An Evaluation of Dianetics

[Vinaire]

I shall be going over the route that LRH followed to see where he might have slipped. Please be patient with me.

LRH started by postulating the ideal scene of a human mind as follows:

The optimum brain may be limited in its capability to solve problems, but it should have memory recall and the ability to imagine the perceptics. It should be able to differentiate between actuality and imagination with precision. It should be able to think fast, and always be right in its computation.

He was looking at the question: “Minds became aberrated. Why”

He followed the route of narrowing down the target. He reduced his search down to “What we can perceive with no higher level of abstraction.”

He decided to use the electronic calculator as an analogy to the mind. He concluded that
(a) The only test of an organism is survival.
(b) Brain is composed of cells and it has evolved on the same plan as cells.
(c) It resolves problems related to survival.
(d) It thinks in terms of differences, similarities and identities.
(e) All its activities are strictly and solely survival-motivated.

LRH observed that in mental context hypnotism is, more or less, a fundamental but it comes across as an unpredictable variable. With various hypnotic suggestions, one could create the appearance of various neuroses, psychoses, compulsions and repressions, but it worked only occasionally.

LRH theorized that if man is basically evil, one should be able to make him more civilized by planting in him more civilization, using hypnotism. But he found that hypnotism seem to affect people adversely at times. So he postulated, “Maybe man is basically good and casting out evil “demons” will restore him to goodness.”

LRH then found through experimentations using hypnosis (including drug-hypnosis) that something akin to “demons” did exist, and casting it out made a patient better.

LRH then re-postulated the optimum brain as follows:

An optimum brain would be able to visualize in color, hear with all tones and sounds present, recall smells and tactile, all memories necessary to thought. It would think without talking to itself, thinking in concepts and conclusions rather than words. It would be able to imagine with all these perceptics. Finally it would know when it was recalling and know when it was imagining.

LRH then found that a plain circuit could represent optimum brain, and “demons” could be installed as added circuits to explain their affect on the brain. But since mental “demons” could not be isolated as such, he postulated that "demons" were somehow using existing circuits of the optimum brain.

[To be continued...]

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[Vinaire]

LRH concluded that these mental “demons” are nothing more than aberrative circuits. Hidden underneath these aberrative circuits was the optimum brain as was discovered in case of several patients. This was the basic personality (the “clear”). The basic personality was the patient’s personality minus certain mental powers, demons, and general unhappiness. It was sincere, intelligent and cooperative. It was invariably strong, hardy, and constructively good.

LRH then concluded that the basic personality is unaberrated and good. He then started focusing on the question, “What makes it aberrated and evil?”

NOTE: At this point I wish if somebody could conduct similar experiments as LRH did on patients using hypnosis and narco-synthesis to verify LRH’s observations and conclusions. But I believe that there are many auditors on this board who can critique the original LRH observations up to this point with sincerity.

[To be continued, but sincere comments are welcome ...]

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[Vinaire]

THE PRIMARY CONCLUSION SO FAR IS THAT ALL ABERRATIONS ARE DUE TO ADDITIVES. “DEMONS,” OR OTHER ENTITIES, ARE ADDITIVES TO THE BASIC PERSONALITY.

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[Vinaire]

LRH then made an assumption: The basic personality would not aberrate itself. The source of aberration, therefore, must be the exterior world.

LRH postulated: Somehow the exterior world gets interior. The individual becomes possessed of some unknowns, which set up circuits against his consent, the individual is aberrated, and is less able to survive.

So, the exterior world becomes interior. How does memory come about? Is the mind separate from the body, or is one simply the extension of another? We are not looking here at the product of the body, or the product of the mind.

LRH postulated further: It is the body that remembers. It simply coordinates its activity in the brain. Pinch the body, which causes pain. Ten minutes later that pinch and pain may be recalled. That’s memory.

From this LRH concluded: So the stronger the physical pain the stronger would be its memory.

From this came the later ideas heavily emphasized by LRH:
(a) Engrams always contain pain.
(b) The heavier is the pain the more difficult it is to approach the engram.

[To be continued...]

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[Vinaire]

LRH then discovered that pain rendered even under unconsciousness could be recalled.

NOTE: Here I would like to see the above verified. Are there any auditors on this board who can verify if any of their PC’s actually recalled data from a current lifetime incident where they were known to have been unconscious? Now we need to understand more clearly what “unconsciousness” is, and what “the unconscious mind” is all about. By the way, Dianetics does not look at where the “exterior world” came from.

LRH assumed that the human mind was capable of solving some of the riddles of existence. He postulated that after all these years; evolution will produce a robust and functional mechanism… that the human mind inherently was not very complex, unstable, and capable of being influenced easily.

LRH concluded that a man was sane in the ratio that he could compute accurately, limited only by information and viewpoint. Optimum brain is a rational brain. Rationality requires that all data must be available for inspection. All data that mind contains must be derived from its own computation or it must be able to compute and check the data it is fed.

LRH observed that the average human mind was infinitely finer than the animal mind. But it could be reduced in capability to be like an animal’s mind. He concluded that the optimum brain would have built-in self-checking circuits so it does not turn out a wrong answer.

The sensory organs help one compare one’s conclusions with the external world. A perfect, errorless computer can use external world data to check the validity of and evaluate its own data input. Only if the computational mechanism is inherently error-proof would this be possible. LRH concluded that the mind is running on the principle that it must be right and must find out why if it isn’t right. It is this “analytical capability” of the mind, which raises man far above his fellow mammals.

[To be continued...]

[Mojo]

LRH then discovered that pain rendered even under unconsciousness could be recalled.

NOTE: Here I would like to see the above verified

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Millions would like to see the above LRH discovery verified Vinaire, but alas will not. And why not? For the simple reason his discovery was theory. Which is a nice word for imaginary (or my own word: fictionary). The objective testing of such a theory(justifiying it's legitimate title as being a discovery) would be quite simple don't you think?

And why the need for an auditor for such a verification Vinaire? Hundreds of thousands of individuals are unconscious in hospitals all the world over on a fairly regular basis. Why not simply interview any number of them and compare their "recall" with the facts of what took place during the course of their "unconsciousness'? to establish LRH's statement as being either fact or fiction? (discovery or theory).

Simple answer. Such a simple test would disrobe (or debunk) the so-called science of scientology. At least that particular underlying "equal to the discovery of fire" aspect of it.

Don't get me wrong here V. I appreciate your analysis of LRH's material. I just assume your hypothetical questions posted on a world-wide message board reflect your sincere search for the truth.

You wrote:

Optimum brain is a rational brain. Rationality requires that all data must be available for inspection. All data that mind contains must be derived from its own computation or it must be able to compute and check the data it is fed.

From my point of view if we were having breakfast and words were on the menu, the above statement would be scrambled eggs.

Firstly the brain and the mind are not identical (think data series, lol). They are different (and significantly so). Thus using them interchangably makes for a nonsensical (unsound) presentation. And the statement: "All data that mind contains must be derived from its own computation" is patently absurd. Think about it. There is no such reality as a mind that contains nothing but data derived of its own computation. Absolutes don't exist. Correct? Thus the statement is fundamentally nonsense (up to and including its later half).

To compute is to consider. Nothing esoteric there. And absolutes don't exist. Mundane knowledge (in certain circles). So his statement is a creative piece of philosophical puffery passed off as scholarly wisdom.

I return to the beginning of your prose: "LRH then discovered that pain rendered even under unconsciousness could be recalled". 57 years later and not a single shred of evidence of the veracity of such a bold bold claim. Call an auditor. Lol.

Look, LRH made no such discovery Vinaire. He was a science fiction writer for goodness sakes. Not a science writer. A science fiction writer. Big difference there.

He imagined what he imagined and called it a discovery (researched no less). By the truckloads. Lol.

We now return to the regular scheduled programming.

[gomorrhan]

He conjectured, which many scientists do, but I agree, his dissertation wasn't so much a discovery as a review of the literature he'd either sampled or heard about, combined with his own redefinition of terms.

I've found that "unconsciousness" isn't something from which memory is recovered, actually. However, "repressed" knowledge or experience is recovered, and it is this repression (alter-isness or not-isness) being undone which gives the person back "themself". They aren't recovering something which was LOST, so much as simply removing constraints.

However, I will have an opportunity over Christmas, it is likely, to take my brother in session and I'll see what happens. He was recently unconscious, truly, as a result of a seizure, and if running him through the incidents can recover memory of a period during which he was unconscious, I, for one, will be satisfied, although I wouldn't expect others to accept it.

[Mojo]

I've found that "unconsciousness" isn't something from which memory is recovered, actually.

Aside from the balance of your post which I found to be exceedingly refreshing (and perhaps can comment on later) would you say (or concede) that LRH then was 'wrong'? Based upon your own experience? Or would his reality (called, um, er, researched discoveries the likes of which humanity has never in 75 million years even imagined, lol) trump your experience of your own reality?

Again, I do very much appreciate the tone (not in the Hubbardarian sense of the word) of your post. Which seems to me to reflect a rather impressive degree of independent intelligence absent that seemingly unshakable "LRH was God" mentality that renders some (otherwise intelligent) individuals in such awe of Mr. Hubbard's creative thought they cannot for the life of themselves, think for themselves. Where that very good man Vinaire comes to mind.

Apparently for V, if Hubbard "said" he discovered it, by God he discovered it. It's up to the rest of us to figure out his genius. By the sweat of our brow. Lol.

[gomorrhan]

I don't share your assessment of Veda's perspective. However, I do thank you for your expressed appreciation!

Of course I am open to the idea that LRH was wrong: there are many things I think he was wrong about, not least of which was his assessment that all homosexuals are at 1.1/Covert Hostility on the tone scale.

LRH's concept of reality was exactly that. I have my own. I have more in common with some progressive psychiatrists and specialists in artificial intelligence than I do with LRH's occult ideas.

[Vinaire]

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Millions would like to see the above LRH discovery verified Vinaire, but alas will not. And why not? For the simple reason his discovery was theory. Which is a nice word for imaginary (or my own word: fictionary). The objective testing of such a theory(justifiying it's legitimate title as being a discovery) would be quite simple don't you think?

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I think it is unscientific to dismiss something without trying the same or similar experiments.

I believe that the recordings from the unconscious period were not easily available to LRH either. He used hypnosis and narco-synthesis to dig into unconscious periods of the patient when he allegedly discovered that the recordings were there.

Has anybody verified the LRH claim by conducting such an experiment?

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