Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (54 page)

Thus, a primary test for aberration is similarity and identity, the primary test for rationality is differentiation and the minuteness or largeness with which it can be done.

“Men are all alike,” she says. And they are too! To her. Poor thing. Like the fellow who raped her when she was a kid, like her detested father who said it.

RELATIVE IMPORTANCESAND “BELIEVE” AND “CAN’T BELIEVE”

The auditor will find himself confronted with two arch enemies in “you must believe it,” and “I can’t believe.”

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The mind has its own equilibrium and ability and it is aided no more by engrams than an adding machine is aided by a held-down seven. One of the most important functions of the mind is the computing of the relative importances of data.

In discovering and conducting research on dianetics, for instance, there were billions of data about the mind accumulated throughout the last few thousand years.

Now, with a six foot rear vision mirror we can look back and see that here and there people had expressed opinions or turned up unevaluated facts which are now data in some of the axioms of dianetics or parts of its discoveries. These facts existed in the past, some exist now in dianetics, but with a tremendous difference: they are evaluated. Evaluation of the data for its importance was vital before the information was of value. Dr. Sententious might have written in 1200 A.D. that he believed actual demons did not exist in the mind; Goodwife Sofie in 1782 was heard to say that she was certain that prenatal influence had warped many a life; Dr. Zamba might have written in 1846 that a hypnotized patient could be told he was crazy and that he would thereafter act crazy. Dr. Sententious might have said also that angels, not demons, caused mental illness because the patient had been evil; Goodwife Sofie also might have said that punk water poultices cured “ravings”; Dr. Zamba might also have declared that hypnotized patients needed only a few more positive suggestions to make them well and strong. In short, for every datum which approached truth there were billions which were untrue. The missing part of each datum was a scientific evaluation of its importance to the solution. The selection of a few special drops of water from an ocean of unspecial drops is impossible. The problem of discovering true data could be resolved only by jettisoning all former evaluations of humanity and the human mind and all “facts” and opinions of whatever kind and starting fresh, evolving the entire science from a new highest common denominator (and it is true that dianetics borrowed nothing but was first discovered and organized; only after the organization was completed and a technique evolved was it compared to existing information).

The point here is that monotone importance in a class of facts leads to nothing but the most cluttered confusion. Here is evaluation: opinions are nothing, authority is useless, data is secondary: establishment of relative importance is the key. Given the world and the stars as a laboratory and a mind to compute the relative importance of what it perceives, and no problems can remain unsolved. Given masses of data with monotone evaluation and one has something which may be pretty but is useful.

The stunned look of fresh-caught ensigns of the Navy when they first see in the metal the things about which they have so laboriously read is a testimony to more than the faulty educational system currently employed: the system seeks to train something which is perfect --

the memory -- ; it aligns little or nothing with purpose or use, and ignores the necessity of personal evaluation of all data both as to need for it and its use. The stunned look comes from the overwhelming recognition that whereas they have thousands of data about what they see, they do not know whether it is more important to read the chronometer when they take a sextant sight or use only blue ink in writing a log book. These gentlemen have been wronged educationally not because they have not been given thousands of data relative to ships but because they have not been told the relative importance of each datum and have not experienced that importance. They know more facts than the less educated but they know less about factual relation.

More pertinent to the auditor, there are two species of engramic commands which give monotone evaluation to data. The persons who have either of these as a major content in the engram bank will be similarly aberrated even if each manifests the aberration with opposite polarity.

Every now and then some unfortunate auditor finds a “Can’t believe it” on his hands.

This case is extremely trying. Under this heading come the “I doubt it,” the “I can’t be sure,”

and the “I don’t know,” cases.

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Such a case is easy to spot for when he first comes into therapy he begins by doubting dianetics, the auditor, himself, the furniture and his mother’s virginity. The chronic doubter is not an easy case because he cannot believe his own data. The analyzer has a built-in judge which takes in data, weighs it and judges it right, wrong or maybe. The engramic doubter has a

“held down 7” to the effect that he has to doubt everything, something much different from judging. He is challenged to doubt. He must doubt. If to doubt is divine, then the god is certainly Moloch. He doubts without inspecting, he inspects the most precise evidence, and he still doubts.

The auditor will return this patient to a somatic which tears half his head off, which is confirmed by scars, which is confirmed by aberration, and which is doubted as an incident.

The way to handle this case is to take his pat phrases and feed them to him in reverie or out of reverie with repeater technique. Make him go over and over them, sending his somatic strip back to them. Shortly a release of the phrase will take place. Feed all doubter phrases which the patient has used in this manner. Then continue the case. The object is not to make him a believer but to place him in a situation where he can evaluate his own data. Don’t argue with him about dianetics -- arguing against engrams is senseless since the engrams themselves are senseless.

In ten or twenty hours of therapy such a patient will begin to face reality enough so that he no longer doubts the sun shines, doubts the auditor or doubts that he had a past of some sort. He is only difficult because he requires these extra hours of work. He is usually, by the way, very aberrated.

The “Can’t believe it” finds difficulty in evaluation because he has difficulty giving credence to any fact more than any other fact: this produces an inability to compute relative importances amongst data with the result that he may be as concerned with the shade of his superior’s tie as with the marriage he himself is about to undertake. Similarly, the “You must believe it” case finds difficulty in differentiating amongst importances of various data and may hold equally firmly the idea that paper is made from trees and that he is about to be fired. Both cases “worry,” which is to say they are unable to compute well.

Rational computation depends upon the personal computation of the relative importances of various data. Reactive “computation” deals exclusively with the equation that widely different objects or events are similar or equal. The former is sanity, the latter is insanity.

The “Must believe it” case will present a confused reactive bank, for the bank embraces the most unlikely differences as close similarities. The “Must believe it” engram command can dictate that one person, a class of persons, or everyone must be believed, no matter what is written or said. The auditor, returning the patient, will find major aberrations held in place by a lock containing only conversation.

When father is the actual source and is an ally of the patient, the auditor will discover that almost everything father said was accepted literally and unquestioningly by his child. The father may not have been aware of having established this “Must believe it” condition and he may even be a jocular man, given to jokes. Every joke will be found to be literally accepted unless the father carefully labeled it a joke, which meant it must not be literally accepted. One case folder is to hand here where father was the source of “Must believe”: one day the father took his daughter, three years of age, down to the seacoast and, through the fog, pointed to a lighthouse. The lighthouse gave an eerie aspect in the foggy night. “That’s Mr. Billingsly’s place,” said the father, meaning that Billingsly, the lighthouse keeper, lived there. The child nodded faithfully, if a little frightened, for “Mr. Billingsly” threw around a mane of hair-shadows -- glared to seaward with one eye sweeping the water and stood a hundred feet tall and “Mr. Billingsly” let out moans which sounded quite ferocious. His “place” was a ledge of rock. As a pre-clear twenty years later the daughter was discovered to be frightened of any low moaning sound. The auditor patiently traced down the source and found, much to the delight of 213

himself and the daughter, “Mr. Billingsly.” Vast quantities of aberration, peculiar conceptions and strange notions were found to derive from casual statements the father had made. Being skilled in his task, the auditor did not bother to try to locate and erase everything the father had said -- a task which would have taken years and years: he located, instead, the prenatal “You must believe me” and its engramic locks, and all the non-engramic locks, of course, disappeared and were automatically re-evaluated as experienced data rather than “held-down sevens.” Of course there is always much more wrong with a case than a mere “You must believe me,” but the change of viewpoint which the patient experienced immediately afterwards was startling: she was now at liberty to evaluate her father’s data, which she had not been before.

Because they teach in terms of altitude* and Authority, educational institutions themselves form a social “You must believe it” aberration. It is impossible to reduce an entire university education even if it sometimes appears desirable, but by addressing the moments when the patient was hammered into believing or accepting school, from kindergarten forward, many a fact-clogged mind can again be made facile which was not so before, for the facts will be re-evaluated automatically by the

* (By altitude is meant a difference of level of prestige -- one on a higher altitude carries conviction to one on a lower altitude merely because of altitude. The auditor may find himself unable to gain sufficient altitude with some patients to work them smoothly and he may have so much altitude with others that they believe everything he says. When he has too little altitude, he is not believed; when he has too much he is believed too well.) mind for importances, not accepted on monotone evaluation as is the case in “formal education.”

The “Can’t believe it” is a subject so weary and dreary to the auditor that he may find himself, after a few finished cases, running adroitly away from one. The “I don’t know” and the “I can’t be sure” cases are not as bad as the “I can’t believe it.” The prize case in difficulty in dianetics is a patient who is a Junior named after either father or mother, who has not only shut-down pain, emotion, visio and sonic recall but also “dub-in” for them on a false basis, with a lie factory working full blast, who is uncooperative and who is a “Can’t believe it.”

Monotone evaluation hinders the “Can’t believe it’s” acceptance of all facts. Any case may have a few “Can’t believe its” but some cases are so thoroughly aberrated by the phrase that they disbelieve not only reality but also their own existence.

The mind has a “built-in doubter” which, unhindered by engrams, rapidly sorts out importances and, by their weights, resolves problems and arrives at conclusions. The rational mind applies itself to data presented, compares it to experience, evaluates its veracity and then assigns it relative importance in the scheme of things. This is done, by a clear, with a rapidity which sometimes requires the splitting of seconds. By a normal the time required is extremely variable and the conclusions are more apt to be referred to another’s opinion or compared to Authority rather than to personal experience. That is the fundamental effect of contemporary education which, through no particular fault of its own and despite every effort it has made to free itself, yet, through lack of tools, is forced to follow Scholastic methods. These, by contagion of aberration, persist against all efforts of advanced educators. The normal is taught on one hand to believe or else he’ll fail and on the other to disbelieve as a scientific necessity: belief and disbelief cannot be taught, they must be personally computed. If a mind could be likened to a general served by his own staff, it could be seen to have a G-2 which, as a combat intelligence center, collected facts, weighed them for importance and formed an estimate of a situation or the value of a conclusion. As the intelligence officer would fail if he had a signed order to disbelieve everything, so does the mind fail which has a reactive command to disbelieve. Certainly a military organization would lose to every puny enemy if it had, conversely, a command to believe everything, and a man will fail if he has a reactive mind order to believe all information in the world around him.

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The believe and disbelieve engrams present different manifestations, and while one cannot be said to be either more or less aberrative than the other, it is certain that the disbelieve engram, by and large, seems to make the less sociable man.

Disbelief occurs in various degrees, of course. There is, for instance, a social disbelief engram which promotes a class of literature which is as insincere as it is unwitty. Insincerity, shame of emotional demonstration, fear of praising may stem from other things than merely a disbelief engram, but a disbelief engram is most certainly present in the majority of such cases.

The auditor will find, when he is trying to enter a very strong “Can’t believe it” case, that experience is disbelieved, the auditor is disbelieved, hope of results is disbelieved and that the most ridiculous and unreasonable insults and arguments may be presented. The patient may squirm in a veritable snake pit of somatics and still disbelieve that he is re-experiencing anything.

It is a sadly chronic fact that an aberree has a certain set of cliches from out of his engram bank. He will repeat these cliches for all occasions and circumstances. Mother, having an engram bank of her own and father having his, will be found to be uttering pretty much the same sort of statement time after time. These are dramatizations. One of the parents may have had an “I don’t know” ready to precede everything he or she said, which makes a whole