The Fundamentals Of Thought

Chapter Seven

THE PARTS OF MAN

     The individual man is divisible (separable) into three parts (divisions).

     The first of these is the spirit, called in Scientology the Thetan.

     The second of these parts is the Mind.

     The third of these parts is the Body.

     Probably the greatest discovery of Scientology and its most forceful contribution to the knowledge of mankind has been the isolation, description and handling of the human spirit, accomplished in July, 1951, in Phoenix, Arizona. I established along scientific rather than religious or humanitarian lines that that thing which is the person, the personality, is separable from the body and the mind at will and without causing bodily death or mental derangement.

     In ages past there has been considerable controversy concerning the human spirit or soul, and various attempts to control man have been effective in view of his almost complete ignorance of his own identity. Latterly spiritualists isolated from the person what they called the astral body, and with this they were able to work for various purposes of their own. In Scientology the spirit itself was separated from what the spiritualists called the astral body and there should be no confusion between these two things. As you know that you are where you are at this moment, so you would know if you, a spirit, were detached from your mind and body. Man had not discovered this before because, lacking the technologies of Scientology, he had very little reality upon his detachment from his mind and body and therefore conceived himself to be at least in part a mind and a body. The entire cult of communism is based upon the fact that one lives only one life, that there is no hereafter and that the individual has no religious significance. Man at large has been close to this state for at least the last century. The state (condition) is of a very low order, excluding as it does all self-recognition.

The Spirit

     The thetan (spirit) is described in Scientology as having no mass, no wave-length, no energy and no time or location in space except by consideration or postulate. The spirit then is not a thing. It is the creator of things.

     The usual residence of the thetan is in the skull or near the body. A thetan can be in one of four conditions. The first would be entirely separate from a body or bodies, or even from this universe. The second would be near a body and knowingly controlling the body. The third would be in the body (the skull) and the fourth would be an inverted condition whereby he is compulsively away from the body and cannot approach it. There are degrees (subdivisions) of each one of these four states (conditions). The most optimum of these conditions, from the standpoint of man, is the second.

     A thetan is subject to deterioration. This is at first difficult to understand since the entirety of his activity consists of considering or postulating. He uses, through his postulates, various methods of controlling a body. That he does deteriorate is manifest, but that he can at any moment return to an entirety of his ability is also factual. In that he associates being-ness with mass and action, he does not consider him-self as having an individual identity or name unless he is connected with one or more of the games of life.

     The processes of Scientology can establish this for the individual with greater or lesser rapidity, and one of the many goals of processing in Scientology is to "exteriorize" the individual and place him in the second condition above, since it has been discovered that he is happier and more capable when so situated.

The Mind

     The mind is a communication and control system between the thetan and his environment. The mind is a network of communications and pictures, energies and masses, which are brought into being by the activities of the thetan versus the physical universe or other thetans. A thetan establishes various Systems of control so that he can continue to operate a body and through the body operate things in the physical universe, as well as other bodies. The most obvious portion of the mind is recognizable by anyone not in serious condition. This is the "mental image picture." In Scientology we call this mental image picture a facsimile when it is a "photograph" of the physical universe sometime in the past. We call this mental image picture a mock-up when it is created by the thetan or for the thetan and does not consist of a photograph of the physical universe. We call a mental image picture a "hallucination" or more properly an automaticity (something uncontrolled) when it is created by another and seen by self.

     Various phenomena connect themselves with this entity called the mind. Some people closing their eyes see only blackness, some people see pictures. Some people see pictures made by body reactions. Some people see only black screens. Others see golden lines. Others see spaces, but the keynote of the entirety of the system called the mind is postulate and perception. Easily ten thousand new, separate mental phenomena, not hitherto seen by earlier observers, have been classified in Scientology and Dianetics (that branch of Scientology which applies only to the mind).

     The thetan receives, by the communication system called the mind, various impressions, including direct views of the physical universe. In addition to this he receives impressions from past activities, and, most important, he himself being close to a total knowingness, conceives things about the past and future which are independent of immediately present stimuli. The mind is not in its entirety a stimulus response mechanism as old Marxist psychology, as once taught in universities, would have one believe. The mind has three main divisions. The first of these could be called the analytical mind, the second the reactive mind, and the third the somatic mind.

The Analytical Mind

     The analytical mind combines perceptions of the immediate environment, of the past (via pictures) and estimations of the future into conclusions which are based upon the realities of situations. The analytical mind combines the potential knowingness of the thetan with the conditions of his surroundings and brings him to independent conclusions. This mind could be said to consist of visual pictures either of the past or of the physical universe, monitored by, and presided over by, the knowingness of a thetan. The keynote of the analytical mind is awareness. One knows what one is concluding and knows what he is doing.

The Reactive Mind

     The reactive mind is a stimulus response mechanism, ruggedly built, and operable in trying circumstances. The reactive mind never stops operating. Pictures of the environment, of a very low order, are taken by this mind even in some states of unconsciousness. The reactive mind acts below the level of consciousness. It is the literal stimulus response mind. Given a certain stimulus it gives a certain response. The entire subject of Dianetics (through mind) concerned itself mainly with this one mind.

     While it is an order of thinkingness, the ability of the reactive mind to conclude rationally is so poor that we find in the reactive mind those various aberrated impulses which are gazed upon as oddities of personality, eccentricities, neuroses and psychoses. It is this mind which stores up all the bad things that have happened to one and throws them back to him again in moments of emergency or danger so as to dictate his actions along lines which have been considered "safe" before. As there is little thinkingness involved in this, the courses of action dictated by the reactive mind are often not safe, but highly dangerous.

     The reactive mind is entirely literal in its interpretation of words and actions. As it takes pictures and receives impressions during moments of unconscious-ness, a phrase uttered when a blow is struck is likely to be literally interpreted by the reactive mind and becomes active upon the body and analytical mind at later times. The mildest stage of this would be arduous training, wherein a pattern is laid into the mind for later use under certain given stimuli.

     A harsh and less workable level is the hypnotic trance condition to which the mind is susceptible. Made impressionable by fixed attention, words can be immediately implanted into the reactive mind which become operable under restimulation at later times. An even lower level in the reactive mind is hat one associated with blows, drugs, illness, pain and other conditions of unconsciousness. Phreees spoken over an anaesthetized person can have a later effect upon that person. It is not necessarily true that each and every portion of an operation is painstakingly "photographed" by the reactive mind of the unconscious patient, but it is true that a great many of these stimuli are registered. Complete silence, in the vicinity of a person under anaesthetic or a person who is unconscious or in deep pain, is mandatory if one would preserve the mental health of that person or patient afterwards.

     Probably the most therapeutic action which could occur to an individual would be, under Scientology processing, the separation of the thetan from the mind so that the thetan, under no duress and with total knowingness, could view himself and his mind and act accordingly. However, there is a type of exteriorization which is the most aberrative of all traumatic (mentally injurious) actions. This is the condition when an individual is brought, through injury or surgery or shock, very close to death so that he exteriorizes from body and mind. This exteriorization under duress is sudden, and to the patient inexplicable, and is in itself very shocking. When this has occurred to an individual, it is certain that he will suffer mentally from the experience afterwards. It could be said that when the reactive mind contains these sudden shocks of exteriorization under duress, attempts to exteriorize the individual later by Scientology are more difficult. However, modern processing has overcome this. The phenomenon of exteriorization under duress is accompanied at times by energy explosions in the various facsimiles of the mind, and these cross-associate in the reactive mind. Therefore, people become afraid of exteriorization, and at times people are made ill simply by discussing the phenomenon, due to the fact that they have exteriorized, under duress, during some operation or accident. Exteriorization under duress is the characteristic of death itself. Therefore, exteriorization or the departure of the soul is generally associated with death in the minds of most people. It is not necessarily true that one is dead because he exteriorizes, and it is definitely not true that exteriorization not accompanied by a shock, pain or duress is at all painful. Indeed, it is quite therapeutic.

The Somatic Mind

     The third portion of the mind is the somatic mind. This is an even heavier type of mind than the reactive mind since it contains no thinkingness and contains only actingness. The impulses placed against the body by the thetan through various mental machinery arrive at the voluntary, involuntary and glandular levels. These have set methods of analysis for any given situation and so respond directly to commands given.

     Unfortunately the somatic mind is subject to each of the minds higher in scale above it and to the thetan. In other words, the thetan can independently affect the somatic mind. The analytical mind can affect the somatic mind. The reactive mind can affect the somatic mind. Thus we see that the neurons, the glandular system, the muscles and masses of the body are subject to various impulses, each one of a lower order than the next. Thus it is not odd to discover what we call "psychosomatic" illness. A condition exists here where the thetan does not have an awareness of burdening the somatic mind with various commands or derangements. Neither does the thetan have an awareness of his own participation in the analytical mind causing this action against the body. In that the thetan is seldom aware of the reactive mind, it is possible then for the reactive mind, with its stimulus response content, to impinge itself directly, and without further recourse or advice, upon the neurons, muscles and glandular system of the body. In that the reactive mind can hold a fixed command in place, causing a derangement in the somatic mind, it is possible then for illness to exist, for bizarre pains to be felt, for actual physical twists and aberrations to occur, without any conscious knowledge on the part of the thetan. This we call physical illness caused by the mind. In brief, such illness is caused by perceptions received in the reactive mind during moments of pain and unconsciousness.

     Whether the facsimile in the mind is received while the thetan is awake or unconscious, the resulting mass of the energy picture is energy just as you see energy in an electric light bulb or from the flames of a fire. At one time it was considered that mental energy was different from physical energy. In Scientology it has been discovered that mental energy is simply a finer, higher level physical energy. The test of this is conclusive in that a thetan "mocking-up" (creating) mental image pictures and thrusting them into the body can increase the body mass, and by casting them away again can decrease the body mass. This test has actually been made and an increase of as much as 30 pounds, actually measured on scales, has been added to, and subtracted from, a body by creating "mental energy." Energy is energy. It has different wave-lengths and different characteristics. The mental image pictures are capable of reacting upon the physical environment, and the physical environment is capable of reacting on mental image pictures. Thus the mind actually consists of spaces, energies and masses of the same order as the physical universe, if lighter and different in size and wave-length. For a much more comprehensive picture of the mind one should read "The Original Thesis" and "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." These were written before the discovery of the upper levels of beingness were made and are a very complete picture of the mind itself, its structure and what can be done to it and with it.

The Body

     The third part of man is the physical body. This can best be studied in such books as "Grey's Anatomy" and other anatomical texts. This is the province of the medical doctor and, usually, the old-time psychiatrist or psychologist who were involved in the main in body worship. The body is a purely structural study, and the actions and reactions among its various structures are complex and intensely interesting.

     When Scientology established biophysics, it did so because of the various discoveries which had accumulated concerning mental energy in its reaction against physical energy, and the activities which took place in the body because of these inter-actions. Biophysics only became feasible when it was discovered in Scientology that a fixed electrical field existed surrounding a body entirely independent of, but influenceable by, the human mind. The body exists in its own space. That space is created by "anchor points" (points which are anchored in a space different to the physical universe space around a body). The complexity of these anchor points can cause an independent series of electronic flows which can occasion much discomfort to the individual. The balance structure of the body and even its joint action and physical characteristics can be changed by changing this electrical field which exists at a distance from, or within, the body.

     The electrical field is paramount and monitors the actual physical structure of the body. Thus the body is not only influenced by the three minds, it is influenced as well by its own electrical field. An expert Scientologist can discover for the average person this field, and can bring about its adjustment, although this is very far from the primary purpose of the Scientologist. The use of electrical shocks upon a body for any purpose is therefore very dangerous and is not condoned by sensible men. Of course, the use of electrical shock was never intended to be therapeutic, but was intended only to bring about obedience by duress, and, as far as it can be discovered, to make the entirety of insanity a horror. Electrical shock deranges the electronic field in the vicinity of the body and is always succeeded by bad health or physical difficulties and never does otherwise than hasten the death of the person. It has been stated by people using electric shock that if they were denied euthanasia (the right to kill people who were considered to be a burden on a society) they would at least use partial euthanasia in the form of electric shock, brain surgery arid drugs. These treatments in some large percentage of cases, however, effected euthanasia as they were expected to do.

     A knowledge of both the mental and physical structure of the body would be necessary in order to treat the body, and this knowledge has not existed prior to Scientology. The medical doctor has achieved many results by working purely with structure and bio-chemical products, and in the field of emergency surgery and obstetrics and orthopaedics, he is indispensable in the society. Medicine, however, has not previously even contained a definition for "mind" and is not expected to invade the field which belongs properly to Scientology.

     These three parts of mail, the thetan, the mind and the body, are each one different studies, but they influence each other markedly and continually. Of the three, the senior entity is the thetan, for without the thetan there would be no mind or animation in the body, while without a body or a mind there is still animation and life in the thetan. The thetan is the person. You are you in a body.

     Many speculations in the field of para-Scientology have been made. Para-Scientology includes all of the uncertainties and unknown territories of life which have not been completely explored and explained. However, as studies have gone forward, it has become more and more apparent that the senior activity of life is that of the thetan, and that in the absence of the spirit no further life exists. In the insect kingdom it is not established whether or not each insect is ordered by a spirit or whether one spirit orders enormous numbers of insects. It is not established how mutation and evolution occur (if they do), and the general Authorship of the physical universe is only speculated upon, since Scientology does not invade the Eighth Dynamic.

     Some facts, however, are completely known. The first of these is that the individual himself is a spirit controlling a body via a mind. The second of these is that the thetan is capable of making space, energy, mass and time. The third of these is that the thetan is separable from the body without the phenomenon of death, and can handle and control a body from well outside it. The fourth of these is that the thetan does not care to remember the life which he has just lived, after he has parted from the body and the mind. The fifth of these is that a person dying always exteriorizes. The sixth of these is that the person, having exteriorized, usually returns to a planet and procures, usually, another body of the same type of race as before.

     In para-Scientology there is much discussion about "between lives areas" and other phenomena which might have passed at one time or another for heaven or hell, but it is established completely that a thetan is immortal and that he himself cannot actually experience death and counterfeits it by forgetting. It is adequately manifest that a thetan lives again and that he is very anxious to put something on the "time track" (something for the future) in order to have something to come back to, thus we have the anxieties of sex. There must be additional bodies for the next life. It is obvious that what we create in our Societies during this life-time affects us during our next lifetime. This is quite different than the "belief," or the idea, that this occurs. In Scientology we have very little to do with forcing people to make conclusions. An individual can experience these things for himself and unless he can do so no one expects him to accept them.

     The manifestation that our hereafter is our next life entirely alters the general concept of spiritual destiny. There is no argument whatever with the tenets of faith since it is not precisely stated, uniformly, by religions that one immediately goes to a heaven or hell. It is certain that an individual experiences the effect of the civilization which he has had part in creating, in his next life-time. In other words, the individual comes back. He has a responsibility for what goes on today since he will experience it tomorrow.

     Sex has been overweighted in importance in old psychotherapy, an importance more or less disgraced at this time. Sex is only one of numerous creative impulses. An anxiety about sex, however, occurs when an individual begins to believe that there will not be a body for him to have during the next life-time. The common denominator of all aberration (mental derangement) is cessation of creation. As sex is only one kind of creation and a rather low order of it, it will be seen that unhappiness could stem from various cessations of creation. Death itself is a cessation of creation. One stops creating the identity John Jones and the environment and things of John Jones. He stops because he believes he cannot, himself, continue this creation without the assistance of a body, having become dependent upon a mind and a body, the first to do his thinking for him and the second to do his acting. An individual becoming sufficiently morose on the idea of creation can actually bring about the condition of an inability to create.

Control

     It will be seen that the three parts of man are intimately associated with control. The anatomy of control is start, change and stop. The loss of control takes place with the loss of pan-determinism. When one becomes too partisan, braces himself too solidly against the remainder of the environment, he no longer controls the environment to the degree that he might and so is unable to start, change and stop the environment.

     It is a scientific definition in Scientology that control consists of start, change and stop. These three manifestations can be graphed alongside the apparent cycle of action, create, survive, destroy. Any person is somewhere along this curve. An individual who is bent mainly upon survival is intent, usually, upon changing things. An individual who is close to being destroyed is bent mainly upon stopping things. An individual who has a free heart and mind about life is bent upon creating things. There could be three things wrong with any person, and these would be the inability to start, the inability to change, the inability to stop. Insanity, for the most part, is an inability to stop. A neurosis is a habit which, worsening, flies entirely out of control. One is stopped so often in life that he becomes an enemy of stopping and dislikes stopping so intensely that he himself will not stop things. Neurosis and psychosis of all classes are entirely inabilities to start, to change or to stop.

     In the matter of the parts of man we discover that all things are initiated by the thetan so far as action, activity and behaviour are concerned. After such an initiation he can be blunted or warped from course and acted upon in such a way that his attention becomes too fixed along one line or another and begins to suffer from these three inabilities. However, each one of the parts of man is subject to the anatomy of control. An individual begins first by being able himself, and without help, to start, to change and to stop. Then the mind may become prone to these disabilities and is unable to start, change or to stop at will. Then the body itself can become subject to these three disabilities and is unable to start, to change and to stop. The oddity is, however, that an environment can so work upon a thetan that his body becomes disabled through no choice of his own. Similarly the reactive mind can become disabled through no choice of either the body or the thetan, but the thetan himself beyond observing the effect of various causes and having initiated the thought to be there, can only become disabled by becoming too partisan, by becoming too little pan-determined, and so bringing himself into difficulties. These difficulties, however, are entirely the difficulties of consideration. As the thetan considers, so he is. In the final analysis the thetan has no problems of his own. The problems are always "other people's problems" and must exist in the mind or the body or in other people or his surroundings for him to have problems. Thus his difficulties are, in the main, difficulties of staying in the game and keeping the game going.

     If a thetan can suffer from anything, it is being out-created (created against too thoroughly). The manifestations of being out-created would be the destruction of his own creations and the over-powering presence of other creations. Thus a thetan can be brought to believe that he is trapped if he is outcreated.

     In past dissertations on the subject of the mind and philosophies of life there was a great deal of speculation and very little actual proof. Therefore, these philosophies were creations, and one philosopher was at work ou1:-creating another philosopher. In Scientology we have this single difference. We are dealing with discoveries. The only things created about Scientology are the actual books and works in which Scientology is presented. The phenomena of Scientology are discovered and are held in common by all men and all life forms. There is no effort in Scientology to out-create each and every thetan that comes along. It is, of course, possible to conceive Scientology as a creation, and to conceive that it is overwhelming. It should be viewed otherwise, for it is intended as an assistance to life at large, to enable life to make a better civilization and a better game. There are no tenets in Scientology which cannot be demonstrated with entirely scientific procedures.

1956