|
If you haven't read our page on
Scientology may we suggest you click to read that first.
Dianetics is the part of Scientology that deals with the mind. And the mind contains
one's experiences of the past be they pleasant or otherwise. Much of these experiences
are recorded in what Dianetics calls the analytical mind. This information is
available to you as memory. You can 'think' with it, which is to say compute or
analyze with it.
However, not all experience is recorded in the analytical mind. Some of it is stored in
what Dianetics calls the reactive mind. It contains three types of recording. The
most deeply buried are engrams, which are moments of pain and unconsciousness. Next
are things known as secondaries, which are moments of loss. Finally there are locks
which are moments when one is reminded, to a certain extent unknowingly of prior
engrams and secondaries.
The reactive mind is sometimes known as the subconscious
mind outside of Scientology, but this is really a misnomer as the subconscious mind is,
in fact, the mind which is always conscious in that it carries on recording the events
around you even if you're unconscious. Now, if the reactive mind were merely a
set of not so pleasant recordings about the past, it wouldn't really be a problem.
However, the reactive mind does exactly what its name suggests. It reacts. It is
capable of influencing your thoughts, actions and feelings without you being aware
of where those thoughts etc are originating from.
Here is an example. Lets consider the imaginary case of Mary who is five years old and
involved in a minor road accident.
Mary is out cold for a little while and taken to hospital where she is treated
mainly for shock and also cuts and bruises, say, on the left arm. During the incident
Mary's parents arrive on the scene and her father says, "I want to kill that driver",
while her mother says, "If only I hadn't let her out of my sight this would never
have happened." The car that hit Mary was blue. A dog can be heard barking in the
distance. This is an engram.
Some years later Mary gets married and has children of her own. One day she is out
with the children and one of them wanders off. A dog comes by and barks. Suddenly
Mary feels strangely tired, has a pain in her left arm and becomes extraordinarily
anxious about her child even though he or she is probably just around the corner. This
is a secondary due to (temporary) loss of the child.
It depends, for its force, on the earlier engram.
Later still, Mary's husband buys a new car. It is blue. Mary doesn't like the new car
even though is it better than their previous one. Anyhow the family goes out at the
weekend. A dog barks at another one across the road. It is a hot day and the children
are fighting in the back. The dog darts across the road and there are screeching tyres.
In fact Mary's husband has avoided an accident by careful driving, but Mary blurts
out, "I want to kill you" for no good reason she can think of. Her arm hurts. This is a lock. It
also depends, for its force, upon the earlier engram.
So what is happening here? The reactive mind has the engram stored away. By virtue
of the pain and unconsciousness it contains, the engram is uninspected. Parts of it
are unknown. Later, when vaguely similar circumstances arise (and they don't need to
be very similar at all), and especially where stress, lack of sleep or some real or
imagined threat to survival occurs, the reactive mind swings into action. Unfortunately
it is a very raw, stimulus response, basic survival mechanism. It says blue car equals
barking dog equals "I want to kill that driver" equals pain in the arm etc etc. Its
rationale, if it has one at all, is that the old incident was survived even though
pain and unconsciousness were involved, therefore, blindly doing what succeeded at that
time will help one survive now. Of course, this is crazy. 'Thinking' on that kind
of line may be appropriate for a single celled organism, but it is not much use to a dog,
let alone a human.
Dianetics has counselling procedures which allow a person to gradiently confront these
engrams, secondaries and locks from the past and, by inspecting them, erase them from
the reactive mind. The memories are re-filed as analytical experience which the person
can use rationally. You may be able to think of things about yourself which are
similar to the above. Maybe a time when you had an unwanted thought or impulse? Or
maybe some unwelcome pain or sensation which had no apparent source? Well,
that's a lock. Wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to have these things messing
up your life? Well, you don't.
Now read our Dianetic Auditing page.
|
