DMSH 1950 Book 2 Chapter 2

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

The Reactive Mind

It is fairly well accepted in these times that life in all forms evolved from the basic building blocks, the virus and the cell. Its only relevance to dianetics is that such a proposition works — and actually that is all we ask of dianetics. There is no point to writing here a past tome on biology and evolution. We can add some chapters to those things, but Charles Darwin did his job well, and the fundamental principles of evolution can be found in his and other works.

The proposition on which dianetics was originally entered was evolution. It was postulated that the cells themselves had the urge to survive and that that urge was common to life. It was further postulated that organisms — individuals — were constructed of cells and were in fact aggregations of colonies of cells.

As went the building block, so went the organism. In the finite realms and for any of our purposes, Man could be considered to be a colonial aggregation of cells and it could be assumed that his purpose was identical with the purpose of his building blocks.

The cell is a unit of life which is seeking to survive and only to Survive.

Man is a structure of cells which are asking to survive, and only to survive.

Man’s mind is the command post of operation and is constructed to resolve problems and pose problems related to survival and only to survival.

The action of survival, if optimum, would lead to survival.

The optimum survival conduct pattern was formulated and then studied for exceptions, and there were no exceptions found.

The survival conduct pattern was discovered to be far from sterile and barren but was full of rich and most pleasant activity.

None of these postulates outlawed any concept concerning the human soul or divine or creative imagination. It was understood perfectly that this was a study in the finite universe only and that spheres and realms of thought and action might very well exist above this finite sphere. But it was also discovered that none of these factors were needed to resolve the entire problem of aberration and irrational conduct.

The human mind was discovered to have been most grossly maligned, for it was found to be possessed of capabilities far in excess of any heretofore imagined much less tested.

Basic human character was found to have been pilloried because Man had not been able to distinguish between irrational conduct derived from poor data and irrational conduct derived from another, far more vicious source.

If there ever was a devil, he designed the reactive mind.

This functional mechanism managed to bury itself from view so thoroughly that only inductive philosophy, traveling from effect back to cause, served to uncover it. The detective work which was invested in the location of this arch criminal of the human psyche occupied many years. Its identity can now be certified by any technician in any clinic or in any group of men. Two hundred and seventy-three individuals have been examined and treated, representing all the various types of inorganic mental illness and the many varieties of psycho-somatic ills.

In each one this reactive mind was found operating, its principles unvaried. This is a long series of cases and will soon become longer.

The reactive mind is possessed by everyone. No human being examined anywhere was discovered to be without one or without aberrative content in his engram bank, the reservoir of data which serves the reactive mind.

What does this mind do? It shuts off hearing recall. It places vocal circuits in the mind. It makes people tone-deaf. It makes people stutter. It does anything and everything that can be found in any list of mental ills: psychoses, neuroses, compulsions, repressions...

What can it do? It can give a man arthritis, bursitis, asthma, allergies, sinusitis, coronary trouble, high blood pressure, and so on down the whole catalogue of psycho-somatic ills, adding a few more which were never specifically classified as psycho-somatic, such as the common cold.

And it is the only thing in the human being which can produce these effects. It is the thing which uniformly brings them about.

This is the mind which made Socrates think he had a “demon” that gave him answers. This is the mind that made Caligula appoint his horse to a government post. This is the mind which made Caesar cut the right hands from thousands of Gauls, which made Napoleon reduce the height of Frenchmen one inch.

This is the mind which keeps war a thing of alarm, which makes politics irrational, which makes superior officers snarl, which makes children cry in fear of the dark. This is the mind which makes a man suppress his hopes, which holds his apathies, which gives him irresolution when he should act, and kills him before he has begun to live.

If there ever was a devil, he invented it.

Discharge the content of this mind’s bank and the arthritis vanishes, myopia gets better, heart illness decreases, asthma disappears, stomachs function properly, and the whole catalogue of ills goes away and stays away.

Discharge the reactive engram bank and the schizophrenic faces reality at last, the manic-depressive sets forth to accomplish things, the neurotic stops clinging to books which tell him how much he needs his neuroses and begins to live, the woman stops snapping at her children and the dipsomaniac can drink when he likes and stop.

These are scientific facts. They compare invariably with observed experience.

The reactive mind is the entire source of aberration. It can be proved and has been repeatedly proven that there is no other, for when that engram bank is discharged, all undesirable symptoms vanish and a man begins to operate on his optimum pattern.

If one were looking for something like demons in a human mind — such as those one observes in some inmates of madhouses — he could find them easily enough. Only they are not demons. They are by-pass circuits from the engram bank. What prayer and exhortations have been used against these by-pass circuits!

If one did not believe in demons, if one supposed that Man were good after all (as a postulate, of course), how would the evil get into him? What would be the source of these insane rages? What would be the source of his slips of the tongue? How would he come to know irrational fear?

Why is it that one does not like his boss although his boss has always been pleasant? Why is it that suicides smash their bodies to bits?

Why does Man behave destructively, irrationally, fighting wars, killing, ruining whole sections of Mankind?

What is the source of all neuroses, psychoses, insanities?

Let us return to a brief examination of the analytical mind. Let us examine its memory banks. Here we find all the sense concepts on file. Or so it appears at first glance. Let us take another look, a look at the time factor. There is a time sense about these analytical mind banks. It is very accurate, as though the organism were equipped with a fine watch. But there is something wrong here about time — it has gaps in it! There are moments when nothing seems to be filed in these standard banks. These are gaps which take place during moments of “unconsciousness,” that state of being caused by anaesthesia, drugs, injury or shock.

This is the only data missing from a standard bank. If in hypnotic trance you examine a patient’s memory of an operation these incidents are the only periods in the banks you will not find. You can find these if you care to look and don’t care what happens to your patient — of which more later. But the point is that there is something missing which has always been considered by one and all in any age never to have been recorded.

One and all in every age have never been able to put a finger on insanity either. Are these two data in agreement and do they have relationship? They definitely do.

There are two things which appear to be — but are not — recorded in the standard banks: painful emotion and physical pain.

How would you go about the building of a sensitive machine upon which the life and death affairs of an organism depended, which was to be the chief tool of an individual? Would you leave its delicate circuits prey to every overload or would you install a fuse system? If a delicate instrument is in circuit with a power line, it is protected by several sets of fuses. Any computer would be so safeguarded.

It happens that there is some small evidence to support the electrical theory of the nervous system. In pain there are very heavy overcharges in the nerves. It may well have been — and elsewhere some dianetic computations have been made about this — that the brain is the absorber for overcharges of power resulting from injury, the power itself being generated by the injured cells in the area of injury. That is theory and has no place here save to serve as an example. We are dealing now only with scientific fact.

The action of the analytical mind during a moment of intense pain is suspended. In fact, the analytical mind behaves just as though it were an organ to which vital supply was shut off whenever shock is present.

As an example, a man struck in the side by a car is knocked “unconscious” and on regaining “consciousness” has no record of the period when he was “knocked out.” This would be a non-survival circumstance. It means that there would be no volition on the part of anyone who was injured, and this is the time when the organism most requires volition. So this is non-survival, if the whole mind cuts out whenever pain appears. Would an organism with more than a billion years of biological engineering behind it leave a problem like this unsolved?

Indeed, the organism solved the problem. Maybe the problem is very difficult, biologically, and maybe the solution is not very good, but large provision has been made for those moments when the organism is “unconscious.”

The answer to the problem of making the organism react in moments of “unconsciousness” or near “unconsciousness” is also the answer to insanity and psycho- somatic illnesses and all the strange mental quirks to which people are liable and which gave rise to that fable “it is human to err.”

Clinical tests prove these statements to be scientific facts:

1. The mind records on some level continuously during the entire life of the organism.
2. All recordings of the lifetime are available.
3. “Unconsciousness,” in which the mind is oblivious of its surroundings, is possible only in death and does not exist as total amnesia in life.
4. All mental and physical derangements of a psychic nature come about from moments of “unconsciousness.”
5. Such moments can be reached and drained of charge with the result of returning the mind to optimum operating condition. “Unconsciousness” is the single source of aberration. There is no such action as

“mental conditioning” except on a conscious training level (where it exists only with the consent of the person).

If you care to make the experiment you can take a man, render him “unconscious,” hurt him and give him information. By dianetic technique, no matter what information you gave him, it can be recovered. This experiment should not be carelessly conducted because you might also render him insane.

A pale shade of this operation can be obtained by hypnosis, either by its usual techniques or drugs. By installing “positive suggestions” in a subject, he can be made to act like an insane person. This test is not a new one. It has been well known that compulsions or repressions can be so introduced into the psyche. The ancient Greek was quite familiar with it and used it to produce various delusions.

There is what is known as a “post-hypnotic suggestion.” An understanding of this can assist an understanding of the basic mechanism of insanity. The actions under both circumstances are not identical, but they are similar enough in their essence.

A man is placed in a hypnotic trance by standard hypnotic technique or some hypnotic drug. The operator then may say to him, “When you awaken there is something you must do. Whenever I touch my tie you will remove your coat. When I let go my tie, you will put on your coat. Now you will forget that I have told you to do this.”

The subject is then awakened. He is not consciously aware of the command. If told he had been given an order while “asleep,” he would resist the idea or shrug but he would not know. The operator then touches his tie. The subject may make some remark about its being too warm and so take his coat off. The operator then releases his tie. The subject may remark that he is now cold and will put his coat back on. The operator then touches his tie. The subject may say that his coat has been to the tailor’s and with much conversation finally explain why he is taking it off, perhaps to see if the back seam had been sewn properly. The operator then releases his tie and the subject says he is satisfied with the tailor and so replaces his coat. The operator may touch his tie many times and each time receive action on the part of the subject.

At last the subject may become aware, from the expressions on people’s faces, that something is wrong. He will not know what is wrong. He will not even know that the touching of the tie is the signal which makes him take off his coat. He will begin to grow uncomfortable. He may find fault with the operator’s appearance and begin to criticize his clothing. He still does not know the tie is a signal. He will still react and remain in ignorance that there is some strange reason he must take off his coat — all he knows is that he is uncomfortable with his coat on whenever the tie is touched, uncomfortable with his coat off every time the tie is released.

These various actions are very important to an understanding of the reactive mind. Hypnotism is a laboratory tool. It is not used to any extent in dianetic therapy, but it has served as a means of examining minds and getting their reactions. Hypnotism is a wild variable. A few people can be hypnotized, many cannot be. Hypnotic suggestions will sometimes “take” and sometimes they won’t.

Sometimes they make persons well and sometimes they make them ill — the same suggestion reacting differently in different people. An engineer knows how to make use of a wild variable. There is something which makes it unpredictable. Finding out the basic reason hypnotism was a variable helped to discover the source of insanity. And understanding the mechanism of the post-hypnotic suggestion can aid an understanding of aberration.

No matter how foolish a suggestion is given to a subject under hypnosis, he will carry it out one way or another. He can be told to remove his shoes or call someone at ten the following day or to eat peas for breakfast and he will. These are direct orders and he will comply with them. He can be told that his hats do not fit him and he will believe that they do not. Any suggestion will operate within his mind unbeknownst to his higher levels of awareness.

Very complex suggestions can be given. One such would be to the effect that he was unable to utter the word “I.” He would omit it from his conversation, using remarkable makeshifts without being “aware” that he was having to avoid the word. Or he could be told that he must never look at his hands and he will not. These are repressions. Given to the subject when drugged or in a hypnotic sleep, these suggestions operate when he is awake. And they will continue to operate until released by the hypnotic operator.

He can be told that he has an urge to sneeze every time he hears the word “rug” and that he will sneeze when it is spoken. He can be told that he must jump two feet in the air every time he sees a cat and he will jump. And he will do these things after he has been awakened. These are compulsions.

He can be told that he will think very sexual thoughts about a certain girl but that when he thinks them he will feel his nose itch. He can be told that he has a continual urge to lie down and sleep and that every time he lies down he will feel that he cannot sleep. He will experience these things. These are neuroses.

In further experiments he can be told, when he is in his hypnotic “sleep,” that he is the president of the country and that the secret service agents are trying to murder him. Or he can be told that he is being fed poison in every restaurant in which he attempts to eat. These are psychoses.

He can be informed that he is really another person and that he owns a yacht and answers to the name of “Sir Reginald.” Or he can be told that he is a thief, that he has a prison record, and that the police are looking for him. These would be schizophrenic and paranoid- schizophrenic insanities respectively.

The operator can inform the subject that the subject is the most wonderful person on earth and that everybody thinks so. Or that the subject is the object of adoration of all women. This would be a manic-type insanity.

He can be convinced, while hypnotized, that when he wakes he will feel so terrible that he will hope for nothing but death. This would be the depressive-type insanity.

He can be told that all he can think about is how sick he is and that every malady of which he reads becomes his. This would make him react like a hypochondriac.

Thus we could go down the catalogue of mental ills and by concocting positive suggestions to create the state of mind, we could bring about, in the awakened subject, a semblance to every insanity.

Understood that these are semblances. They are similar to insanity in that the subject would act like an insane person. He would not be an insane person. The moment the suggestion is relieved — the subject being informed that it was a suggestion — the aberration (and all these insanities, etc., are grouped under the heading of aberration) theoretically vanishes.* * An injunction here. These are tests. They have been made on people who could be hypnotized and people who could not be but who were drugged. They brought forth valuable data for dianetics. They can be duplicated only when you know dianetics unless you want to actually drive somebody insane by accident. For these suggestions do not always vanish. Hypnotism is a wild variable. It is dangerous and belongs in the parlor in the same way you would want an atom bomb there.

The duplication of aberrations of all classes and kinds in subjects who have been hypnotized or drugged has demonstrated that there is some portion of the mind which is not in contact with the consciousness but which contains data.

It was the search for this portion of the mind which led to the resolution of the problem of insanity, psycho-somatic ills and other aberrations. It was not approached through hypnotism, and hypnotism is just another tool, a tool which is of only occasional use in the practice of dianetics and is, indeed, not needed at all.

Here we have an individual who is acting sanely, who is given a positive suggestion and who then temporarily acts insanely. His sanity is restored by the release of the suggestion into his consciousness, at which moment it loses its force upon him. But this is only a semblance of the mechanism involved. The actual insanity, one not laid now by some hypnotist, does not need to emerge into the consciousness to be released. There is this difference and others between hypnotism and the actual source of aberration; but hypnotism is a demonstration of its working parts.

Review the first example of the positive suggestion. The subject was “unconscious,” which is to say, he was not in possession of complete awareness or self-determinism. He was given something he must do and the something was hidden from his consciousness. The operator gave him a signal. When the signal occurred, the subject performed an act. The subject gave reasons for the act which were not the real reasons for it. The subject found fault with the operator and the operator’s clothing but did not see that it was the tie which signaled the action. The suggestion was released and the subject no longer felt a compulsion to perform the act.

These are the parts of aberration. Once one knows exactly what parts of what are aberrations, the whole problem is very simple. It seems incredible at first glance that the source could have remained so thoroughly hidden for so many thousands of years of research. But at, second glance, it becomes a wonder that the source was ever discovered. For it is hidden cunningly and well.

“Unconsciousness” of the non-hypnotic variety is a little more rugged. It takes more than a few passes of the hand to cause “unconsciousness” of the insanity-producing variety.

The shock of accidents, the anaesthetics used for operations, the pain of injuries and the deliriums of illness are the principal sources of what we call “unconsciousness.”

The mechanism, in our analogue of the mind, is very simple. In comes a destructive wave of physical pain or a pervading poison such as ether and out go some or all of the fuses of the analytical mind. When it goes out, so go what we know as the standard memory banks.

The periods of “unconsciousness” are blanks in the standard memory banks. These missing periods make up what dianetics calls the reactive mind bank.

The times when the analytical mind is in full operation plus the times when the reactive mind is in operation are a continuous line of consecutive recording for the entire period of life.

During the periods when the analytical mind is cut out of circuit in full or in part, the reactive mind cuts in in full or in part. In other words, if the analytical mind is unfused so that it is half out of circuit, the reactive mind is half in circuit. No such sharp percentages are actually possible, but this is to give an approximation.

When the individual is “unconscious” in full or in part, the reactive mind is cut in in full or in part. When he is fully conscious, his analytical mind is fully in command of the organism. When his consciousness is reduced, the reactive mind is cut into the circuit just that much.

The moments which contain “unconsciousness” in the individual are contra-survival moments, by and large. Therefore it is vital that something take over so that the individual can go through motions to save the whole organism. The fighter who fights half out on his feet, the burned man who drags himself out of the fire — these are cases when the reactive mind is valuable.

The reactive mind is very rugged. It would have to be in order to stand up to the pain waves which knock out other sentience in the body. It is not very refined. But it is most awesomely accurate. It possesses a low order of computing ability, an order which is sub- moron, but one would expect a low order of ability from a mind which stays in circuit when the body is being crushed or fried.

The reactive bank does not store memories as we think of them. It stores engrams. * These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full “unconsciousness.” They are just as accurate as any other recording in the body. But they have their own force. They are like phonograph records or motion pictures, if these contained all perceptions of sight, sound, smell, taste, organic sensation, etc.

The difference between an engram and a memory, however, is quite distinct. An engram can be permanently fused into any and all body circuits and behaves like an entity.

In all laboratory tests on these engrams they were found to possess “inexhaustible” sources of power to command the body. No matter how many times one was reactivated in an individual, it was still powerful. Indeed, it became even more able to exert its power in proportion to its reactivation.

The only thing which could even begin to shake these engrams was the technique which developed into dianetic therapy, which will be covered in full in the third section of this volume.

This is an example of an engram: A woman is knocked down by a blow. She is rendered “unconscious.” She is kicked and told she is a faker, that she is no good, that she is always changing her mind. A chair is overturned in the process. A faucet is running in the kitchen. A car is passing in the street outside. The engram contains a running record of all these perceptions: sight, sound, tactile, taste, smell, organic sensation, kinetic sense, joint position, thirst record, etc. The engram would consist of the whole statement made to her when she was “unconscious”: the voice tones and emotion in the voice, the sound and feel of the original and later blows, the tactile of the floor, the feel and sound of the chair overturning, the organic sensation of the blow, perhaps the taste of blood in her mouth or any other taste present there, the smell of the person attacking her and the smells in the room, the sound of the passing car’s motor and tires, etc.

These would all be considered something on the order of a “positive suggestion.” But there is something else here which is new, something which is not in the standard banks except by context: pain and painful emotion.

These things are what make the difference between the standard banks and the reactive engram banks: physical pain and painful emotion. Physical pain and painful emotion are the difference between an engram, which is the cause of aberration, all aberration, and a memory.* * In dianetics, a memory is considered to be any concept of perceptions stored in the standard memory banks which is potentially recallable by the “I.” A scene beheld by the eyes and perceived by the other senses becomes a record in the standard memory banks and later may be recalled by “I” for reference.

We all have heard that bad experience is helpful to living and that without bad experience, man never learns. This may be very, very true. But it doesn’t embrace the engram. That isn’t experience. That is commanded action.

Perhaps before Man had a large vocabulary, these engrams were of some use to him. They were survival in ways which will be developed later. But when Man acquired a fine, homonymic (words that sound the same but mean different things) language, and indeed, when he acquired any language, these engrams were much more a liability than a help. And now with Man well evolved, these engrams do not protect him at all but make him mad, inefficient and ill.

The proof of any assertion lies in its applicability. When these engrams are deleted from the reactive mind bank, rationality and efficiency are enormously heightened, health is greatly increased and the individual computes rationally on the survival conduct pattern, which is to say, he enjoys himself and the society of those around him and is constructive and creative. He is destructive only when something actually threatens the sphere of his dynamics.

These engrams, then, are entirely negative in value in this stage of Man’s development. When he was nearer the level of his animal cousins (who have, all of them, reactive minds of this same kind), he might have had use for the data. But language and his changed existence make any engram a distinct liability, and no engram has any constructive value.

The reactive mind was provided to secure survival. It still pretends to act in that fashion. But its wild errors now lead only in the other direction.

There are actually three kinds of engrams, all of them aberrative: First is the contra- survival engram. This contains physical pain, painful emotion, all other perceptions and menace to the organism. A child knocked out by a rapist and abused receives this type of engram. The contra-survival engram contains apparent or actual antagonism to the organism.

The second engram type is the pro-survival engram. A child who has been abused is ill. He is told, while he is partially or wholly “unconscious,” that he will be taken care of, that he is dearly loved, etc. This engram is not taken as contra-survival but pro-survival. It seems to be in favor of survival. Of the two this last is the most aberrative since it is reinforced by the law of affinity which is always more powerful than fear. Hypnotism preys on this characteristic of the reactive mind, being a sympathetic address to an artificially unconscious subject. Hypnotism is as limited as it is because it does not contain, as a factor, physical pain, and painful emotion: things which keep an engram out of sight and moored below the level of “consciousness.”

The third is the painful emotion engram which is similar to the other engrams. It is caused by the shock of sudden loss such as the death of a loved one.

The reactive mind bank is composed exclusively of these engrams. The reactive mind thinks exclusively with these engrams. And it “thinks” with them in a way which would make

Korzybski swear, for it thinks in terms of full identification, which is to say identities, one thing identical to another.

If the analytical mind did a computation on apples and worms, it could be stated, probably, as follows: some apples have worms in them, other don’t; when biting an apple one occasionally finds a worm unless the apple has been sprayed properly; worms in apples leaves holes.

The reactive mind, however, doing a computation on apples and worms as contained in its engram bank, would calculate as follows: apples are worms are bites are holes in apples are holes in anything are apples and always are worms are apples are bites, etc.

The analytical mind’s computations might embrace the most staggering summations of calculus, the shifty turns of symbolic logic, the computations requisite to bridge-building or dress-making. Any mathematical equation ever seen came from the analytical mind and might be used by the analytical mind in resolving the most routine problems.

But not the reactive mind! That’s so beautifully, wonderfully simple that it can be stated, in operation, to have just one equation: A = A = A = A = A.

Start any computation with the reactive mind. Start it with the data it contains, of course. Any datum is just the same to it as any other datum in the same experience.

An analytical computation done on the woman being kicked, as mentioned, would be that women get themselves into situations sometimes when they get kicked and hurt and men have been known to kick and hurt women.

A reactive mind computation about his engram, as an engram, would be: the pain of the kick equals the pain of the blow equals the overturning chair equals the passing car equals the faucet equals the fact that she is a faker equals the fact that she is no good equals the fact that she changes her mind equals the voice tones of the man equals the emotion equals a faker equals a faucet running equals the pain of the kick equals organic sensation in the area of the kick equals the overturning chair equals changing one’s mind equals.... But why continue? Every single perception in this engram equals every other perception in this engram. What? That’s crazy? Precisely!

Let us further examine our post-hypnotic positive suggestion of the touched tie and the removed coat. In this we have the visible factors of how the reactive mind operates.

This post-hypnotic suggestion needs only an emotional charge and physical pain to make it a dangerous engram. Actually it is an engram of a sort. It is laid in by sympathy between the operator and subject, which would make it a sympathy engram — pro-survival.

Now we know that the operator had only to touch his tie to make the awakened subject remove his coat. The subject did not know what it was which caused him to remove his coat and found all manner of explanation for the action, none of which was the right one. The engram, the post-hypnotic suggestion in this case, was actually placed in the reactive mind bank. It was below the level of consciousness, it was compulsion springing from below the level of consciousness. And it worked upon the muscles to make the subject remove his coat. It was data fused into the circuits of the body below the command level of the analytical mind and operated not only upon the body but also upon the analytical mind itself.

If this subject took off his coat every time he saw somebody touch a necktie, society would account him slightly mad. And yet there was no power of consent about this. If he had attempted to thwart the operator by refusing to remove the coat, the subject would have experienced great discomfort of one sort or another.

Let us now take an example of the reactive mind’s processes in a lower echelon of life: a fish swims into the shallows where the water is brackish, yellow, and tastes of iron. He has just taken a mouthful of shrimp when a bigger fish rushes at him and knocks against his tail.

The small fish manages to get away but he has been physically hurt. Having negligible analytical powers, the small fish depends upon reaction for much of his choice of activity.

Now he heals his tail and goes on about his affairs. But one day he is attacked by a larger fish and gets his tail bumped. This time he is not seriously hurt, merely bumped. But something has happened. Something within him considers that in his choice of action he is now being careless. Here is a second injury in the same area.

The computation on the fish reactive level was: shallows equals brackish equals yellow equals iron taste equals pain in tail equals shrimp in mouth, and any one of these equals any other.

The bump in the tail on the second occasion keyed-in the engram. It demonstrated to the organism that something like the first accident (identity thought) could happen again. Therefore, beware!

The small fish, after this, swims into brackish water. This makes him slightly “nervous.” But he goes on swimming and finds himself in yellow and brackish water. And still he does not turn back. He begins to get a small pain in his tail. But he keeps on swimming. Suddenly he gets a taste of iron and the pain in his tail turns on heavily. And away he goes like a flash. No fish was after him. There were shrimp to be had there. But away he went anyway. Dangerous place! And if he had not turned away, he would have really gotten himself a pain in the tail.

The mechanism is survival activity of a sort. In a fish it may serve a purpose. But in a man, who takes off a coat every time somebody touches a tie, the survival mechanism has long outlived its time. But it is there!

Let us further investigate our young man and the coat. The signal for the coat removal was very precise. The operator touched his tie. This is equivalent to any or all of the perceptions the fish received and which made the fish turn back. The touch of the tie could have been a dozen things. Any one of the dozen might have signaled the removal of the coat.

In the case of the woman who was knocked out and kicked, any perception in the engram she received has some quality of restimulation. Running water from a faucet might not have affected her greatly. But water running from a faucet plus a passing car might have begun some slight reactivation of the engram, a vague discomfort in the areas where she was struck and kicked, not enough yet to cause her real pain but there all the same. To the running water and the passing car we add the sharp falling of a chair and she experiences a shock of mild proportion. Add now the smell and voice of the man who kicked her and the pain begins to grow. The mechanism is telling her that she is in dangerous quarters, that she should leave. But she is not a fish, she is a highly sentient being, to our knowledge the most complex mental structure so far evolved on Earth, organism of the species, Man. There are many other factors in the problem than this one engram. She stays. The pains in the areas where she was abused become a predisposition to illness or are chronic illness in themselves, minor it is true in the case of this one incident, but illness just the same. Her affinity with the man who beat her may be so high that the analytical level, being assisted by a normally high general tone, may counter against these pains. But if that level is low, without much to assist it, then the pains can become major.

The fish that was so struck and received an engram did not disavow shrimp. Shrimp might have made him a little less enthusiastic afterwards, but the survival potential of shrimp- eating made shrimp equal far more pleasure than it did pain.

A pleasant and hopeful life in general — and never think we intimate that the woman stays for food alone whatever the wits say about women — has a high survival potential, and that can overcome a very great deal of pain. As the survival potential diminishes, however, the level of pain (Zone 0 and Zone 1) is more closely approached and such an engram could begin to be reactivated severely.

There is another factor here, however, besides pain — in fact, several more factors. If the young man with the detachable coat had been given one of the neurotic positive suggestions as listed a few pages back, he would have reacted to it on signal.

The engram this woman has received contains a neurotic positive suggestion quite in addition to the general restimulators such as the faucet and the car and the overturning chair. She has been told that she is a faker, that she is no good, and that she is always changing her mind. When the engram is restimulated in one of the great many ways possible, she has a “feeling” that she is no good, a faker, and she will change her mind.

There are several cases to hand which peculiarly illustrate the sadness of this. One case in particular which was cleared had been beaten severely many times and told a similar thing each time, all derogatory. The content inferred that she was very loose morally and would cohabit with anyone. She was brought in as a case by her father — she had since been divorced — who complained that she was very loose morally and had cohabited with several men in as many weeks. She herself admitted that she was, she could not see how it could be and it worried her, but she just “could not seem to help it.” Examination of the engrams in her reactive mind bank brought forth a long series of beatings with this content. Because this was a matter of research, not treatment — although that was given — her former husband was contacted. An examination, independent of her knowledge, demonstrated his rage dramatization to contain these very words. He had beaten his wife into being a morally loose woman because he was afraid of morally loose women.

All cases examined in all this research were checked, the patient’s engrams against the engrams in the donor. The contents of the incidents were verified wherever possible and were found uniformly to agree. Every safeguard was made to prevent any other method of communication between donor and patient. Everything found in the “unconscious” periods of every patient, when checked against other source, was found to be exact.

The analogy between hypnotism and aberration bears out well. Hypnotism plants by positive suggestion one or another form of insanity. It is usually a temporary planting, but sometimes the hypnotic suggestion will not “lift” or remove in a way desirable to the hypnotist. The danger of running experiments with hypnosis. on uncleared patients is found in another mechanism of the reactive kind.

When an engram such as our example above exists, the woman obviously was “unconscious” at the time she received the engram. She had no standard bank memory (record) of the incident beyond the knowledge that she had been knocked out by the man. The engram was not, then, an experience as we understand the word. It could work from below to aberrate her thinking processes, it could give her strange pains — which she attributed to something else — in the areas injured. But it was not known to her.

The key-in was necessary to activate the engram. But what, precisely, could key it in? At some later time when she was tired the man threatened to strike her again and called her names. This was conscious level experience. It was found to be “mentally painful” by her. And it was “mentally painful” only because there was real, live, physical pain unseen under it, which had been “keyed-in” by the conscious experience. The second experience was a lock. It was a memory but it had a new kind of action in the standard banks. It had too much power and it gained that power from a past physical blow. The reactive mind is not too careful about its time clock. It can’t tell one year old from ninety, in fact, when a key-in begins. The actual engram moved up under the standard bank.

She thinks she is worried about what he said in the lock experience. She is actually worried about the engram. In this way memories become “painful.” But pain doesn’t store in the standard banks. There is no place in that bank for pain. None. There is a place for the concept of pain and these concepts of what is painful are good enough to keep the sentient organism called Man away from all the pain he believes is actually dangerous. In a clear there are no pain-inducing memories because there is no physical pain record left to ruin the machinery from the reactive mind bank.

The young man with the detachable coat did not know what was worrying him or what made him do what he did. The person with an engram does not know what is worrying him. He thinks it is the lock and the lock may be a very long way removed from anything resembling the engram. The lock may have similar perceptic content. But it may be on another subject entirely.

It is not very complicated to undersand what these engrams do. They are simply moments of physical pain strong enough to throw part or all the analytical machinery out of circuit; they are antagonism to the survival of the organism or pretended sympathy to the organism’s survival. That is the entire definition. Great or little “unconsciousness,” physical pain, perceptic content and contra-survival or pro-survival data. They are handled by the reactive mind, which thinks exclusively in identities of everything equals everything. And they enforce their commands upon the organism by wielding the whip of physical pain. If the organism does not do exactly as they say (and believe any clear, that’s impossible!), the physical pain turns on. They steer a person like a keeper steers a tiger — and they can make a tiger out of a man in the process without much trouble — and give him mange into the bargain.

If man had not invented language, or, as will be demonstrated, if his languages were a little less homonymic and more specific with their personal pronouns, engrams would still be survival data and the mechanism would work. But Man has outgrown their use. He chose between language and potential madness and for the vast benefits of the former he received the curse of the latter.

The engram is the single and sole source of aberration and psycho-somatic illness.

An enormous quantity of data has been sifted. Not one single exception has been found. In “normal people,” in the neurotic and insane, the removal of these engrams wholly or in part, without other therapy, has uniformly brought about a state greatly superior to the current norm. No need was found for any theory or therapy other than those given in this book for the treatment of all psychic or psycho-somatic ills.