It might seem incredible that the unborn babe, from zygote to embryo to fetus to birth, can be a recipient of engrams. After all, was the point not made that an engram consists of pain and anaten? Yes, but an additional point was made, and I quote: "Engrams are not memories and they do not lie exclusively, if at all, within the brain. They are recorded on the cells of the body, much as a speech or a piece of music may be recorded on tape." It was also said that, "The tape does not 'remember' the words of a speech, nor do the cells remember the percepts of an engram." So the question has nothing to do with whether the cells of the unborn child can hear and remember. They can, and they do, record.
When Hubbard was experimenting with his new discoveries, he and his associates ran a number of cases during which they successfully prevented the preclears from entering the prenatal area, and not one of these
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cases advanced to clear in spite of many hours of auditing. All of the cases resulted in improvement, but not until they were finally reworked in the prenatal area did they begin to achieve states of release and clear. It was found that the first engram on most chains, the basic engram, existed in the prenatal area, and that once this area was cleared - that is, once all these engrams were removed from the reactive banks by processing and re-filed in the standard memory banks - the rest of the engrams on the chains could be erased with ease and dispatch.
Then Hubbard ran into the granddaddy of all the engrams, the one he called basic-basic. This is the first engram to be installed after conception, and it is involved in every other engram. Once basic-basic has been erased, the whole case is well on its way to clear. It was found that basic-basic can be established as early as the moment of conception, and certainly before more than a few days have elapsed after conception. The zygote, the first cell, resulting from the penetration of the ovum by the sperm, begins to record at once, even though the recording may not be engramic. But it is the parent, so to speak, of every other cell that the person, whether fetus or grownup, will ever have.
As we know, cells multiply by dividing; that is, one cell, upon reaching maturity, divides into two, the second cell being a duplicate of the first, including any recordings that have been made on it. Now, with this first cell division, we have entered upon the embryonic stage. Let us, for the purposes of illustration, designate these two cells as A and B. Now, pain and other per-
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cepts could be recorded on A and its descendants, without being recorded on B and its descendants, so that only half of all the cells in the body yet to be will carry that recording. When A and B split into two cells each, which we may designate as Ax and Ay, Bx and By, percepts recorded on Ax will have no effect on Ay, Bx or By; that is, only one-fourth of all the cells will carry that recording. It can be seen from this that, as the earliest engram, basic-basic will affect a larger fraction of all future cells than any later one.
The first goal of the auditor is to go after basic-basic. That he seldom succeeds in contacting it until many of the occluding engrams have been reduced or erased does not stop him. He will continue, in session after session, to try to direct the preclear earlier and earlier, until basic-basic is finally encountered, but this may require many hours of therapy to accomplish.
There are all sorts of reasons why basic-basic is not handed up by the file clerk early in the game, and all of the reasons are engramic. These engrams bear the somewhat humorous names of holders, groupers, bouncers, denyers and misdirectors, names given them as being more descriptive than any ponderous Latin terms might be.
We have already met two of these. We have seen that the holder is one of the demons, and consists of such phrases as: "Stay there," "keep still," "don't move," "be quiet," and "stop." Holders tend to hold the preclear in whatever condition is implied by the engram in which it Occurs.
The other demon to whom we have been introduced
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is the bouncer. His phrases are those like "not now," "some other time," "go away," and "don't come back." "Not now" and "some other time" mean that the time of this particular engram is wrong, go to some other time. The others have a delightful way of "bouncing" the preclear out of the time of the engram. All of these make that particular engram difficult to contact.
The grouper tends to group all engrams into one period of time, thus snarling up the time track. The phrases classed as groupers are, "everything happens at once," "it's like this all the time," "why is it always this way," and "one day is just like another." Single words like "always," "forever," and "perpetually" can also serve in this capacity.
The denyer tends to deny that there is any engram to be contacted, employing such phrases as, "I can't find it," "I'm not here," "I'm not going anywhere," "I don't know," "it's not important," and "don't mention it."
The misdirector tends to send the preclear in the wrong direction on the track. When the auditor wants him to come to present time, he will go earlier; when he should be returning to an early incident, he will go later. Some of the misdirector phrases are: "that's not the way to go," "you're doing it all backwards," and "I have no sense of direction."
Most of these phrases do not appear when the preclear is being directed along the time track, because they have a way of hiding themselves as well as the engrams in which they live. However, the auditor can usually detect their presence by the manner in which they affect the time track, since the bouncer will cause the
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preclear to bounce suddenly up from the time to which he had returned, and the misdirector will have him traveling in the wrong direction. The rest of the demons also make their presence known, once the auditor learns how to ferret them out. But some of them are almost invisible, and since he cannot run something that does not seem to be there, he would be in quite a dilemma if it were not for a method known as the repeater technique.
This is a simple method of having the preclear repeat anything he has said that indicates the possibility of the presence of one of these demons. For instance, if the preclear has returned to the time of an engram but has difficulty in contacting it, he might say to the auditor, "I can't get in." The auditor realizes this phrase is probably engramic, because one would not usually express his impasse in these terms, and if the preclear continues to be unable to contact the engram, the auditor will say "Please repeat, 'I can't get in.'" Based on this, an imaginary session might proceed in this fashion:
PRECLEAR: I can't get in. I can't get in. I can't get in. I can't - ouch, that hurt. Who hit me in the head?
AUDITOR: Please contact the phrase more closely and repeat it.
PRECLEAR: I can't get in. I can't get in. Hey, it's hurting more. [The somatic recall grows stronger in repeater technique, because the engram is only beginning to be contacted.]
AUDITOR: Continue repeating, please.
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PRECLEAR: I can't get...Say, that's my mother's voice.
AUDITOR: Please tell me everything she is saying.
PRECLEAR: She says, "The door is stuck and I can't get into the house." And there's my father's voice. He says, "Wait a minute and I'll help you." Ouch, there's that hit in the head. He says, "Oh, I'm sorry, honey. Did it hurt you?" And she says, "It's not too bad, just a little bump in the stomach."
AUDITOR: Please return to the beginning and roll it again.
Repeating the phrase, "I can't get in," has unlocked the door to the engram that might not have otherwise been contacted, since "I can't get in" is a command to stay out, and in this case has been computed by the reactive mind to mean: "Stay out of this engram."
There are times - many of them - when the preclear does not give up the data on a demon circuit as easily as occurred in this illustration, and the auditor will have quite a search in finding it, trying the preclear on all sorts of phrases until he comes up with the right one. There will be no such problem once basic-basic has been erased, but until that happens there may be quite a few of them.
Sometimes, the auditor is able to make some shrewd guesses as to what demon phrases are involved in a case from ordinary conversations with the preclear, noting carefully, without seeming to notice, the holders, bouncers, et al., that crop up in his speech, particularly when
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he is discussing his own case and Dianetics in general. Habitual groupings of words, not in everyday usage as clichés, probably indicate the presence of a demon, and the auditor will find occasion to use these when the preclear is stuck on the time track or moves away from an engram he has just encountered.
While the auditor tries from the very first session to get into the basic area, where lie all of the prenatal and most of the basic engrams (and particularly basic-basic), he will not insist on this or indicate that he has this goal in mind to a preclear who has not yet entered into the prenatal area. He will simply try to obtain a return into earlier and earlier stages of the preclear's life. In by far the great majority of cases, the first engrams encountered will not be basic ones, and these are not to be disregarded in a desire to push the preclear into going further back. An engram that is merely touched upon is restimulated, and it may serve to block the time track beyond all hope of deeper penetration until it has been reduced. The procedure upon contacting a later engram on the chain is to run it until it has been reduced and then ask for the earliest engram on the chain. The file clerk may hand up an earlier one rather than the first one on that chain, and this one must also be reduced before going earlier. The auditor should never feel frustrated by this slower procedure, but must have faith in the file clerk. There is probably a very good reason why this late engram reduction has to take place before getting to the basic, although it may not become apparent and may never be known. There may be something in one of these later engrams that is
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serving to block the track, a bouncer or misdirector for instance. There may be a strong emotional charge in a later engram not present in the basic, and the emotional charge will have to be lifted before further progress can be made.
Late in his experimental period, when Dianetics was approaching the condition in which it was first made public, Hubbard discovered an important fact there was an exact correlation between the preclear's progress in therapy and the amount of emotional charge that had been released from his engram bank. Once this discovery had been made, it was followed by a tendency on the part of the auditors to hunt out and systematically reduce all emotional charges that could be found, and this resulted in a marked speeding up of therapy, with entry into the prenatal area much easier of accomplishment. There was also an increase in the discovery of new engrams, some of which had been undreamed of previously. One of these, and a more common one than might be supposed, was the attempted abortion engram, "AA" to the auditors who delight in inventing colloquialisms. These are not the incidents in which doctors and quacks have performed abortions, for they are usually successful, leaving behind them no child to be affected. The AA refers to attempts, obviously unsuccessful, made at home and using a variety of implements, from knitting needles to douches. These seldom succeed, but they do have an effect on the embryo or fetus, each incident (and there may be as many as twenty or thirty of them in a single case) creating an engram. The implement may pierce the unborn child on a number of
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occasions, and he may still live, since the amniotic sac is self-sealing and all penetrating and crushing wounds to the embryo are quickly healed, since it is surrounded by the materials for repairing the damage. Wounds that would kill a man are taken in stride by the embryo, but the engrams remain.
While the prenatal child is in the uterus, it is subject to all sorts of damaging blows. When his mother bumps into a table, the amniotic fluid passes the pressure directly on to him, since it is not compressible. His embryonic head may be crushed, but it is soon rebuilt, and all he has remaining of the incident is an engram which may, if the perceptual content is just right, affect his whole life. When Mother bends over to tie her shoes the pressure may install an engram, given the proper words. And particularly engramic are the pressures of coitus, for they are frequently accompanied by words that can have all sorts of meanings to the unanalytical reactive mind. It is a simple matter to think of dozens of phrases, all containing the word "come," which can serve as bouncers, denyers, misdirectors, and holders. It would be too much to demand a cessation of sexual activity during pregnancy, but it is not too much to request that it be conducted in the greatest possible silence.
In fact, the old rule that "silence is golden" could have been made for pregnant women. When she falls she should be helped up, but without words. Whenever she is hurt or assumes any position that might cause additional pressure on the child, she must be aided in silence. And the silence is not to be imposed only on the
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people around her, but on herself, for if the engram can be robbed of its verbal content it will have nothing in it but its somatics, its experiences of pain, and without demon phrases will be easily erased. In fact, it will not be very aberrative, if at all.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that anything said in the presence of a person in pain and anaten is aberrative. There is no such thing as a helpful engram. Those which one might think would be helpful are termed manics, and they motivate the person who has them in the direction of a sort of forced achievement, but such a person is one who will blast off like a rocket and then fizzle out, sometimes at the top of his career.
Let us take an imaginary case: the mother of an unborn child receives a bump in the stomach, and says, "Oh, I hope I haven't hurt my baby. He'll never grow up to be a fine musician if he is injured." The father says, "Don't worry. And anyway, he is not going to be a musician, but a great astrophysicist." The child grows up with an absorbing interest in astronomy and physics. He is quite short ("He'll never grow up") and tone deaf as far as music is concerned. He makes excellent grades in college, standing at the head of his science classes, but he does not receive the professorship or observatory post that he wanted. His condition becomes one of apathy, since his manic has been driven into recession by this setback. He gives up science, which he suddenly finds he does not care very much about anyway. And he gets severe pains in some part of his body, that which had received the brunt of Mother's encounter with the table. Under Dianetic therapy, he will lose his apathy,
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go on with his scientific career and become a greater success than he could have been under the aberration of the manic, since he has the knowledge and training for it and has the full capacity of his mind to bring to bear upon the subject.
Let us suppose another construct for the sake of illustration, that any mind has a potential of one thousand attention units, units of mental capacity which can be used in giving attention to an idea or activity, thus furthering the purpose of one's life. Every engram ties up one or more of these units, and this includes the manics. Now, our boy scientist had a manic, and although all of his available units were arrayed in a force which, because of the manic, turned him into a virtual monomaniac striving for scientific knowledge, he had a shortage of units. Suppose that five hundred of his units were tied up in engrams; then he only had five hundred at his disposal. Once cleared, he could bring the full force of his entire thousand units into play. Failing to obtain the post he desired, he entered into a sad state. His manic had commanded him to be a great astrophysicist, but circumstances would not permit him to obey by achieving his goal, and he fell into apathy. Cleared, he could withstand such a temporary, minor setback and continue striving for success, which would be bound to come to one so well equipped.
We can rest assured that most, if not all, of the conquerors who rose to great power, only to fall in the end, were strongly motivated by such manics. Hannibal marched his Carthaginian armies to the very gates of Rome, but with victory in his grasp he suddenly retired,
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lost prestige among his allies, and suffered defeat from that time on. Attila also marched to Rome, and the only force that out to meet him was not an army, but Pope Leo at the head of a group of churchmen. Attila, who certainly was not overwhelmed by a band of unarmed Christian priests, being a most anti-Christian pagan, nevertheless turned back, and his threat was soon ended by his death. Alexander the Great conquered all of Asia up to the banks of the Indus, but when his armies could not be supplied over so great a distance, he had to retire and was dead within a year.
These are but three of the many would-be world conquerors who were driven on by a manic backed by great skill, but who crumbled when blocked by circumstances beyond their control. While biographies cannot be processed under Dianetic therapy, one can see marked resemblances in their stories to the manic engrams of living people. It has always been a mystery why Hannibal retired at a time when Rome lay virtually defenseless before him. What caused Attila to bow to the desires of Leo? Certainly not a divine miracle as some churchmen proclaim. Certainly not any fear of Leo's power. Or could that be the answer? Leo might have had power over Attila; not that of physical or spiritual force, but of an ally computation. Could some mannerism of Leo's, some way in which he spoke or moved, have reminded Attila of, say, his father whom he had to obey, or to whom he had to yield? Might not something of the same sort have been the motivating force behind Hannibal's withdrawal? We do not know,
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but certainly no other explanation of these strange retreats has been satisfactory.
Unlike Hannibal and Attila, Alexander had a clear reason for retreat. And when he could no longer obey the engramic command to conquer the world, he literally fell apart, becoming subject to drunkenness and a fever, both of which were probably engramic. Since we know that his mother Olympias instigated the assassination of his father Philip II, King of Macedon, it is quite reasonable to assume that she hated her husband. Mothers who hate fathers to the degree of killing them or having them killed are apt to prove excellent sources of manic engrams, as they tell one and all, "My child will be greater than his father. Nothing can stand in his way. Philip will only be remembered as the father of the greatest conqueror the world has ever seen," and other such remarks, at a time when the fetal Alexander was rendered anaten by the rise in blood pressure due to her combined emotions of hatred and excitement.
There are, then, two principal classes of engrams: those that are pro-survival and those that are anti-survival. The anti-survival engrams are those that block the How of life force; the pro-survival engrams seem to assist the flow of life force, although they do not. The anti-survival engram is like a dam across a river, holding back its flow; the pro-survival engram is like a channel which syphons off at least part of a river's flow, dispersing it where it can do no good.
One of the pro-survival engrams is the manic. Another is the ally computation which was discussed in the
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first chapter. This is the one in which Mother says, "I will take care of you," or in the prenatal area, "I must save my baby," or some such. You can have two engrams for the price of one by combining a manic with an ally computation in a phrase such as: "I must save my baby so that he can become a great artist."
Another of these pro-survival engrams, and a particularly harmful one, is the sympathy engram. It says, "I know your stomach hurts, darling, but Mother will take care of you. Poor baby, I'll always be here when you need help." This can be a prenatal engram if, for instance, Mother is saying this to a sick child as she bends over his crib, causing pressure on the fetus she is carrying. The reactive recording does not distinguish between the real target of these remarks and itself. In this particular situation, Mother may have killed, so to speak, two babes with one engram, for the child she is nursing might also, if sufficiently anaten, pick up his own engram from the same words. The effect of this engram, once restimulated, will be to cause either (or both) of these children to grow up with a reactive computation which says, "My survival depends on being taken care of. In order to receive care, I must be ill. If I am not ill, I will die."
All pro-survival engrams, and particularly the ally computations, are more difficult to find and erase than the anti-survival ones, for they seem to be a protection against the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune. Anti-survival engrams are more easily contacted, because they hold out no promise of survival to the preclear.
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The painful emotion engram is sometimes difficult to contact, but it will have to be entered and reduced or erased before much progress can be made in therapy. The painful emotion engram is usually installed at the death or removal of an ally, who may be a parent, an aunt, a nurse, or even a dog. Although it might possibly be found in the prenatal area, where the ally frequently resides, it is more likely to be the product of the years after birth. Those who become allies during the preclear's childhood are likely to be links on a chain leading back into the prenatal area.
There will probably be no physical pain when the death of an ally is first learned, but there will be shock and anaten, and the emotional content of this engram may well be sufficient to hold up the progress of therapy. Therefore, one of the first things the auditor will do is go searching for painful emotion. Frequently, the preclear will be quite casual about the whole affair: "Oh, she was just a governess I had when I was four. I didn't know her very well." Or: "Oh, he was just the family dog. He died when I was about six. I always did say that people shouldn't get involved with pets. That reminds me..."
That last phrase is an attempt to "duck" away from the incident, and when the auditor hears this, having already noted that the preclear is speaking in the past tense, another indication that he does not want to contact the incident too closely, he may be sure that there is a good deal of pain connected with that little dog The preclear would like to avoid the whole matter, but the auditor firmly steers him back into the incident and,
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more than likely, he will weep tears by the bucketful, discharging all the pent-up grief that has been held up in his reactive mind banks for years. The auditor will let him cry it out - it may take anywhere from five to thirty minutes - after which the whole engram is run through and erased, which can now occur quite easily. Once the grief has been lifted from a case, the rest of it will be likely to run smoothly.
The anaten in an engram in which there was severe pain sometimes manifests itself during therapy as unconsciousness. The preclear will begin to yawn and then give every indication of falling into a restless sleep, filled with mutterings and snatches of dreams. It seems as though he is making no progress, but he is, for he is reliving a period when he underwent injury and perhaps even came close to death, as an embryo, fetus, boy, or man. This may continue for five or ten minutes or more. Rarely does it last as long as half an hour, although in at least one case, the auditor had to sit it out for five hours. This is called boil-off in the popular terminology of the auditors, since the anaten overlaying a good part of this case is, like a pot of water, literally boiling off. An auditor who lacks experience may confuse the boil-off with a simple sleep command in an engram, but the difference is quite plain: in a sleep command, the preclear goes off into a nice sound sleep, while in the boil-off he will find all the sounds and bodily twistings already described.
The prenatal life of a person of forty is only some two-and-a-half percent of his total life, but it contains anywhere from two-thirds to three-fourths of his en-
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grams. So it is to the prenatal area that we must go for our major efforts at bringing a person up to clear. And this is the reason why psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis have failed to accomplish more than an occasional reduction of one or two out of perhaps hundreds of engrams in their patients, even after three years of intensive "therapy."
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