Editing Auditing (Scientology) (section)

== Constructs ==

=== Reactive mind ===

The ''reactive mind'' (also called a ''reactive bank'', or simply ''bank'') is a concept formulated by Hubbard, referring to that portion of the human mind that is unconscious and operates on a stimulus-response basis. In the reactive mind are ''engrams'' which are recordings of incidents in one's life that Hubbard says cause most mental, emotional, and [[psychosomatic]] ailments.{{r|hubbard-sos|p=418}}{{r|gardner|p=266}}

{{Blockquote|text=What can it do? It can give a man arthritis, bursitis, asthma, allergies, sinusitis, coronary trouble, high blood pressure and so on down the whole catalogue of psycho-somatic ills, adding a few more which were never specifically classified as psycho-somatic, such as the common cold. —L. Ron Hubbard {{r|hubbard-dmsmh|p=51}} }}

The action of auditing is to locate these incidents and "erase" them, meaning they are removed from the unconscious reactive mind and re-filed into the person's conscious analytical mind.{{r|corydon|p=269|quote=The idea in [auditing] is to gain access to the postulates or 'think' (immature evaluations) buried in moments of pain, unconsciousness, and shock, and 'erase' them from the 'reactive mind,' thus refiling them in the conscious mind where they can be intelligently evaluated, used or discarded, at the individual's discretion.}}{{r|gardner|p=269|quote=As he recounts these experiences, the engrams slowly lose their evil power. Eventually they are totally "erased." This means they have been taken from the "reactive bank" and refiled in the "standard memory bank" where they can be recalled by the conscious mind.}}

=== Engram ===

The use of the word ''engram'' in Dianetics and Scientology is different from the meaning of [[Engram (neuropsychology)|"engram" in cognitive psychology]].{{r|cordon}} According to Hubbard, an engram is a detailed mental image or memory of a traumatic event from the past that occurred when an individual was partially or fully unconscious. Whenever something painful happens while one's "analytic mind" is unconscious, engrams are said to be recorded and stored within the reactive mind.{{r|Jacobsen}}{{r|hubbard-techdict|p=141}}

In 1950, Hubbard first described an engram as a "cellular level recording" that includes both physical and emotional pain,{{r|Refslund|p=52}} but later redefined his concept as being "a mental image picture of a moment of pain and unconsciousness".{{r|abilitymag36}}

Engrams are said to originate from painful incidents, which close down the "analytic function", leaving a person to operate only on the "reactive" level, where everything, including pain, position, and location are experienced as "aspects of the unpleasant whole." An engram is restimulated if the person is later reminded of the painful experience, causing feelings of guilt or embarrassment – another engram. This cycle is called a "lock" in Scientology terminology.{{r|cook|p=59}} Engrams are stored as series of incidents that are similar, called "chains".{{r|Refslund|p=52}}

Jeff Jacobsen compared the process of auditing engrams to the [[Freudian psychoanalysis|Freudian psychoanalytic]] concept of [[abreaction]], equating engrams to the painful subconscious memories that abreaction therapy brings up to the conscious mind. He quoted Nathaniel Thornton, who compared abreaction to confession.{{r|Jacobsen}} Dorthe Refslund Christensen describes engrams in layman's terms as trauma, a means to explain the long and short term effects of painful experiences.{{r|Refslund}} According to Christensen, Hubbard wrote about the dramatization of an engram, where the one who suffered and recorded the pain as an engram relates all sensory perceptions during the time of the painful incident to the incident. These sensory perceptions become "restimulators" that remind the individual of the pain and triggers him or her to re-experience it.{{r|Refslund}} 

Scholar Richard Holloway writes that according to Scientology, engrams are "damaging experiences that happen by accident," bruises through time implanted on [[thetan]]s through the course of millions of lives. Sometimes the damage is intentionally inflicted by thetans who desired power over other thetans. Deliberate injuries are called [[#Implants|implants]] in Scientology. Hubbard wrote, "Implants result in all varieties of illness, apathy, degradiation, neurosis and insanity and are the principle causes of these in man." The Christian idea of heaven is a deceptive implant, Hubbard taught, for there is an infinite series of lives after the first, contrary to the Christian notion of the afterlife.{{r|Holloway}}

The term ''engram'' was coined in 1904 by the German scholar [[Richard Semon]],{{r|dudai}} who defined it as a "stimulus impression" which could be reactivated by the recurrence of "the energetic conditions which ruled at the generation of the engram."{{r|corydon|p=Cha.2}} Hubbard re-used Semon's concept when he published ''[[Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health]]'' in 1950. He conceived of the engram as a form of "memory trace", an idea that had long existed in medicine. According to physician [[Joseph A. Winter|Joseph Winter]], who collaborated with Hubbard during the early years of the Dianetics organizations, Hubbard had taken the term "engram" from a 1936 edition of ''[[Dorland's Medical Dictionary]]'', where it was defined as "a lasting mark or trace...In psychology it is the lasting trace left in the psyche by anything that has been experienced psychically; a latent memory picture."{{r|winter}} Hubbard had originally used various terms such as "norn", "comanome" and "impediment" before settling on "engram" following a suggestion from Winter.{{r|atack|page=109}}

{{Anchor|Incident|Incidents|Implant|Implants}}
=== Incidents and implants ===

"Incidents" are events that happened to a person which continue to have a grip on their mind or spirit, and negatively affects them. It could be an accident or traumatic event that includes pain and subconscious commands, whether from this life or in a past life. Auditing procedures locate incidents in the person and relieve or erase them from the person's mind.{{r|lewishandbook|p=3-4}}{{Efn|Quotation: "The invention of language and the entrance of language into the [[Engram (Dianetics)|engram bank]] of the reactive mind seriously complicates the mechanistic reactions. The engrams containing language impinge themselves upon the conscious mind as commands." —L. Ron Hubbard {{r|hubbard-dmsmh|p=xiii}} }}{{r|hubbard-techdict|p=207}}

"Implants" are an element of some incidents involving externally-imposed memories that contain commands and fictitious events. Hubbard alleges that the person will believe the implanted incident actually existed, and the commands in the implant make the person act strangely. A contemporary analogy would be the installing of a [[Hypnosis|hypnotic]] command. However, the implants Hubbard presents in his lectures and writings are characterized by past-life incidents set in technologically advanced, [[space opera]] scenarios. Typically, these implants involve electronic fields entrapping and zapping a [[thetan]] (the being), installing commands, and showing cinema-like moving pictures to install false memories.{{Efn|Glossary entry in Corydon (1987): "IMPLANT: Fundamentally any hypnotic suggestion. Hubbard defined it in terms of "space opera": a highly technical and complex system of mass hypnosis inflicted on populations by evil rulers. He claims that these implants have been inflicted upon everyone on the planet. An example of the "most devastating" of these are in the "Wall of Fire" chapter.{{r|corydon}} }}{{r|atack|p=30}}{{r|hubbard-techdict|p=206}}{{r|lewis-ch4|p=91}} Such incidents are alleged to have occurred millions or trillions of years ago.{{efn|name=scale|L. Ron Hubbard used the [[Long and short scales|short scale]] numbering system where a ''billion'' is 1,000,000,000, a ''trillion'' is 1,000,000,000,000, a ''quadrillion'' is 1,000,000,000,000,000, and a ''trillion trillion'' is "1" followed by 24 zeroes.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Book of E-Meter Drills |year=1968 |first=L. Ron |last=Hubbard |author-link=L. Ron Hubbard |editor-first=Mary Sue |editor-last=Hubbard |editor-link=Mary Sue Hubbard |at=E-Meter Drill 25}}</ref>}} However, Hubbard believed that implantation is being performed in contemporary times by psychiatrists and priests.{{r|kent1999|p=104,106}}{{r|atack|p=344}} 

Methods of trapping and implanting a thetan might include blasts of raw electricity, explosions, fantastic motion, or white energy. Hubbard named his implants based on elements in the narratives—like aircraft door, gorilla, hoipolloi, bear, black thetan, and invisible picture.{{r|malko|pp=111-3}}

Hubbard wrote extensively about specific incidents and implants he alleged are common to all beings on earth, and which should be "audited out" (removed) in order to help a person become more sane or spiritually free. The incidents that have most been covered in media, scholarly works, and books include the between-lives implants,{{r|miller|p=206}} Christian-story implants, and the OT III implants known as the [[Xenu|Xenu story]].

Jon Atack wrote that "implants are [considered] the true foundation of the Reactive Mind" and specific implants are addressed by auditing on [[Operating Thetan#OTII|OT levels II and III]].{{r|atack|pp=30, 32}} Hubbard names the earliest implant on the whole track as "Facsimile One", and describes the "Between-lives implants" as forgetter implants that cause humans to not remember their past lives.{{r|atack|p=133}}{{r|hubbard-techdict|pp=43, 154}}

Hubbard's incidents and implants are unique to Scientology beliefs and have not been proven to exist or to have happened. Critics have noted many scientific implausibilities connected with the OT III incidents. Peter Forde's paper "A Scientific Scrutiny of OT III" analyzes the matter in detail,{{r|forde}} and the placement of events trillions of years ago contradicts the currently accepted [[age of the Universe]] as 13.8 billion years.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.space.com/24054-how-old-is-the-universe.html |website=space.com |title=How Old is the Universe |first=Keith |last=Cooper |date=August 28, 2023}}</ref>

Some examples of Hubbard's incidents and implants include the following.

{{Anchor|Helatrobus}}
;Helatrobus implants
: Hubbard describes the [[Helatrobus]] implants as occurring 52 to 382 trillion years ago by an alien nation called the Helatrobans, who sought to restrain minds by capturing and brainwashing thetans; these implants are said to be responsible for the concept of [[Heaven]].{{r|hcob19630511|helatrobus}}

; Heaven implants
: The Heaven Implants were dated at "43,891,832,611,177&nbsp;years, 344&nbsp;days, 10&nbsp;hours, 20&nbsp;minutes and 40&nbsp;seconds ago from 10:{{frac|02|1|2}}&nbsp;P.M. Daylight [[Greenwich Mean Time|Greenwich Time]] May 9, 1963." They comprised two series of views of Heaven, the first of which was quite positive: Hubbard compares Heaven to "[[Busch Gardens#Pasadena (1906–1937)|Busch Gardens in Pasadena]]". In the second series, Heaven had become a lot shabbier:
: {{blockquote|text=The place is shabby. The vegetation is gone. The pillars are scruffy. The saints have vanished. So have the Angels. A sign on one (the left as you "enter") says "This is Heaven". The right has a sign "Hell" with an arrow and inside the grounds one can see the excavations like archaeological diggings with raw terraces, that lead to "Hell".{{r|hcob19630511}}}}
: After being ridiculed in the [[Anderson Report]] (a 1960s Australian public inquiry into Scientology), this bulletin was withdrawn from circulation.

; Incident I
: Incident I is set four quadrillion years ago,{{efn|name=scale}} wherein an unsuspecting thetan was subjected to a loud snapping noise, followed by a flood of luminescence, then saw a [[chariot]] followed by a trumpeting [[cherub]]. After a loud set of snaps, the thetan was overwhelmed by darkness. This is described as the implant opening the gateway to the present universe, separating thetans from their ''static'' (natural/godlike) state. The incident is described in [[Operating Thetan]] level III (OT III), written in 1967.{{r|wright|p=104}}

; R6 implants (Incident II)
: The R6 Implants were the work of the Galactic Confederacy's tyrannical leader, [[Xenu]], 75 million years ago. According to Hubbard, Xenu destroyed billions of captured subjects during Incident II by dropping them into volcanoes and attacking them with [[nuclear weapon]]s.<ref>{{Cite news|author= Jamie Doward |title= Lure of the celebrity sect|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/may/16/religion.world |work=The Guardian |date= 2004-05-16 |access-date=2008-02-12}}</ref> The subjects, once disembodied, were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for thirty-six days. This implanted pictures "contain[ing] [[God]], [[the Devil]], Angels, [[space opera]], theaters, helicopters, a constant spinning, a spinning dancer, trains and various scenes very like modern England."<ref>Hubbard, Assists, Class VIII Course, October 3, 1968</ref>

; Bodies in pawn
: One of the more gruesome incidents is "Bodies in pawn":{{r|SHOM|pages=80–81}}
: {{blockquote|text=A fellow is grabbed, hypnotized, shoved into an electronic field, and then told he is somewhere else. And so he departs—most of him—and goes to the new location while still being under control of the implanters. He picks up a [physical] body in the new location and starts living a life there, ''while still having a living body somewhere else''. The implanters can keep his original body alive indefinitely, and control the [being] through it. If the [being] tries to flee, the hypnotizers simply cause pain to the original body, still alive in a vat of fluid, and he is immediately recalled. That's a BODY IN PAWN. It's a second body you may have, living somewhere else, right in present time. But the second body is not under YOUR direct control. —L. Ron Hubbard <ref>{{Cite magazine |magazine=[[Bibliography of Scientology#Periodicals|Source]] |issue=105 |page=39 |year=1997 |title=Bodies in Pawn}}</ref><ref>Hubbard, ''Research and Discovery Series'' vol. 10</ref>}}