the sound of their own voices and the feel of their skill that the poor pre-clear hardly gets a chance to get a word in reactive-wise — and it is the pre-clear who is to be cleared, who has the only accurate information, who can make the only evaluations.

Being clever in the sense of the repeater technique is being able to pick out, from the subject’s conversation or action, just what the engrams contain which will prevent his reaching them, progressing through them and so forth. The repeater technique is addressed only to action, not to aberration.

Here is a case, for instance, which was so “sealed-in” that thirty hours of almost continual repeater technique were necessary to break the walls between the analytical mind and the engrams. It is important to know that an engram would not be an engram if the pre-clear could contact it easily. Any engram which can be easily contacted and has no emotional charge is about as aberrative as a glass of soda water.

A young girl, with sonic recall, but with extended hearing and such a complete imbalance of the endocrine system that she had become an old woman at twenty-two, was worked for seventy-five hours before she contacted anything in the basic area. This is almost incredible but it happened. In a patient with sonic shut-off and off his time track, seventy-five hours of work would just about get the wheels greased. But this girl, having sonic recall, should have been well on the road to being clear and she had yet to touch basic-basic.

By repeater technique and repeater alone the case was finally resolved. It contained practically no holders or bouncers. It simply appeared that the whole prenatal area was a blank.

Now it happens that an engram, being not a memory with reason in it, is just a set of waves or some other type of recording which impinges itself on the analytical mind and the somatic mind and runs the voice and muscles and other parts of the body. The analytical mind, to justify what it finds going forward, and cut down by the engram in dramatization, may be interjecting data to make this action seem reasonable — to justity it. But this does not make an engram sentient. When an engram is first approached in therapy it appears to be absent entirely. It may be that three sessions will be required to “develop” this engram. As many are worked, this does not mean three blank sessions, but it means that the “I,” in returning, must pass over an engram a few times for the engram to “develop.” This is important to know. Just as you ask the mind for a datum one week and don’t find it (in an aberree) and ask it again the next week and find it, so with engrams. A cardinal principle in therapy is that if you keep asking for it, you will eventually get the engram. Returning over and over the prenatal area will, of itself alone, eventually develop the engrams in it so that the analytical mind can attack them and reduce them. This is slow freight. The repeater technique — although the engram is still in need of development by several sessions — speeds the process immensely.

In the case of this young girl it probably would have taken another fifty or sixty hours of work to contact the engrams unless a technique like repeater had been used.

Repeater technique resolved it when the auditor noted that she kept saying, “I’m sure there’s a good reason why I feel bad up in my childhood. After all, my brother raped me when I was five. I’m sure it’s up in my childhood, much later. My mother was terribly jealous of me. I’m sure it’s later.”

This young lady, as might be imagined, had studied some school of mental healing in college which thought sex or eating vitamins caused aberrations of the mind and she had often held forth on the fact that while she was not averse to what she called “analysis” she did think it dull to expect a foetus to hear anything. She would go into the area before birth and declare she was quite comfortable. But birth was not in sight. That is important. The basic engram or engrams in the basic area — around the embryo period — cannot vanish and will not vanish short of therapy, and when birth cannot even be contacted by so much as one somatic, it is certain that something lies before it. If birth were the first engram, everybody could be cleared in five hours. Birth can even be in sight and there may still remain half a hundred severe prenatal experiences. In her case, nothing was in sight. Her educational pattern had slowed the case: she was always trying to sit in present time and “remember” with a memory so full of occlusions that she couldn’t have recalled her mother’s right name. (She had acquired this from being in the hands of mental practitioners for ten years who had asked her to do nothing but “remember.”) As has been said, she was quite comfortable before birth, sensed the amniotic fluid and was certain that life in the womb was a joyous life for all. The incongruity that she could experience the sensations of this amniotic fluid and floating comfort and warmth and a continued belief that there was no prenatal memory escaped her utterly. The auditor made no slightest effort to convince her. Knowing his business, he merely kept sending her back and forth, trying this mechanism or that.

She finally wanted to know if there had to be prenatal experience and was told that what was there was there, that if there was no prenatal memory then she wouldn’t recall any but that if there was, she might. This is a good, equivocal attitude for an auditor. Dianetics, after all, as one auditor put it, “just shows the yard goods” and makes no sales effort at all.

The auditor had been using repeater technique on varieties of phrases. She was moving on the track so there must be a denyer present. And he had utterly run out of ideas when he realized, suddenly, that she was very handy with that phrase, “much later.”

AUDITOR: Say “Much later” and return into the prenatal area.

GIRL: “Much later. Much later,” etc. (very bored and uncooperative).

AUDITOR: Continue please. (Never say “Go ahead” for that means to do just that. Say “Continue” when you want them to keep on progressing along an engram or repeating and “Return over it” when re-running an engram already run once.)

GIRL: “Much later. Much...” I have a somatic in my face! It feels like I am being pushed. (This was good news for the auditor knew she had a mid-prenatal pain shut-off which prevented later somatics from appearing.)

AUDITOR: Contact it more closely and continue to repeat.

GIRL: “Much later. Much later.” It’s getting stronger. (Naturally. On repeater technique, the somatic gets stronger until the phrase appears, exactly right. On a non-sonic case it impinges itself indirectly on “I”; in a sonic, the sound comes through as sound.)

AUDITOR: Continue.

GIRL: “Much...” I hear a voice! There. That’s it. Why, that’s my father’s voice!

AUDITOR: Listen to the words and repeat them, please.

GIRL: He’s talking to my mother. Say, this face pressure is uncomfortable. It keeps going up and down on me. It hurts!

AUDITOR: Repeathiswordsplease.

GIRL: He’s saying: “Oh honey, I won’t come in you now. It’s better to wait until much later to have one.” And there’s my mother’s voice. Say, this pressure is hurting me. No, it’s eased up considerably. Funny, the minute I contacted his voice, it got less.

AUDITOR: What is your mother saying, please, if you hear her?

GIRL: She’s saying: “I don’t want you in there at all then!” She’s mad! Say, the somatic stopped. (Coitus had ended at this point.)

AUDITOR: Please return to the start of this and recount.

GIRL: (Regains the beginning, somatic returns) I wonder what they’re doing? (then a pause) I hear a squishing sound! (then a pause and embarrassment) Oh!

AUDITOR: Recounttheengramplease.

GIRL: There’s a sort of a faint rhythm at first and then it gets faster. I can hear breathing. Now it’s beginning to bear down harder but a lot less than it did the first time. Then it eases up and I hear my father’s voice: “Oh, honey I won’t come in you now. It’s better to wait until much later to have one. I’m not too sure I like children that well. Besides, my job ...” And my mother must shove at him because there’s a sharper somatic here. “I don’t want you in there at all then. You cold fish!”

AUDITOR: Returntothebeginningandrecountitagain,please.

GIRL: (Recounts it several times, somatic finally vanishes. She feels quite cheerful about it but doesn’t think to mention that she doubted prenatals existed.)

This is repeater technique at work. This particular case had had about two hundred phrases thrown at her for repeater technique without finding one of them that would fit. In the first place, there were only a few lower engrams which the file clerk was willing to give out and the auditor was guessing at the whole gamut of deniers. A later incident might have contained — and did but no somatic appeared — numbers of the phrases he used. But the file clerk was willing to settle for this one for it was early and could be erased.

The file clerk rarely hands out something in a badly occluded case which cannot be reduced to recession. And an auditor never leaves an engram so offered until he has made every effort with many recountings to reduce it. The file clerk, in this case, by the bye, would have let down the auditor by putting forth such an engram as birth, which would not have lifted and which would have caused a lot of lost work and given the patient a headache for a few days. The auditor would have let the file clerk down if he had not reduced the engram offered by making the girl go over it several times until the somatic was gone and the voice faded out.

The reason this engram stayed hidden was because its content said so. Actually it was a coitus. As an engram it seemed to say that the incidents would be found later on in life. Further, as an engram, it said that it was not to be entered.

Repeater technique will sometimes embroil a patient in trouble of a minor sort by getting him “sucked into” incidents which will not lift. This is not common but the file clerk occasionally hands out a late incident, rather than an early one. However, this is not an error on the part of the file clerk. Remember, he has these engrams filed by subject, somatic and time, and the auditor can use any one of these. When the file clerk responds and hands out a somatic on a repeater phrase the auditor has gleaned from the pre-clear’s chatter or has guessed himself and yet that somatic will not lift or no voice appears with it (in a sonic case, or merely won’t lift with a non-sonic), the file clerk had to unstack a pile of material. Therefore, the auditor, realizing this, finding that a voice does not appear or that the somatic will not lift, has the pre- clear repeat the same phrase and tells him to go earlier and earlier. Another somatic may turn up in a different place in the body. The file clerk has gotten an even earlier one loose, now that a small amount of trouble has been taken from what he could first get. Now this earlier one is addressed similarly. It may get mediumly strong as a somatic, the pre-clear repeating the phrase all the while, and still no voice may appear. The auditor then sends the pre-clear earlier. The file clerk again has managed to get out an even earlier one, now that something has been taken from the second. This time again, an even earlier somatic turns on, probably down around the basic area in a case which has not previously contacted this area, and this time a voice can be heard. The engram reduces. The file clerk, in short, was willing to risk trouble in order to get several somatics unstacked and let the auditor get a basic incident.

There are variations on this sort of thing. As the filing system is by subject, somatic and time, the auditor can use other things than phrases. He can send a pre-clear to the “highest intensity of a somatic,” and often results may be obtained, though this is not as reliable as by subject nor as foolproof. The pre-clear, incidentally, does not mind going to any “highest intensity” of somatic because somatics are about a thousandth part as strong as the original agony, though they are quite strong enough. In present time with the pre-clear not in therapy, the intensity of one of these somatics can be a drastic affair as witness the migraine headache.

Taking the migraine, a pre-clear can be returned to the very moment of its reception when one would think its intensity would be the highest and yet find a mild, dull ache such as one would get with a hangover. This is part of the principle that any entrance of a case is better than a case not entered at all. For by return with standard reverie technique the source is approached, and if the source is contacted at all, the power of the engram to aberrate has become reduced in strength no matter how many mistakes the auditor makes.

Returning to “maximum intensity” of a somatic, then, is nothing very painful. Actual maximum intensity is when the pre-clear is awake before the contact with the incident is made. But in returning to “maximum intensity” the incident may often be contacted and reduced. If “maximum intensity” however, contains in its engram the phrases, “I can’t stand it!” “It’s killing me,” or “I’m terrified,” then expect our pre-clear to respond to it in some such way. If he does not respond, then he has an emotional shut-off, which is another problem which will be taken up later.

Similarly, the auditor can handle his pre-clear in time. There exists a very accurate clock in the mind. The file clerk is very well acquainted with this clock and wherever possible will comply. The auditor who wants the patient to go “six minutes before this phrase is uttered” will generally find that his pre-clear is now six minutes before it, even though the incident is prenatal. The auditor can bring his pre-clear forward, then, minute by minute as he desires. He can take a pre-clear straight through an incident by announcing, “It is one minute later, it is two minutes later. Three minutes have gone by,” and so forth. The auditor does not have to wait for those minutes to elapse; he just announces them. He can make a pre-clear go through time at five minute intervals or hour intervals or day intervals, and unless there is engramic material which holds him or otherwise affects the operation, the auditor can move the pre-clear on the time track at will. It would be very nice if the auditor could send the pre-clear to conception and then tell him it is one hour later, two hours later and so forth to pick up the first engram. However, there are more factors involved than time, and the plan, though pretty, is not feasible. The time shift is generally used when the auditor is trying to get the pre-clear ahead of an incident to make sure that he really has a beginning. By returning the pre-clear by five or ten minute intervals, the auditor may sometimes discover that he is running backwards into a very long and complicated incident and that the headache he has been seeking to alleviate on the pre- clear was received, actually, hours before the period in which he thought it had initially been received. In such a case there is a second engram appended to an earlier engram and the auditor cannot lift the second one until he has the first one.

Actually time shift is of limited use. The auditor who tries to go chasing backwards through time will find that he will have on his hands an artificially restimulated case and that the work is much impeded. Repeater technique works best and is most easily handled by the file clerk. The auditor uses a time shift to get the pre-clear as close to basic area (early prenatal) as possible and then generally, if the file clerk doesn’t simply go to work handing out engrams which can be washed, one after the other, the auditor uses repeater technique. Time shift and “running down a somatic” have some limited use. Some experimentation will show about how much use they have.

The laws of regression are these:

(1)  A returned patient reacts more, theoretically, to those commands which are earlier than he is on the time track and less to those commands which are later than his point in time.

(2)  A pre-clear reacts to those engramic commands which are: (a) in chronic restimulation, or (b) to which he is nearest on the time track. Thus, if an engram says, “I’m afraid,” he is. If it says, “I’d rather die than face this,” he would. If the command to which he is near says, “I’m sleepy,” he will be. If it says, “Forget it,” he will. Commands in chronic restimulation give a false color to the personality: “I can never be sure of anything,” “I don’t know,” “I can’t hear anything” are all possibly in chronic restimulation. If the file clerk won’t give them up, then keep working the case anyway around these. They will give up after a while.

(3)  The action of the pre-clear on the time track and the condition of the track are regulated exclusively by engramic commands classifiable as bouncers, holders, denyers and groupers and misdirectors. (These conditions, it is repeated, are quite variable, as variable as language: “I don’t know whether I am coming or going,” for instance in an engram makes it very confusing. “I can’t go back at this point” makes the pre-clear keep progressing later and later.)

(4)  The engramic command manifests itself either in the awake speech of the pre-clear after a session of therapy or is inadvertently announced as a supposedly “analytical” thought when he nears the vicinity of the command.

(5)  The engram is not a sentient, rationalized memory but a collection of unanalyzed perceptions, and it will develop into contact simply by the process of returning through it, to it, over it or asking for it.

(6)  The file clerk will give the auditor whatever can be extracted from the engram bank. The auditor must aid the file clerk by reducing in charge or severity everything the file clerk offers. This is done by making the patient recount it. (Otherwise the file clerk gets so much material piled around that, with this in restimulation, he can no longer get at the files. The auditor who bucks the file clerk is not rare. The file clerk who will buck an auditor except by withholding data which will not reduce has yet to be found.)

The techniques available to the auditor are as follows:

1. Returning, in which the pre-clear is sent as early as possible on his track before therapy itself is engaged upon.
2. Repeater technique, by which the file clerk is asked for data on certain subjects, particularly those affecting the return and travel on the time track, and which aid the ability of the pre-clear to contact engrams.
3. Time shift, by which a pre-clear can be moved short or long distances on the track by specific announcement of the amount of time forward the pre-clear is to go or time backwards, or return or progression through intervals of time. (It is also useful to find out if the pre-clear is moving or which direction he is moving on the time track in order to discover the action some engram may be having upon him.)
4. Somatic location, by which the moment of reception of the somatic is located, in an effort to discover whether it is received in this engram or to find an engram containing it.