The most basic and recurrent theme of Dianetics and Scientology may well be the subject of sanity. “Book One” as we call it, “Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health” (hereafter referred to by the initials DMSMH) is a handbook of how to attain higher sanity through eliminating aberration, the antithesis of rational thinking. In this practice, we have techniques for eliminating the mental machinery that is detrimental to sanity. These come under the category of negative-gain processing-“addition by subtraction”- that is, reducing the negative elements to free the positive elements of such basic abilities as perception, analysis, decision and action. As explained by L. Ron Hubbard, author of DMSMH and other writings to be referenced here, “Negative Gain: By removal of the harmful thing, you can get a positive advance” (Tape lecture Esto 6, 7203C03 SO II). There also exist positive gain processes, in which the aforementioned basic abilities are directly addressed and exercised so as to bring about greater realization of these abilities.

Sanity and insanity are recognized in Scientology to be relative, rather than absolute terms. For most people, sanity is a hazy concept at best, viewed from one’s own relative state of sanity/insanity, and not clearly defined. It is one of the basic breakthroughs of this body of knowledge to clearly define the terms, and in a way that is useful and workable.

From DMSMH: “Sanity is the ability to tell differences. The better one can tell differences, the more rational he is. The less one can tell differences and the closer one comes to thinking in identities (A=A) the less sane he is.”

To further clarify “thinking in identities”, we refer to the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary(hereafter referred to as the Tech Dictionary): “The inability to evaluate differences in time, location, form, composition or importance…..the lowest level of reasoning is complete inability to differentiate, which is to say, identification.” (The mental impairment of mistaking things which are different from each other to be identical to each other) Thus you could also say the more confused a person’s thinking is, the less sane they are. See definition #3 of “confuse” in the Funk and Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary: “To mistake one for the other”, in other words, identification!

In daily life, this insanity manifests itself in people’s heretofore unexplained tendencies to react to one situation as though it were another, to react to one person as though they were another, “over-reacting” to what was actually said, done or meant, etc, thus exhibiting a failure to recognize and to respond appropriately to what is actually happening.

“Thinking in identities” is also manifested as making generalities and stereotyping people, places and activities as “They’re all the same”, about any “type” of people or things. It is one sign of compromised ability to reason. Thomas Edison kept this observation posted in his laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey: “There is no expedient
to which a man will not resort to avoid the true labor of thinking”. Today we know that reasoning only becomes laborious to the degree that one’s mind is debilitated with thinking in identities.

One example of thinking in identities is to take the idea “rice and beans provide good nutrition” to the illogical extreme of having the same identical meal of rice and beans 3 times a day. This can result in a variety of medical problems arising from nutritional deficiencies. (Ironically, in today’s “Church of Scientology”, in the “elite” management structure known as the “Sea Org”, the rank and file workers are actually fed this exact diet! Let this serve as one of many examples of why we must be sane enough to differentiate between the principles of Scientology the philosophy and Scientology, the “official church organization”.)

Therefore, we learn to recognize sanity as differentiation- the relative ability to see things as unique, and not identical to other things- people, places, points in the flow of time, objects, et al. Coming to this understanding was in itself a breakthrough that lead the way to define the factors that could reduce sanity in the mind, the things that make us confused about where we are, who others are, and what is actually existing and happening around us, thus causing behavior that is not appropriate to our actual environments and situations. Removing and eliminating these factors would be the negative-gain processing referred to above- removal of the harmful thing to get a positive advance.

From Hubbard’s book Scientology 8-8008, section entitled “Differentiation, Association and Identification”: “Differentiation is at the top of the tone-scale* and is a condition of the highest level of sanity and individuality. Association or similarity is a condition which exists from the upper to the very low range of the scale. And identification is at the bottom of the scale.
The condition of the preclear** can be established readily by his ability to associate. He can, however, associate much too well. Association is the essence of logic. Logic is the gradient scale of relating facts one to another. As logic reaches the lower part of the scale, this relationship becomes finer until at last identification is reached and thought could be expressed in terms of A=A=A=A***.
An excellent rendition of this-although one not related to experience and which did not have with it a truly workable therapy-is to be found in general semantics**** in the book “Science and Sanity” by Alfred Korzybski. Insanity is the inability to associate or differentiate properly….
Association expresses itself in the preclear in terms of the way he thinks. When he reaches a low level of association, he supposes himself to be thinking connectedly, but is actually thinking in a completely disassociated fashion, for he identifies facts with other facts which should not be identified.”

*Tone scale: “A scale which plots the descending spiral of life from full vitality and consciousness through half-vitality and consciousness down to death…the range of emotion.” (Tech Dictionary)
**Preclear: “A person who, through Scientology processing, is finding out more about himself and life”. (Tech Dictionary)
***A=A=A=A: Irrationally identifying thoughts, people, objects, experiences, statements, etc., with one another where little or no similarity actually exists. (Tech Dictionary)
****Semantics:  The relation between signs or symbols and what they signify or denote. (Funk and Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary)

Identification as a mental aberration could be thought of as misidentification- thinking you recognize something for what it is, when in fact that’s not what it is- but on a grand scale, wherein stuck ideas connected to old mental images continue to resurface in connection with what is here now, although those images shouldn’t be connected with now, because now is different from then (the point in time from which the old mental images derive).

Thus, it could be said that the basic identification, or confusing of this with that, is of time itself (that is, unknowingly reacting to something from another point in time that one’s mind, automatically, below your level of consciousness, is misevaluating to be the same thing being experienced here and now. In fact, in an instructional bulletin issued on July 28th of 1963, Hubbard stated, “We have known for many years that Time is the Single Source of human aberration”.

The single source of aberration:

In Scientology, one word we commonly use to sum up irrationality is aberration, defined in the Tech Dictionary as: “..wrong conduct, or conduct not supported by reason…Aberration is opposed to sanity, which would be its opposite”.

DMSMH (again, that is, the book “Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health”) is primarily an explanation of what has been discovered to be the single source of aberration-the very mechanism that causes us to react to one situation as though it were another, to react to one person as though they were another, etc (identification) – and a manual for how to remove and eliminate this mental infiltration that confuses what we perceive as reality with impressions of old incidents from our past.

This is a technology of how to straighten out the primary reason why we all suffer from a varying tendency to react inappropriately in life situations, and do things we cannot explain, and later, wish we hadn’t, the mechanism that often enough manifests itself every time you observe someone “inexplicably” say or do something you can clearly see isn’t sensible.

The mechanism that throws our consciousness under the bus of a past incident is termed the Reactive Mind, or bank, and that recording of the past incident that is playing through our consciousness is termed an Engram.

First, let us understand the Engram:

“A mental image picture which is a recording of a time of physical pain and unconsciousness.” ..””A complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full unconsciousness.” ..”The word ‘engram’ is an old one borrowed from biology. It means simply, ‘a lasting memory trace on a cell’. It may be engraved on more than the cell, but up against Dianetic processing, it is not very lasting.”  “A moment when the analytical mind is shut down by physical pain, drugs or other means, and the reactive bank is open to the receipt of a recording.” .. “simply moments of physical pain strong enough to throw part or all of the analytical machinery out of circuit”.. “not a sentient recording containing meanings. It is merely a series of impressions such as a needle might make on wax. These impressions are meaningless to the body until the engram keys in, at which time aberrations and psychosomatics occur.” (Tech Dictionary)

A painful experience trips the mechanism that we call the reactive mind, just like a heavy electrical current trips a circuit breaker. The reactive mind diverts the pain from one’s surface consciousness just like the circuit breaker diverts the current from damaging an electrical system. The painful experience is converted from fully perceived and understood experiential information to an encapsulated recording, or engram, in the  reactive mind, which  contains a bank of these engrams.

There are at least 4 major liabilities to this mental circuit-breaker system:

  1. We are denied full perception and understanding of the life experience thus quarantined and encapsulated;
  2. An actual portion of your ability to reason-what we call your IQ (intelligence quotient) is captured within the encapsulated  recording, and with it a portion of your ability to clearly and vividly perceive or take in your environment, which we refer to as quantifiable attention units.
  3. We are subject to unknowingly re-experiencing all the undesirable emotional and physical feelings in these recordings of painful experiences; and
  4. We are subject to unknowingly misidentifying the people, things and environment around us here and now with those in the triggered engrams, and thus acting inappropriately to what is actually there, without knowing or understanding what we are doing. Identification-thinking in identities-(mis)identifying one thing or person as being another. The complete inability to differentiate. The very bottom of the scale of sanity, which is total insanity.

This again is “triggered engrams”- the closing of a mental switch from conscious observation of one’s actual present-time environment to hypnotically reliving a past experience, superimposing it over what is actually happening now. In Dianetics, the word we use for this phenomenon is “restimulation”, and it can occur to greater or lesser degrees. Restimulation is not random, it has causes. As with allergies, restimulation is triggered by something present in the environment.

The reactive mind, containing the engram bank, functions simplistically – in fact, over-simplistically, for here is the very seat of irrational, or insane thinking- (mis)identifying present time experience as one of the many, many painful past experiences (engrams) contained within this reactive mind. It is a mechanism that functions automatically and primitively to cause the individual to react as though the experience of the triggered (restimulated) engram is happening now, because it can take anything present here and now that is at all similar to any element within the experience of the engram as a signal that the engrammic experience is happening right now. A train whistle, the feeling of hot sun on one’s skin, a musical passage, a repeated phrase, a similar voice, and so on.

An engram is a special type of what we call in Dianetics a facsimile. (Any mental image picture; ..All physical perceptions, all effort, emotion and thought are recorded continuously, and these recordings are called “facsimiles”; a sort of three-dimensional color picture with sound and smell and all other perceptions plus the conclusions or speculations of the individual*).

Restimulation: The reactivation of an existing incident; Where the environment reactivates a facsimile.* Here is the person “inexplicably” blowing up at someone over a perfectly innocent comment, “inexplicably” feeling scared or nervous, or “spooked” in certain places. The individual who is sweet and understanding, except when in a supermarket, or behind their desk, or in their car, where the particular surroundings effect an acute change in attitude and mannerisms. The lighting, the sound or view of equipment running, the cubical walls and desk, the background voices, the smells of chemicals in the factory or the ventilation, the color of the walls and floors, the ceilings, virtually anything that can be perceived can be the common element to some painful experience, encapsulated in the reactive mind as an engram, and thus be the restimulator that will trigger the reactivation of that experience in one’s mind, below conscious awareness, putting one right back in the incident.

People present here and now become the threatening, intimidating, or irritating, or frightening people in the actual, original incident. The person can gasp for air, re-experiencing a smoke filled room from long ago, or being held underwater in a swimming pool. And all they know is, suddenly they are overwhelmed with a strong uncomfortable attitude toward their surroundings, and they will make irrational claims about the people and things around them.

Here is the essence of insanity- thinking in identities, mistaking what is happening here now for what was happening somewhere earlier, having the 2 different experiences become,  in one’s mind, identical.

*(from the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary)
That is how the reactive mind operates- it gets a whiff of something similar to where and when something bad happened, and it automatically goes into full defensive alert mode, reactivating the state of mind the person experienced in the incident, without any recognition of present time.   The reactive mind is the basis of identification-level, or stimulus-response thought, or to put it another way, the basis of insanity. Thus, the reactive mind is the source of the lowest level of thought, pure stimulus-response; inability to distinguish the circumstances of now from some dangerous past experience. This is the basis of insanity.

How to Restore Sanity (Betcha didn’t see that coming!)

In Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health, Ron Hubbard lists out the 4 valid therapies for the influence of the reactive mind as change of environment, education, physical treatment, and the optimum solution of clearing out the reactive mind. To further clarify:

(1) Change of environment – Basically this breaks down into 2 methods, removing restimulative elements from the surroundings (analogous to finding a new home for a pet that one has allergic reactions to), and relocating oneself. Moving a person “out of the environment in which he is unhappy or ineffective can bring about some astonishingly swift recoveries; this is valid therapy; it removes the restimulators from the individual or takes the individual away from the restimulators. It is ordinarily quite hit-or-miss and more miss than hit, and it will not remove all the restimulators by nine tenths since the individual carries the bulk of these around with him or is compelled to contact them.”

So we can see, change of environment will, likely, to some degree, be helpful, but it is generally far from a cure-all.

(2) Education – “New data or enthusiasms may very well key-out* engrams  by overbalancing the reactive mind in the light of a new analytical surge. If a man can simply be convinced that he has been fighting shadows or if he can be persuaded to hang his fears on some indicated cause, whether that cause is true or not, he can be benefited. Sometimes he can be “educated” into a strong faith in some deity or cult which will cause him to feel so invulnerable that he rises above his engrams. Raising his survival potential in any way will raise his general tone to a point where it is no longer on a par with the reactive bank”. Giving him an education in engineering or music, where he can receive a higher level of respect, will often defend him from his restimulators. A rise to a position of esteem is actually a change of environment, but it is also educational since he is now taught he is valuable. If a man can be made busy at a hobby or work by personal or exterior education that is good for him, another mechanism comes into being-the analytical mind becomes so engrossed that it takes to itself more and more energy for its activity and begins to align with a new purpose”. By the “analytical mind”, we mean “That mind which combines perceptions of the immediate environment, of the past (via mental images) and estimations of the future into conclusions which are based upon the realities of situations” (from the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary).

Basically, this paragraph about education as valid therapy makes the point that you can increase your sanity by “beefing up” your levels of knowledge, confidence and enthusiasm for life to make yourself less susceptible to restimulation of reactive mind content. Doing any worthwhile activity well will have this effect, for as long as it is continued. We all need such activity to have a good life.


*Key-out: Release or separation from one’s reactive mind or some portion of it” (from the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary)

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