Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (5 page)

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An entirely new recall process which was inherent in the mind but which had not been noticed came to light in the process of observing clears and aberrees. This recall process is possible in only a small proportion of aberrees in its fullest sense. It is standard, however, in a clear. Naturally, no intimation is made here that the scholars of past ages have been unobservant. We are dealing here with an entirely new and hitherto non-existent object of inspection, the clear. What a clear can do easily, quite a few people have, from time to time, been partially able to do in the past.

An inherent, not a taught, ability of the remembering mechanisms of the mind can be termed, as a technical word of dianetics, returning. It is used in its dictionary sense, with the addition of the fact that the mind has it as a normal remembering function, as follows: the person can “send” a portion of his mind to a past period on either a mental or combined mental and physical basis and can re-experience incidents which have taken place in his past in the same fashion and with the same sensations as before. Once upon a time an art known as hypnotism used what was called “regression” on hypnotized subjects, the hypnotist sending the subject back, in one of two ways, to incidents in his past. This was done with trance techniques, drugs and considerable technology.

The hypnotic subject could be sent back to a moment “entirely” so that he gave every appearance of being the age to which he was returned with only the apparent faculties and recollections he had at that moment: this was called “revivification” (re-living). “Regression”

was a technique by which part of the individual’s self remained in the present and part went back to the past. These abilities of the mind were supposed native only in hypnotism and were used only in hypnotic technique. The art is very old, tracing back some thousands of years and existing today in Asia as it has existed, apparently, from the dawn of time.

Returning is substituted for “regression” here because it is not a comparable thing and because “regression,” as a word, has some bad meanings which would interrupt its use.

Reliving is substituted for “revivification” in dianetics because, in dianetics, the principles of hypnotism can be found explained and hypnotism is not used in dianetic therapy, as will be explained later.

The mind, then, has another ability to remember. Part of the mind can “return” even when a person is wide awake and re-experience past incidents in full. If you want to test this, try it on several people until one is discovered who does it easily. Wide awake he can “return”

to moments in his past. Until asked to do so he probably will not know he has such an ability.

If he had it, he probably thought everybody could do it (the type of supposition which has kept so much of this data from coming to light before). He can go back to a time when he was swimming and swim with full recall of hearing, sight, taste, smell, organic sensation, tactile, etc.

A “learned” gentleman once spent some hours demonstrating to a gathering that the recall of a smell as a sensation, for instance, was quite impossible since “neurology had proven that the olfactory nerves were not connected to the thalamus.” Two people in the gathering discovered this ability to return and despite this evidence, the learned gentleman continued the dispute that olfactory recall was impossible. A check amongst the gathering on this faculty, independent of returning, brought forth the fact that one-half of those present remembered smell by smelling it again.

Returning is the full performance of imagery recall. The entire memory is able to make the organ areas re-sense the stimuli in a past incident. Partial recall is common, not common enough to be normal, but certainly common enough to have merited considerable study. For it again is a wide variable.

Perception of the present would be one method of facing reality. But if one cannot face the reality of the past then, in some part, he is not facing some portion of reality. And if it is ageed that facing reality is desirable, then one would have to face yesterday’s reality as well if he were to be considered entirely “sane” by contemporary definition. To “face yesterday”

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requires a certain condition of recall to be available. One would have to be able to remember.

But how many ways are there of remembering?

First there is the return. That is new. It gives the advantage of examining the moving pictures and other sense perceptions recorded at the time of the event with all senses present.

He can also return to his past conclusions and imaginings. It is of considerable aid in learning, in research, in ordinary living to be able to be again at the place where the data desired was first inspected.

Then there are the more usual recalls. Optimum recall is by the return method of single or multiple senses, the individual himself remaining in present time. In other words, some people, when they think of a rose, see one, smell one, feel one. They see in full color, vividly

-- with the “mind’s eye” to use an old colloquialism. They smell it vividly. And they can feel it even to the thorns. They are thinking about roses by actually recalling a rose.

These people, thinking about a ship, would see a specific ship, feel the motion of her if they thought of being aboard her, smell the pine-tar or even less savory odors and hear whatever sounds there were about her. They would see the ship in full color motion and hear it in full tone audio.

These faculties vary widely in the aberree. Some, when told to think of a rose, can merely visualize one. Some can smell one but not see it. Some see it without color or in very pale color. When told to think of a ship some aberrees only see a flat, colorless, still picture such as a painting of a ship or the photograph of one. Some perceive a vessel in motion without color but with sound. Some hear the sound of a ship but fail to see any picture whatever. Some merely think of a ship as a concept that ships exist and that they know about them and fail to see, feel, hear, smell or otherwise sense anything on a recall basis.

Some past observers have called this “imagery” but the term is so inapplicable to sound and touch, organic sensation and pain that recall is used uniformly as the technical dianetic term. The value of recall in this business of living has occupied such scant attention that the entire concept has never been formulated previously. It is therefore detailed at some length here, as above.

It is quite simple to test recalls. If one will ask his fellows what their abilities are, he will gain a remarkable idea of how widely varied this ability is from individual to individual.

Some have this recall, some have that, some have none, but operate on concepts of recall only.

And remember, if you make a test on those around you, that any perception is filed in the memory and therefore has a recall which is to include pain, temperature, rhythm, taste and weight with the above mentioned sight, sound, tactile, and smell.

The dianetic names for these recalls are visio (sight), sonic (sound), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), rhythmic, kinesthetic (weight and motion), somatic (pain), thermal (temperature) and organic (internal sensations and, by new definition, emotion).

Then there is another set of mental activities which can be summated under the headings of imagination and creative imagination. Here again is abundant material for testing.

Imagination is the recombination of things one has sensed, thought or intellectually computed into existence, which do not necessarily have existence. This is the mind’s method of envisioning desirable goals or forecasting futures. Imagination is extremely valuable as a part of essential solutions in any mental problem and in everyday existence. That it is recombination in no sense deprives it of its vast and wonderful complexity.

A clear uses imagination in its entirety. There is an imagination impression for sight, smell, taste, sound -- in short, for each one of the possible perceptions. These are manufacturered impressions on the basis of models in the memory banks combined by conceptual ideas and construction. New physical structures, tomorrow in terms of today, next 19

year in terms of last year, pleasure to be gained, deeds to be done, accidents to avoid, all these are imaginational functions.

The clear has full color-visio, tone-sonic, tactile, olfactory, rhythmic, kinesthetic, thermal and organic imagination in kind. Asked to envision himself riding in a gilded coach and four, he “sees” the equipage, moving, in full color, he “hears” all the noises which should be present, he “smells” the smells he thinks should be there, and he “feels” the upholstery, the motion, and the presence in the coach of himself.

In addition to standard imagination there is creative imagination. This is a very wide undimensional ability, quite variable from individual to individual, possessed in enormous quantity by some. It is included here, not as a portion of the operation of the mind treated as a usual part of dianetics, but to isolate it as an existing entity. In a clear who possessed creative imagination, even if inhibited, as an aberree, it is present and demonstrable. It is inherent. It can be aberrated only by prohibition of its general practice, which is to say, by aberrating the persistence in its application or encysting the whole mind. But creative imagination, that possession by which works of art are done, states builded and Man enriched, can be envisioned as a special function, independent in operation and in no way dependent for its existence upon an aberrated condition in the individual, since the examination of its activity in and use by a clear possessing adequately demonstrates its inherent character. It is rarely absent in any individual.

Finally, there is the last but most important activity of the mind. Man is to be regarded as a sentient being. His sentience depends upon his ability to resolve problems by perceiving or creating and understanding situations. This rationality is the primary, high echelon function of that part of the mind which makes him a Man, not just another animal. Remembering, perceiving, imagining, he has the signal ability of resolving conclusions and of using conclusions resolved to resolve further conclusions. This is rational Man.

Rationality, as divorced from aberration, can be studied in a cleared person only. The aberrations of the aberree give him the appearance of irrationality. Though such irrationality may be given the gentler names of “eccentricity” or “human error” or even “personal idiosyncrasy,” it is, nevertheless, irrationality. The personality does not depend upon how irrationally a man may act. It is not a personality trait, for instance, to drive while drunk and kill a child on a crosswalk -- or even to risk killing a child by driving while drunk. Irrationality is simply that -- the inability to get right answers from data.

Now it is a curious thing that although “everybody knows” (and what a horrible amount of misinformation that statement lets circulate) it is “human to err,” the sentient portion of the mind which computes the answers to problems and which makes man Man is utterly incapable of error.

This was a startling discovery when it was made, but it need not have been. It could have been deduced some time before. For it is quite simple and easy to understand. The actual computing ability of Man is never in error even in a very severely aberrated person. Observing the activity of such an aberrated person, one might thoughtlessly suppose that that person’s computations were wrong. But that would be an observer error. Any person, aberrated or clear, computes perfectly on the data stored and perceived.

Take any common calculating machine (and the mind is an exceptionally magnificent instrument far, far superior to any machine it will invent for ages to come) and put a problem on it for solution. Multiply seven times one. It will answer, properly, seven. Now multiply six times one but continue to hold down the seven. Six times one is six but the answer you will get is forty-two. Continue to hold down seven and put other problems on the machine. They are wrong, not as problems, but as answers. Now fix seven so that it stays down no matter what keys are touched and try to give the machine away. Nobody will want it because, obviously, the machine is crazy. It says ten times ten is seven hundred. But is the calculating portion of the machine really wrong or is it merely being fed the wrong data?

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In the same way the human mind, being called upon to resolve problems of a magnitude and with enough variables to confound any mere calculating machine a thousand times an hour, is prey to incorrect data. Incorrect data gets into the machine. The machine gives wrong answers. Incorrect data enters the human memory banks, the person reacts in an

“abnormal manner.” Essentially, then, the problem of resolving aberration is the problem of finding a “held-down seven.” But of that much, much more, later. Right now we have accomplished our immediate ends.

These are the various abilities and activities of the human mind in its constant task of resolving and putting into solution a multitude of problems. It perceives, it recalls or returns, it imagines, it conceives and then resolves. Served by its extensions -- the perceptics and the memory banks and the imaginations -- the mind brings forth answers which are invariably accurate, modified only by observation, education and viewpoint.

And the basic purposes of that mind and the basic nature of man, as discoverable in the clear, are constructive and good, uniformly constructive and uniformly good, the solutions modified only by observation, education and viewpoint.

Man is good.

Take away his basic aberrations and with them go the evil of which the Scholastic and the moralist were so fond. The only detachable portion of him is the “evil” portion. And when it is detached, his personality and vigor intensify. And he is glad to see the “evil” portion go because it was physical pain.

Later there are experiments and proofs for these things and they can be measured with the precision so dear to the heart of the physical scientist.

The clear, then, is not an “adjusted” person, driven to activity by his repressions now thoroughly encysted. He is an unrepressed person, operating on self-determinism. And his abilities to perceive, recall, return, imagine, create and compute are outlined as we have seen.