DMSH 1950 Book 2 Chapter 2

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

The Cell and the Organism

The reason the engram so long remained hidden as the single source of aberration and psycho-somatic ills is the wide and almost infinitely complex manifestations which can derive from simple engrams.

Several theories could be postulated as to why the human mind evolved exactly as it did, but these are theories, and dianetics is not concerned with structure. A comment or two as a stimulation to future workers in that field might be made, however, wholly as a postulate, that there is a definite connection between any electriclike energy in the body and the energy effusion of cells undergoing injury. A theory could be constructed along the lines that injured cells, further injuring their neighbors by a discharge of electric-like energy, forced the development of a special cell which would act as a conduit to “bleed off” this painful charge. The conduits of cells might have become neurons and the charge might have been better distributed so through the body with less likelihood of local incapacitation at the point of the injury impact. These conduits — neurons — might have been started in formation by impacts at the extremity of the body toward the direction of locomotion. This would make the skull the greatest mass of neurons. Man, walking upright, might have had another new point of impact, the forehead, and so gained his pre-frontal lobes. And maybe not. That is just theory, with only a few data to support it which have a scientific value. And it has not been subjected to experiment of any kind whatever.

This much, however, has to be advanced as theory on structure. The cell is one of the basic building blocks of the body. Cells, the better to survive, seem to have become colonies which, in turn, had the primary interest, survival. And the colonies developed or recruited into aggregations which in turn were organisms, also with the sole purpose of survival. And the organisms developed minds to coordinate the muscles and resolve the problems of survival. Again, this is still theory and even if it was the track of reasoning which led toward dianetics, it can be completely wrong. It works. It can be pulled away from dianetics and dianetics will remain a science and go on working. The concept of the electronic brain was not vital but only useful to dianetics and it could be swept away as well — dianetics would still stand. A science is a changing affair as far as its internal theory goes. In dianetics we have our wedge into an enormous scope of research. As dianetics stands, it works and it works every time and without exception. The reasons why it works will undoubtedly be mulled over and changed here and there to its betterment — if they aren’t, an abiding faith in this generation of scientists and the future generations will not have been justified.

Why we talk about cells will become apparent as we progress. The reason we know that past concepts of structure are not correct is because they don’t work as function. All our facts are functional and these facts are scientific facts, supported wholly and completely by laboratory evidence. Function precedes structure. James Clerk Maxwell’s mathematics were postulated and electricity was widely and beneficially used long before anyone had any real idea about the structure of the atom. Function always comes before structure. The astounding lack of progress in the field of the human mind during the past thousands of years is partly attributable to its “organ of thought” lying within a field, medicine, which was and long may be an art, not a science. Basic philosophy to explain life will have to come before that art makes much further progress.

What the capabilities of the cell are, for instance, have been but poorly studied. Some work has been carried on in recent years to find out more, but basic philosophy was absent. The cell was being observed, not predicted.

The studies of cells in Man have been largely done from dead tissue. An unknown quality is missing from dead tissue, the important quality — life.

In dianetics, on the level of laboratory observation, we discover much to our astonishment that cells are evidently sentient in some currently inexplicable way. Unless we postulate a human soul entering the sperm and ovum at conception, there are things which no other postulate will embrace than that these cells are in some way sentient. Entering a new field with postulates which work in all directions — and the basic philosophy of survival is a pilot which leads us on and on into further and further realms, explaining and predicting phenomena on every hand — it is inevitable that data will turn up which does not agree with past theory. When that data is as scientific as the observation that when an apple is dropped under usual conditions on Earth it falls, one cannot help but accept it. Abandoning past theories may do damage to treasured beliefs and one’s nostalgic love of the old school tie, but a fact is a fact.

The cells as thought units evidently have an influence, as cells, upon the body as a thought unit and an organism. We do not have to untangle this structural problem to resolve our functional postulates. The cells evidently retain engrams of painful events. After all, they are the things which get injured. And they evidently retain a whip hand of punishment for every time the analyzer fails them. The story of the engram seems to be a story of a battle between the troops and the general every time the general gets some of the troops killed off. The less fortunate this general is in protecting these troops, the more power the troops assume. The cells evidently pushed the brain on an upward evolution toward higher sentience. Pain reversed the process as though the cells were sorry they had put so much power in the hands of a central commander.

The reactive mind may very well be the combined cellular intelligence. One need not assume that it is, but it is a handy structural theory in the lack of any real work done in this field of structure. The reactive engram bank may be material stored in the cells themselves. It does not matter whether this is credible or incredible just now. Something has to be said about it to give one a mental hold on what happens during moments of “unconsciousness.”

The scientific fact, observed and tested, is that the organism, in the presence of physical pain, lets the analyzer get knocked out of circuit so that there is a limited quantity or no quantity at all of personal awareness as a unit organism. It does this either to protect the analyzer or to withdraw its power in the belief that an engram is best in an emergency — with which the analyzer, by the way, on observed experience, does not agree.

Every percept present, including physical pain, is recorded during these non-analytical moments. Whenever pain is present — physical pain — that is, the analyzer gets shut down to a small or large extent. If the duration of the pain is only an instant, there is still an instant there of analytical reduction. This can be proven very easily — just try to recall the last time you were seriously hurt and see if there isn’t at least a momentary blank period. Going to sleep under anaesthetic and waking up some time later is a more complicated sort of shut-down in that it includes physical pain but is initially caused by a poison (and all anaesthetics are poisons, technically). Then there is the condition of suffocating, as in drowning, and this is a shut-down period to greater or lesser extent. And there is the condition caused by blood, for one cause or another, leaving the area or areas which contain analytical power — wherever they are — and this again causes a greater or lesser degree of analytical shutdown: such incidents include shock (in which the blood tends to lake in the center of the body), the loss of blood by surgery or injury or anemia and the closing of the arteries leading through the throat. Natural sleep causes a reduction of analytical activity but is actually not very deep or serious; by dianetic therapy any experience occurring during sleep can be recovered with ease.

It can now be seen that there are many ways in which analytical power can be shut down. And it can be seen that there is greater or lesser reduction. When one burns one’s finger with a cigarette, there is a small instant of pain and a small amount of reduction. When one undergoes an operation, the duration may be in terms of hours and the amount of shut-down may be extreme. The duration and the amount of reduction are two different things, related but quite dissimilar. This is not so very important but it is mentioned.

We have seen, reading in dianetics this far, that the principle of the spectrum has been quite useful to us. And it can be seen that the amount of reduction in analytical power can be described in the same way that survival potential can be described. There can be a very little bit and there can be a very great deal. Going back and taking a look at the survival potential range, one can see that there would be death at the bottom and immortality at the top. There is “infinite” survival. Whether or not there can be infinite analytical power is a matter of mysticism. But that there is a definite relationship between individual tone and the amount of analytical shutdown is a scientific fact. Put it this way: with the individual well and happy and enthusiastic, analytical power can be considered to be high (Zones 3 and 4). With the individual under the wheels of a truck, “unconscious” and in agony, the analytical power may be considered to be ranging in Zone 0. There is a ratio between potential survival and analytical power. As one goes down, so does the other. There is more data to be concluded from this than one would think at first glance. It is a very important ratio.

All the percepts are included in an engram. Two of these percepts are physical pain and painful emotion. A third is organic sensation, which is to say, the condition of the organism during the moment of the engram. And how was the organism when the engram was received?

Greater or lesser “unconsciousness” was present. This meant that there was an organic sensation of reduced analytical power, since analytical power derives, evidently, from an organ or organs in the body. If an engram is reactivated by a restimulator or restimulators — that is to say if the individual with an engram receives something in his environment similar to the perceptions in the engram — the engram puts everything it contains — its percepts such as faucets and words — into greater or lesser operation.

There can be greater or lesser restimulation. An engram can be put into force just a little bit by restimulators in the environment of the individual or, with many restimulators present and the body in an already reduced state, the engram can go into a full force display (which is covered later). But whether the engram is slightly restimulated or greatly restimulated, everything in it goes into effect one way or another.

There is just one common denominator of all engrams, just one thing which every engram has and which is possessed by every other engram. Each contains the datum that the analyzer is more or less shut-down. There is a shut-down datum in every engram. Therefore, every time an engram is restimulated, even though physical pain has not been received by the body, some analytical power turns off, the organ or organs which are the analyzer are fused out of circuit in some degree.

This is highly important to an understanding of the mechanics of aberration. It is a scientific fact, susceptible of proof, and it never varies. This always happens: when an engram is received, the analyzer is shut down by the physical pain and emotion; when the engram is restimulated the analyzer shuts down as part of the commands of the engram. Actually this is a very mechanical thing. Engram is restimulated, part of the analytical power is shut down. This is as inevitable as turning on and off an electric light. Pull the cord and the light goes off. The reduction of the analyzer is not that sharp — there are grades of light — but it is just as mechanical.

Put a man under ether, hurt him in the chest. He has received an engram because his analytical power was turned off first by ether and then by a chest pain. While he was there on the operating table, the reactive mind recorded the click of instruments, everything said, all sounds and smells. Let us suppose that a nurse was holding one of his feet because he was kicking. This is a complete engram.

The engram will be keyed-in by something in the future, a similar incident. After this, in greater or lesser degree, whenever he hears clicks like instrument clicks he gets nervous. If he pays attention to what is happening in his body at that minute, he may find that his foot feels slightly as if it were being held. But he is not likely to give any attention to his foot because if

he had any attention to give, the chest pain would be found present in some degree. But his analytical ability has been turned off slightly. As the foot felt it was being held, so does the analyzer have the conception of being shut down by ether and pain. The restimulator (the clicking) tended to bring the whole engram slightly into being and part of the engram command is a reduced analytical power.

This is “push-button” in its precision. If one knew another’s main restimulators (words, voice tones, music, whatever they are — things which are filed in the reactive mind bank as parts of engrams) one could turn another’s analytical power almost completely off, actually render him unconscious.

We all know people who make us feel stupid. There can be two causes for that but both of them are from engrams and one of them is the fact that no matter what engram is brought into restimulation, part of the analytical power is turned off.

Engrams can, if environment is uniform, be held in chronic restimulation. This means a chronic partial shutdown of analytical power. The recovery of intelligence by a clear and the rise of that intelligence to such fantastic heights results in part from the relief of word commands in engrams that he is stupid and in a larger part from the relief of this chronic shut- down condition.

This is not theory. This is scientific fact. It is strictly test-tube. The engram contains the percept of a shutdown analyzer; when it is restimulated the engram puts that datum back into force in some degree.

Engrams, then, being received in “unconsciousness” cause a partial “unconsciousness” to exist every time they are restimulated. The person who has an engram (any aberree) need not receive new physical pain to have a new moment of partial “unconsciousness” take place. Feeling “dopey” or “sleepy” or “dull” results in part from a partially shut-down analyzer. Being “nervous” or in a rage or frightened also carries with it partially shutoff analytical power.

The hypnotist has “success” where he does because he is able, by talking to people about “sleep,” to put into restimulation some engram which contains the word sleep and shut- down analytical power. This is one of the reasons hypnotism “works.”

The whole society, however, is liable to analytical shutdown in greater or lesser degree by the restimulation of engrams.

The number of engrams a person’s reactive bank contains may not, however, establish the amount of analytical reduction to which he is subjected. A person may have engrams and they may not have been keyed-in. And if they have been keyed-in, he might not be in an environment which contains any great number of restimulators. Under these conditions his survival zone position may be high even though he is possessed of a great many engrams. And again, he might have educated himself over and above these engrams to some slight degree.

But a person who has keyed-in engrams and does exist in the area of many restimulators is liable to an enormous amount of restimulation and analytical shut-down. This is a normal condition. If a person has a large number of engrams and they are keyed-in and he lives around many restimulators his condition can vary from normal to insane. And in a single day — as in the case of a man who experiences moments of rage or a woman who drops into apathies — the condition of a person may vary from normal to insane and back to normal. We take here the word “insane” to mean utter irrationality. So there is temporary or chronic insanity.

The court of law which goes through the lugubrious process of having a man pronounced sane or insane after that man has murdered somebody is itself being irrational. Of course the man was insane when he committed the murder. What the court is asking now is whether or not the man is chronically insane. This has little bearing on the matter. If a man has

gone insane enough to murder once, he will go insane enough in the future to murder again. Chronic, then, means either a chronic cycle or a continuous condition. The law says sanity is the “ability to tell right from wrong.” When Man is subject to a mechanism (and all men are) which lets him be rational one minute and restimulated the next, none in the society, if uncleared, can be considered able to always tell right from wrong. This is completely aside from what the law means by “right” and what it means by “wrong.”

This is an example of the roller-coaster sanity curve of the aberree. All aberrees possess engrams (the normal number is probably in the hundreds per individual). Analytically people have a wide latitude of choice and they can deal even with philosophic rights and wrongs. But in aberrated persons the engram bank is always susceptible of restimulation. The “sanest” aberree of Tuesday may be a murderer on Wednesday if the exactly right situation occurs to trip the exact engram. A clear is not entirely predictable in any given situation — he has such a wide power of choice. But an aberrated person transcends all predictability for the following reasons: (1) what engrams an aberree has in his reactive engram bank none know including himself; (2) what situation will contain what restimulators is a matter of chance; and (3) what his power of choice will be with the factors in the engrams on a reactive level cannot be established.

The variety of conduct which one can evolve out of these basic mechanics is so wide that it is no wonder that Man was considered to be a rather hopeless case by some philosophies.

The cells, if the engram bank is retained on a cellular level, might be theoretically supposed to have made sure that the analyzer did not get too adventurous in this life and death matter of living. They therefore could be considered to have copied down all data contained in every moment of physical pain and emotion resulting in or contained in “unconsciousness.” Then when any data similar to this appeared in the environment they could be wary and, with a large number of restimulators in sight, they could be considered to shut down the analyzer and proceed on reaction. This has a crude safety factor. Obviously, if the organism survived through one period of “unconsciousness,” it could be theorized by the cells that the placing of the data and action in effect under circumstances which threatened to be similar would result once more in survival. What’s good enough for grandpa is good enough for me. What was good enough in the bus accident is good enough in a bus.

This moronic “thinking” is typical of the reactive mind. It is just the sort of thinking it does. It is the ultimate in conservatism. It misses the point and important data at every turn, it overloads the body with pain, it is a whirlpool of confusion. If there were just one engram per situation, maybe it would get by. But there may be ten engrams with similar data in them (an engram lock chain) and yet the data may be so contradictory that when a new emergency arises which contains the restimulators of the chain, no proper past conduct can be put forth to meet it.

Obviously the x factor is language. The cells, if this is a problem in cells (for recall, this part is theory based on data in an effort to explain what happens and a theory can be altered without altering the scientific usefulness of the facts), probably do not understand languages very well. If they did they wouldn’t evolve such “solutions.”

Take two engrams about baseball bats. In the first, the individual is hit on the head and knocked out and somebody yells, “Run! Run! Run!” In the second the individual is knocked out by the bat in the same environment and somebody yells, “Stay there! You’re safe!” Now what does he do when he hears a baseball bat or smells one or sees one or hears these words? Run or stay there! He has a similar pain for each action. What actually happens? He gets a headache. This is that thing called conflict. This is anxiety. And anxiety can become very acute indeed on a purely mechanical level when one has ninety engrams pulling him south and eighty-nine pulling him north. Does he go north or south? Or does he have a “nervous breakdown?”

The level of brilliance of the reactive mind is about the same as a phonograph. The needle gets put on the record and the record plays. The reactive mind merely puts on the needle. When it tries to select several records out and play them all at once, things happen.

By intentional construction or accident in design or by-pass in evolution — where the old, useless organ is still built — the cells managed to hide this engram bank fairly well. Man is conscious in his analytical mind. When he is “unconscious,” his analytical mind is unable to monitor the incoming data and the data is not to be found in the thing we call, by analogue, the standard banks. Therefore whatever came in passed by consciousness. And having passed by, consciousness cannot (without dianetic process) recall it, since there is no channel for recall.

The engram enters when consciousness is absent. It thereafter operates directly into the organism. Only by dianetic therapy can the analyzer come into possession of this data (and the removal of it does not depend upon the analyzer contacting it at all, despite an old belief that the “realization” of something cures it: “realize” an engram and one is in quick trouble, without dianetic technique). The engram is received by the cellular body. The reactive mind could be the very lowest level of analytical power, of course, but this does not alter the scientific fact that the engram acts as if it were a soldered-in connection to the life function regulator and the organic co-ordination and the basic level of the analytical mind itself. By “soldered-in” is meant “permanent connection.” This keying-in is the hook-up of the engram as part of the operating machinery of the body. An analytical thought process is not permanently hooked in but can be thrown in and out of circuit at the will of the analyzer. This is not true of the engram, thus the term, “soldered-in.”

The analytical mind lays down a training pattern; on a stimulus-response basis this training pattern will work smoothly and well whenever it will do the organism the most good. An engram is a training pattern, all complete in a package, “permanently” hooked into the circuits (without dianetic therapy) and it goes into operation like a training pattern without any consent whatever from the analyzer.

Influenced itself by the engram in the several ways of reduced analytical power and positive suggestion in the engram, the analytical mind is unable to discover any truly valid reason for the conduct of the organism. It therefore makes up a reason, for its job is to make sure the organism is always right. Just as the young man with the detachable coat gave forth a number of silly explanations as to why he was detaching his coat so does the analytical mind, observing the body engaged in irrational actions, including speech, for which there seems to be no accounting, justify the actions. The engram can dictate all the various processes incident to living; it can dictate beliefs, opinions, thought processes or lack of them and actions of all kinds, and can establish conditions remarkable for their complexity as well as their stupidity. An engram can dictate anything it contains and engrams can contain all the combinations of words in the entire language. And the analytical mind is forced, in the light of irrational behavior or conviction, to justify the acts and conditions of the organism, as well as its own strange blunders. This is justified thought.

There are three kinds of thought, then, of which the organism is capable: (a) analytical thought, which is rational as modified by education and viewpoint, (b) justified thought, analytical thought attempting to explain reactions, and (c) reactive thought, which is wholly in terms of everything in an engram equals everything in an engram equals all the restimulators in the environment and all things associated with those restimulators.

We have all seen somebody make a blunder and then give forth an explanation of just why that blunder had been made. This is justified thought. The blunder was made, unless out of education or viewpoint, by an engram. The analytical mind then had to justify the blunder to make sure that the body was right and that its computations were right.

Now there are two other conditions which can be caused by engrams. One is dramatization and the other is valence.

You have seen some child come forth with a tirade, a tantrum. You have seen some man go through a whole rage action. You have seen people go through a whole irrational set of actions. These are dramatizations. They come about when an engram is thoroughly restimulated, so thoroughly that its soldered-in aspect takes over the organism. It may come into circuit slightly or wholly, which is to say that there are degrees of dramatization. When it is in full parade, the engram is running off verbatim and the individual is like an actor, puppet- like, playing his dictated part. A person can be given new engrams which will make these old ones take secondary importance. (Society’s punishment complex is aimed squarely at giving anti-engram education.)

Dramatization is survival conduct — in the silly, reactive mind way of thinking — based on the premise that the organism, in a “similar” situation lived through it because these actions were present.

The woman who was knocked down and kicked would dramatize her engram, possibly, by doing and saying exactly the same things done and said to her. Her victim may be her child or another woman. It could or would be the person who gave her the engram if she were strong enough to overcome him. Just because she has this engram does not mean she will use it. She may have a hundred other engrams she can use. But when she dramatizes one, it is as if the engram, soldered-in, were taking over a puppet. As much analytical power as she has left may be devoted to altering the pattern. Therefore she can make a similar or an identical dramatization.

This aspect of dramatization is strictly “tooth and claw” survival. This is the sort of thing which made observers think that “tooth and claw” was a primary rule.

In went the engram, by-passing rationality and the standard memory banks. Now it is in the organism but the organism does not know it in the level of consciousness. It is keyed-in by a conscious level experience. Then it can be dramatized. And far from becoming milder the more it is used, the more an engram is dramatized the more solid is its hold in the circuits. Muscles, nerves, all must comply.

“Tooth and claw” survival. The cells were making sure. And here we come to valence. Valens means “powerful” in Latin. It is a good term because it is the second half of ambivalent (power in two directions) and exists in any good dictionary. It is a good term because it describes (although the dictionary did not mean it to) the intent of the organism when dramatizing an engram. Multi-valence would mean “many powerfuls.” It would embrace the phenomena of split personality, the strange differences of personality in people in one and then another situation. Valence in dianetics means the personality of one of the dramatic personnel in an engram.

In the case of the woman being knocked out and kicked, there were two valences present: herself and her husband. If another person had been present the engram would have contained three valences, providing he took any part: herself, her husband and the third person. In an engram, let us say, of a bus accident where ten people speak or act, there would be, in the “unconscious” person an engram containing eleven valences, the “unconscious” person and the ten who spoke or acted.

Now in the case of the woman beaten by her husband, the engram contains just two valences. Who won? Here is the law of “tooth and claw,” the aspect of survival in engrams. Who won? The husband. Therefore it is the husband who will be dramatized. She didn’t win. She got hurt. Aha! When these restimulators are present, the thing to do is to be the winner, the husband, to talk like him, to say what he did, to do what he did. He survived. “Be like him!” say the cells.

Hence, when the woman is restimulated into this engram by some action, let us say, on the part of her child, she dramatizes the winning valence. She knocks the child down and kicks him, tells him he is a faker, that he is no good, that he is always changing his mind.

What would happen if she dramatized herself? She would have to fall down, knocking over a chair, pass out and believe she was a faker, no good and was always changing her mind and she would have to feel the pain of all blows!

“Be yourself” is advice which falls on deaf reactive mind ears. Here is the scheme. Every time the organism gets punished by life, the analytical mind, according to the reactive mind, has erred. The reactive mind then cuts the analytical mind out of circuit in ratio to the amount of restimulation present (danger) and makes the body react as if it were the person who won in the earlier but similar situation where the organism was hurt.

Now what happens if “society” or the husband or some exterior force told this woman, who is dramatizing this engram, that she must face reality? That’s impossible. Reality equals being herself, and herself gets hurt. What if some exterior force breaks the dramatization? That is to say, if society objects to the dramatization and refuses to let her kick and yell and shout! The engram is still soldered-in. The reactive mind is forcing her to be the winning valence. Now she can’t be. As punishment, the reactive mind, the closer she slides in to being herself, approximates the conditions of the other valence in the engram. After all, that valence didn’t die. And the pain of the blows turns on and she thinks she is a faker, that she is no good and that she always changes her mind. In other words, she is in the losing valence. Consistent breaking of dramatization will make a person ill just as certainly as there are gloomy days.

A person accumulates, with the engrams, half a hundred valences before he is ten. Which were the winning valences? You will find him using them every time an engram is kicked into restimulation. Multiple personality? Two persons? Make it fifty to a hundred. In dianetics you can see valences turn on and off in people and change with a rapidity which would be awesome to a quick-change artist.

Observe these complexities of conduct, of behavior. If one set out to resolve the problem of aberration by a system of cataloguing everything he observed and were unaware of the basic source, he would end up with as many separate insanities, neuroses, psychoses, compulsions, repressions, obsessions and disabilities as there are combinations of words in the English language. Discovery of fundamentals by classification is never good research. And the unlimited complexities possible from the engrams (and the severest, most thoroughly controlled experiments discovered these engrams to be capable of just such behavior as is listed here) is the whole catalogue of aberrated human conduct.

There are a few other basic, fundamental things that engrams do. These will be covered under their own headings: parasite circuits, emotional impaction and psycho-somatic ills. With the few fundamentals listed here, the problem of aberration can be resolved. These fundamentals are simple, they have given rise to as much trouble as individuals and societies have experienced. The institutions for the insane, the prisons for the criminals, the armaments accumulated by nations, yes and even the dust which was a civilization of yesterday exist because these fundamentals were not understood.

The cells evolved into an organism and in the evolution created what was once a necessary condition of mind. Man has grown up to a point where he creates now the means of overcoming that evolutionary blunder. Examination of the clear proves he no longer needs it. He is now in a position where he can take an artificial evolutionary step on his own. The bridge has been built across the canyon.