The Mind's Protection

"The mind is a self-protecting mechanism." OK, I'm prepared to consider this as a valid statement. Let's delve deeper.

Auditors will make mistakes, but nothing that can't be remedied. There are thousands of ways to get in to trouble with mental healing. Fine. I'm happy with those statements.

When it comes to, "The mind will not permit itself to be seriously overloaded so long as it can retain partial awareness of itself; it can only be overloaded when its awareness is reduced to a point where it cannot evaluate anything; it can then be thoroughly upset." I have to admit to struggling. On the face of it, this is contradicting itself. As long as the mind is at least partially aware of itself, then it can't be overloaded. If the mind is not aware of itself then it can be overloaded. The key things I find myself asking are, how does the mind lose awareness of itself if not through overloading, and if the mind hasn't got awareness of itself then how is it aware of other things by which it can be overloaded?

The only answer of this, for me, is that the mind must be in a state of trance. According to the dictionary, "an abnormal state of suspended consciousness." Dianetics claims the state to be, "reverie," which is explained by the dictionary as, "Musing; a day dream." This contrasts with the definition of reverie given by Dianetics to be, "a label introduced to make the patient feel that his state has altered and that he has gone into a state where his memory is very good or where he can do something he couldn't ordinarily do before. The actuality is that he is able to do it all the time anyway. It is not a strange state. The person is wide awake, but merely by asking him to close his eyes he is technically in reverie."

So, in order to achieve results during auditing, the person is encouraged in to a mode which is not a hypnotic trance, but is neither being fully conscious. The mode suggested by page 236 (page 2 of this chapter) is that the person is susceptible to suggestion; the manner by which past events can be analysed by the auditor through bypassing the protections of the fully conscious and wilful mind. The event can then be revisited and analysed for the impact that it had on the person, and the power of the emotional response to the situation, re-programmed.

In short, this is coming down to the age old adages of a problem shared being a problem halved and, in the case of dianetic application of this technique, having the support of another in a calm and perceived safe environment, to go through traumas experience and analyse them. To this extent, what I have read in this chapter is what the human race has been doing for years. The fact that Dianetics has observed these events and written them down does, indeed, classify this as being science of the mind; the pursuit of systematic and formulated knowledge on the subject of the minds behaviour.

I do recall Hubbard writing, somewhere else in this book, that Dianetics can not be outlawed because it is on the basis of one man simply talking to another. In that, I am in agreement with the foundational principle.

Now that I have reached this point in understanding, I have to take issue with the protection of the mind in these circumstances and the claim that any damage encountered through such a process can be undone. This is combined with the moral aspect of treatment. Where confronting a truth of a situation can, in itself, incur damage to the mind. One strong example is where this is a result of actions that the individual perceives as being bad and shameful, for example post-war veterans who pulled the trigger and killed people; whether enemy or innocents; this changes a person. To remove that responsibility, there seems from what I have been reading, to be only two ways out. One is to remove or shift responsibility for the actions; eg. following orders for the greater good. The other is to enforce belief that the end justified the means.

When public support wanes for a war and the justification in a war is thrown in to question, or the soldier in question ended up killing innocents, even by accident, then it can be seen that in order to alleviate the guilt in these cases, may be seen by some as introducing or reinforcing lies in order to alleviate engrams of guilt. That is, then, a very awkward ethical question.

In the everyday, it might be the result of seeing someone lying on the street, crying for help but walking past them doing nothing. What is worse, the guilt of doing nothing and walking by, or trying to do something for them but ultimately losing the battle to save their life? Seeing a pickpocket at work but failing to raise the alarm. Little things like that will result in engrams that can only be faced by repentance, or by forging a means of justification to appease the guilt.

Messing around with serious guilt complexes can send people in to downward spirals from which they might never come out, if they refuse to accept the forged justification and haven't got the soul to feel genuine repentance and acknowledge their feelings for their actions.

Thus, I take issue with the claim that an auditor can do no damage by reverie.