Dianetics 55! 1955 Chapter 2
Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Life
Much more broadly covered in Scientology, the fundamentals of life yet differ in no way for Man.
The basic subdivision in life is between ability and mechanics. This could also be described as a subdivision of quality and quantity, but less accurately.
Where mechanics have ability, the ability is only apparent and has been endowed into the mechanics by life. It is all right to suppose that an electronic brain is capable of thought as long as one realizes that life itself must necessarily be present in order to give cause, and quality, or direction, to such a brain. An electronic brain will sit all day and do nothing unless life starts the machine running. It will give millions of answers, but none of these, no matter how sharp, have any meaning until they are viewed by life. The machine is never anything more than a servo-mechanism to life. Indeed, a machine cannot even exist in the absence of life.
By mechanics we mean any and all of the objects, motions, or spaces which exist. Foremost of these, and foremost in any mechanical scheme, is space. Next is energy. Next is condensed or solidified energy, called matter. And finally, always present in any mechanical arrangement or mechanic, that relative change of position of particles or objects known as time. Thus we have space, energy, matter, and time. Whether we are considering a body running on any energy, an automobile or a mountain, we are still dealing with what we call here mechanics. Mechanics are always quantitative. There is always just so much distance, or so much mass, or so many hours. The quality of space, energy, matter, and time has value only when viewed, used, or monitored by life, and, indeed, cannot exist in the absence of life. Correct or not, this is workable and is our primary assumption. We have a word for mechanics compounded from matter, energy, space, and time which is MEST. By MEST we mean any or all arrangements of energy of whatever kind, whether in fluid or object form, in space or spaces. We do not conceive life to have an energy, and therefore, any energy, even if directly produced by life, can be found to be embraced under the quantitative term „MEST.“
Life itself has quality and ability. The products of quality and ability are mechanics. Ability is demonstrated by the handling of matter, energy, space and time. Quality means simply „valued,“ or „having a value.“ No values, that is to say opinions, exist in the absence of life. In the matter of such a thing as an automatic switch we might consider that the switch is capable of making a decision whether to be off or on. However, we must remember that the original decision that a switch was to be made, and that „off“ and „on“ could be accomplished, and indeed, the design of a switch itself depended entirely upon life – quality.
In the field of mechanics we do not discover creativeness. We discover varying conditions, varying arrangements, deterioration and destruction of one or another form, but we do not discover any alteration in quantity. Indeed, the entire science of physics is predicated upon the assumption of „conservation of energy,“ which is to say that energy, itself, cannot be created or destroyed but can only alter its form. To this we might add „conservation of space,“ „conservation of matter,“ and „conservation of time.“ None of these things are capable, in themselves, of altering. They are not capable of more than change of position or alteration of form. The physicist is very fond of demonstrating that the breaking of a vase does no more than the altering of the relative positions of the particles of the form, and that the burning of a piece of coal does not change the basic particles of matter, since if you were to collect all the smoke, and the ash, and the particles which radiated from the burning and weigh them you would have the same weight as before the coal was burned. In other words, the quantity of matter does not change, and, as above, it does not create to itself or add to itself in any way.
Life, it has been adequately established, can, however, create. It can create particles and it can add to mass. The demonstration of this on a man is an easily accomplished thing and is quite conclusive. A process known as „the remedy of havingness“ is capable of altering the weight of a man upwards of twenty to thirty-five pounds even though there is no change whatsoever in the diet or the living habits of that person. In other words, the life which is in the body of the man, and which is actually the man, can, by a certain process, increase the amount of mass of this man. Another process known as „perfect duplication“ can reverse this, and, again without change of diet or the living habits of the man, decrease the amount of mass of a man without the complications of heat or waste-products being present. Thus, forthrightly and directly, in the same frame of reference as that used by the physicist, it is easily demonstrated that life does create mass and can cause mass to disappear.
As long ago as fifty years, as represented by an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, it was fairly well understood that the study of physics should have begun with an examination of the mind. This article, under the heading of time and space, states that as space and time are mental phenomena their proper delineation and study begins in the field of the mind. Nineteenth century „mental sciences“ were insufficiently schooled in science to comprehend this, and the physicist, unaware in general of such facts, did not consider that his proper province was the mind. Thus a misunderstanding existed in the Humanities and in the Sciences where one was depending upon the other, and the result came about that neither knew his proper field of endeavor. By undertaking a study of the mind from the orientation of physics, and with the application of all the principles known in chemistry, physics, and mathematics (items with which the nineteenth century psychologist was entirely unfamiliar, and which the twentieth century psychologist utterly disdains), it was only then possible to produce some comprehension of this thing we call life in this place we call the physical universe.
Thus, that thing which considers, that thing which has opinions, that thing which creates, that thing which monitors, that thing which has goals, desires, and which can experience, is Life. What we call space, time, energy, matter, forms of any kind, are the by-products of, and are monitored by, Life. Energy, whether in the form of a mental image, a body, a tree, or a rock, are alike the by-products of life. There is no faintest difference, save only density and wavelength, between the space you behold around you with your physical eyes and the spaces and forms you see when you close them and behold a mental image. These things, alike, are energies, and obey the various laws of energy.
Here, then, we have a unit or a quality capable of bringing into being quantities such as spaces, energies, masses, and time, capable of changing and controlling these masses and energies, capable of adding to them or subtracting from them.
There is considerable dissertation in „Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health“ concerning the „awareness of awareness unit.“ When this subject was first under investigation it w a s established that all was not a machine. Somewhere, in tracing back the various lines, it was necessary to strike a cause point, either simply to assume that there was a cause point or to discover one. Two words were used in connection with this causative agent. One of them was „analytical mind,“ and the other, much more properly, the „awareness of awareness unit.“ The awareness of awareness unit, as its name implies, is aware of being aware, or aware of being alive. When one was looking at or discussing the analytical mind, one was aware of something else: that the awareness of awareness unit became connected in some fashion with computers, or analyzers, in order to handle and control the remainder of the physical being. The term „analytical mind“ then meant the awareness of awareness unit plus some evaluative circuit or circuits, or machinery, to make the handling of the body possible.
The other item discussed broadly in „Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health,“ was the „reactive mind.“ This mind was a stimulus-response mind which depended for exterior direction upon its action and reaction. The reactive mind was conceived to be a collection of records, in picture form, so arranged as to make a complete pattern of experience, capable by its pattern alone of evaluating the conduct or behavior of the individual. The pictures contained in the reactive minds are now called „facsimiles,“ for they are no more and no less than pictures, like photographs, taken of the universe around the individual and retained by him. A specialized kind of facsimile was the „engram.“ This differed from other mental pictures because it contained, as part of its content, unconsciousness and physical pain. The definition of an engram is: a picture of „a moment of pain and unconsciousness.“ The reactive mind was conceived to have more of these engrams than the analyzer. But the analyzer was seen to have some of these, too, except they were a lighter form and were a lock on the engram in the reactive memory bank. Indeed, when one considered the reactive mind he was actually considering what is, in the electronic brain, a memory bank. Instead of cards or a card-file system the reactive mind contained pictures. These pictures were filed and were drawn out of the files by the environment, which contained restimulators.* The presence of these pictures could alter form and could alter behavior. The eradication of one of these engrams by one of the earlier erasure techniques of Dianetics was found to alter the stimulus-response behavior of the individual.
Here we were confronting three kinds of mind. One was the causative agent, the awareness of awareness unit, which did not appear to have any by-products but which was impinged upon another mind called the analytical mind, which on a machine basis analyzed situations rationally, when sane and rational, and a third kind of mind even further remote from the awareness of awareness unit, which acted without the consent of the causative agent and did not in any way consult it. Now on a very careful review of this we see that the analytical mind and the reactive mind, alike, are by-product mechanical minds. Alike, they depend upon energy, spaces, storage, and other quantitative things. The awareness of awareness unit, however, is itself decision, is itself knowingness. It delivers into the analytical mind and its system various knowingnesses to be handled on a mechanical basis, and unwittingly delivers into the hands of the reactive mind – which is totally a mechanical thing – the right to alter and correct the analytical mind. Apparently, then, we have here a causative agent and two machines. We might as well, then, take the obvious conclusion that there is the awareness of awareness unit, and that this in some fashion handles machinery, and that the analytical mind, the reactive mind, and even the body and the environment are mechanical. One item here is qualitative and decisional – the awareness of awareness unit. All other items are subordinate to it and depend for their conclusions either upon it or upon the environment. Here again we have quality versus quantity.
A further demonstration of this awareness of awareness unit in action is quite convincing. A machine, a meter, which is built in every tradition of physics and electronics, and which is composed of nothing more or less than the usual meters and gauges and electrodes, can detect the production of energy by the analytical mind. This machine demonstrates conclusively that the awareness of awareness unit can predict and cause an energy reaction to occur at will. It goes further and demonstrates that the awareness of awareness unit can bring about, without further contact, an energy flow in a body at a distance. This is a very startling demonstration, and is one of the more significant electrical discoveries of recent times. The conditions of the experiment are sufficiently rigorous to dispel any doubt in the mind of a physicist concerning the authenticity of occurrence.
If there were no energy being created by the awareness of awareness unit, then one would be at a loss to account for mental energy pictures, for these things, being made at a tremendously rapid rate, have considerable mass in them – mass which is measurable on a thing which is as common and everyday as a pair of bathroom scales.
As soon as it was discovered how facsimiles (these mental energy pictures) came into being it was also discovered that they were actual energy and not „an idea of energy“ as they had been supposed to be in the past. The facsimile and the engram come into action by resistance. The awareness of awareness unit resists a scene in the physical universe, either resisting its approach or departure, and thus by this resistance makes a print. This print is made in a moving fashion, like a motion picture, and is complete in every detail. Later on the individual can call back this print and take a look at it, and will find it to have in it the exact forces which were in the original version in the physical universe. The awareness of awareness unit does this so easily that it has been completely unaware of what it was doing. Now, when the awareness of awareness unit makes a print, trying to restrain something from going away, or trying to restrain it from approaching, and considers that the survival of its body is being violated or threatened, it files this print in such a way that it will not have to look at it again. But this does not mean that an approximation of the print by the physical environment cannot reactivate the print independently. In other words, when the awareness of awareness unit puts away and does not want to look again at such a facsimile, the facsimile itself begins to have a power over the awareness of awareness unit. The collected files of these non-survival experiences come together and are the reactive mind. The awareness of awareness unit could be conscious of these, but chooses not to be. Thus the environment can restimulate this reactive mind and can cause changes of behavior and bodily form such as over-weight, psychosomatic ills, or even fixed expressions or gestures.
The essence of time is change. Where there is no change there is no time. Thus, something which is unchanging is enduring. If a thing has no change in it, it will then „float“ in all time, since it does not assign itself to any changingness, being a thing of no-change. Thus we discover that silences and no-motions „float“ in time and we discover that every place on the time track where the awareness of awareness unit has taken a picture of silence, has resented or restrained silence, it then has an energy mass which will „float“ or stay with it, whatever time it assigns to itself, and we get the composition of the physical universe. The physical universe is composed of „floating“ or forever energy. If this did not work out in processing and if it were not a usable principle it would not be included in this text.
In view of the fact that these facsimiles, particularly those of silence, can „stay with“ the individual, then we get the entire mechanism we call „restimulation“ where the environment reactivates a facsimile, which then acts back against the body or awareness of awareness unit of the person. This is a very simple system of stimulus- response. We discover then that engrams, or facsimiles in general, have a tendency to hang up on all of their silent or motionless spots. Thus a facsimile may contain considerable action and yet be stuck at one point of no-motion. Here we have a no-motion on either side of which there is motion. The no-motion point hangs up and is not contacted by the awareness of awareness unit, since the awareness of awareness unit is looking, in general, for motion. Thus we get a phenomenon known as „stuck on the time track“ where an individual can believe himself to be at some distant point in the past. The facsimile or engram in which he is „caught“ has almost as much reality to him as a condition of existence as his present-time environment. When he becomes entirely psychotic the facsimile or engram has far more reality to him than his present-time environment. Thus we have aberration and psychosomatic illness.
In early Dianetics, the way this condition was alleviated was by addressing the pictures themselves and persuading the awareness of awareness unit to erase them by recounting them and re-experiencing them. Because this took a long time, and because auditors had a tendency to abandon half-erased incidents, the technology – while workable – was not conclusive. Thus, more research and investigation had to be entered upon in order to establish the best way to handle this situation.