In Dianetics, a person in his or her optimal state is called clear (from the English clear, “clear, clean”). This word appears frequently in the book, both as a noun and as a verb (“to clear”). Therefore, it is important to state precisely at the beginning of the book what the goal of dianetic therapy is - the state of “clear”.
One can check the clearing for any aberrations: psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions, as well as autogenous (self-induced) diseases, which are called psychosomatic diseases. Such a check will confirm that the cleric has no trace of such diseases or aberrations. Further verification will show that his intelligence level is far above what is considered the norm today, and observation of his activities will demonstrate that he is energetic and lives with pleasure.
In addition, it is also possible to obtain such results on the basis of comparison. A neurotic who also has psychosomatic illnesses can be examined for aberrations and illnesses and confirmed that they are indeed present. He can then be given dianetic therapy to rid him of these diseases and neurotic conditions. Finally, he can be examined again - and verified that his diseases and aberrations have indeed disappeared.
Note that this experiment has been carried out many times, and each time the result has been unchanged. It has been proven experimentally that clearing with dianetic therapy has this effect on all people whose nervous system is not organically damaged.
The Clear has qualities (these qualities are inherent in every person, but are not always manifested in him unless he is Clear) that people did not even suspect existed, and in the past these qualities were never considered when discussing human abilities and behavior.
First of all, this concerns perceptions. Even so-called "normal" people do not always distinguish all colors, all sound tones, and their sense of smell, taste, touch and organic sensations are not always at an optimum level.
These are the main communication channels that connect a person with the limited world that most people perceive as reality. It is interesting to note the following: although in the past observers believed that it was absolutely necessary for an aberrated person to face reality in order to become mentally healthy, however, no method was ever formulated for achieving this.
In order to face the reality that exists at the moment, it is necessary, of course, that a person be able to perceive this reality through the communication channels that are most often used by people.
Any of man's perceptions may be aberrated by mental disorders which prevent the analytical part of the mind from being aware of the sensations it receives. In other words, although the mechanism of color perception may be perfectly fine, there may be circuits in the mind which destroy the color before the conscious mind has a chance to see the object. It may be found that there are varying degrees of color blindness: colors appear less vivid, or dull, or, in the worst case, completely absent. We all know people who cannot stand "garish" colors, and people for whom these same colors seem not bright enough to be noticed.
The fact that this difference in the degree of color blindness depends on some mental state has never been recognized. And when it has been noticed, only vague suggestions have been made that it is a state of mind.
There are people who are greatly disturbed by noise, and to whom, for example, the persistent wailing of a violin sounds very much like drilling into their eardrums. There are also people who find fifty violins playing very loudly soothing. There are also those who show no interest in violin music, but merely feel bored. And for some, the sound of a violin, no matter how complex the melody, seems monotonous. These differences in the perception of sound, as well as errors in the perception of color and other visual information, have been attributed to innate qualities, organic deviations, or not classified at all.
Likewise, the sense of smell, touch, organic sensations, the sense of pain, and the sense of gravity vary greatly from person to person. If you quickly test your friends, you will find enormous differences in the perception of the same stimuli. One person finds the aroma of a turkey in the oven delicious, another remains indifferent to it, and a third, perhaps, does not notice it at all. And someone else might argue that roasting turkey smells exactly like hair oil, if we're talking about extremes.
Until we got the Clears, the reason for these differences remained unclear, since in most cases such sharp differences in the quality and intensity of perception are the result of aberration. Due to pleasant experiences in the past, and also depending on the innate sensitivity, there may also be some differences in the perceptions that the Clears have. The reaction of the Clear should not be automatically accepted as some kind of standard, an average (this is a dull and disgusting picture, which was the goal of the teachings of the past). The reaction of the Clear to the stimulus is the strongest possible, but it is subject to his desires. Burning gunpowder still smells dangerous to him, but this smell does not make him sick. Roast turkey smells good if he is hungry and likes turkey. Then it really smells wonderful. The violin sounds melodious to him, not monotonous, it does not cause painful sensations and brings full pleasure if the Clear likes violin music, which is a matter of taste. If the violin doesn't give him pleasure, then he might like the timpani, the saxophone, or, depending on his mood, no music at all.
In other words, there are two variables involved. One of them, the least predictable, is determined by aberrations. The other, quite rational and understandable, is determined by the individual qualities of the person.
Thus, the perceptions of an aberrated person (not a Clear) are very different from the perceptions of a Clear (non-aberrated person).
There are differences in the sense organs themselves and the errors caused by them. A certain amount of these errors (minimal) are of organic origin: perforated eardrums are not a full-fledged sound recording mechanism. Most of the errors of perception that can be attributed to organic are caused by psychosomatic deviations.
Wherever you look, you can see people wearing glasses, even children wear glasses. In most cases, people do this in an attempt to correct a certain condition, while the body itself is struggling to maintain this condition. When a person begins to wear glasses, his vision deteriorates due to psychosomatic deviations (but not because of the glasses themselves). This may be called a wild assertion, but no more than the assertion that apples, when falling from a tree, usually obey the law of gravity. One of the "side effects" that a Clear receives is that his vision, if it was poor when he was aberrated, usually improves markedly, and with some attention it eventually reaches optimum levels.
The vision of an aberrated person is impaired organically by his aberrations, so that the organs of perception (the eyes) themselves are no longer able to function normally. With the removal of the aberration, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by experience, the body makes heroic efforts to return to optimum conditions.
Hearing, like other senses, varies widely at the organic level. Calcium deposits, for example, can cause a constant ringing in the ears. The elimination of aberrations allows the body to self-regulate to achieve an optimal state: the calcium deposits disappear - the ringing in the ears stops. But even without considering this special case, there can be significant differences in the perception of sounds at the organic level. Both due to differences at the organic level and due to aberration, hearing can become significantly sharper or, conversely, can be greatly dulled, so that one person can hear footsteps a block away and for him it is normal, while another would not hear a drum thundering right outside his door.
The fact that different perceptions in different people differ greatly due to aberrations and psychosomatic deviations is far from the most important of the discoveries described here. The ability to remember is a much more impressive phenomenon if we consider how it varies from person to person. In observing Clears and aberrees, an entirely new way of remembering has been discovered, which is inherent in the mind but was previously unknown. In the case of aberrees, this process can be fully manifested only in a small percentage of them. In the Clear, however, it is a normal phenomenon. Of course, there is no hint here that the learned men of the past were not noted for their powers of observation. We are dealing with an entirely new, hitherto unknown object of observation - the Clear. What the Clear can do with ease, many people in the past were also able to do, but only to some degree and not always.
The ability that is inherent in the mechanisms of memory (and is not acquired) can be called in Dianetics the term recurrence. This word is used in its ordinary dictionary meaning, taking into account the fact that for the mind this is the normal activity of remembering. It happens like this: a person can “send” part of the mind into the past either mentally or simultaneously mentally and physically and relive those events that happened in the past – just as they happened at the time they happened, with the same sensations.
So the mind has another way of remembering. Part of the mind is able to “go back” and relive in full detail an event from the past, even when the person is fully awake. If you want to be sure, check this on several people until you find a person who can do this with ease. Being fully awake, he can “go back” to moments of his past. Until you asked him about it, he probably did not even suspect that he had this ability. If he could do it, he probably thought that everyone could do it (this kind of assumption was precisely the obstacle due to which much of this information previously remained unknown). He can return to the moment when he once swam and “swim” again, experiencing all the sensations from that moment: auditory, visual, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, organic, and so on.
Return is the full-blown work of image memory. Memory as a whole is capable of causing the organs of the body to sense again the stimuli that were present at a past moment. Partial ability to recall sensations is common; not so common as to be considered "normal," but certainly common enough to merit serious study, since this ability, again, can vary widely.
The perception of what exists in the present is one way of facing reality. However, if a person is unable to face the past, this means that he is in some way unable to face reality. And if it is agreed that facing reality is desirable, then a person would also have to face the reality of yesterday to be considered fully sane, according to the modern definition.
The first way is return. This is something new. Return has the following advantage: it allows one to revisit the moving pictures and all the other perceptions of the senses recorded at the moment when the event occurred. A person can also, by going back in time, recall his conclusions and fantasies. This ability to go back in time, to the moment when the necessary information was considered for the first time, is an excellent assistant in study, research and in everyday life.
In addition, there are more familiar ways of remembering. The optimal way is to return one or more sensations, while the person himself remains in the present time. In other words, some people, thinking about a rose, see a rose, feel its smell, touch it. They see it in all its colors, clearly - "with their inner eye", to use a well-known colloquial expression. They clearly feel its smell. And they are able to touch it, feeling even the thorns. Thinking about roses, they actually resurrect a rose in their memory.
In aberrated people, these abilities manifest themselves in completely different ways. If you ask them to think about a rose, some will only be able to visualize a rose. Others will smell the aroma, but will not see the flower itself. To others it will be colorless or very dim. If asked to think of a ship, some aberree will see only a flat, colorless, frozen image, such as a photograph or a painting. Others will see a ship in motion, without color, but will hear a sound. Some will hear the sounds that one might hear on a ship, but will see nothing at all. Some will think of a ship and get only the idea that ships exist and that they know about it, but these people will not be able to see it from memory, or feel it, or hear its sounds, or smell it, or have any other sensations.
In the past, some observers have called these "mental images," but this term is so inapplicable to hearing and touch, to organic sensations and pain, that in Dianetics a special term is used in all cases - recall.
Testing for recall is quite simple. If you ask people you know about their abilities, you will get a good idea of how much this ability varies from person to person. Some people have one recall, some have another. Some people have no recall at all, and operate solely on ideas of what a particular recall should be. And remember, when testing your friends for recall, that all perception is stored (and therefore can be recalled) in memory, and this includes pain, temperature, rhythm, taste, weight, along with the ones already mentioned: sight, hearing, touch, and smell.
The names of recalls used in Dianetics are: visual (sight), sonic (sound), touch, smell, rhythmic, kinesthetic (weight and movement), somatic (pain), thermal (temperature), and organic (internal body sensations, and, by new definition, emotion).
There are a number of other mental activities that can be classified under the headings of "imagination" and "creative imagination." These, too, offer rich material for study.
Imagination is a recombination6 of what one has previously sensed, thought, or created through intellectual calculations, and which does not necessarily exist in reality. It is the mind's way of picturing desired goals and predicting future events. Imagination is extremely valuable because it is necessary for solving all the problems that confront the mind, including those that arise in everyday life. The fact that it is a recombination does not in any way deprive imagination of its amazing, incredible complexity.
The Clear uses imagination to its fullest extent. He has "templates" of sorts for picturing sights, smells, tastes, sounds—in short, for every possible perception. These templates are made up of patterns in the memory banks; he builds these models into a coherent whole with the help of the concepts he has.
Building something new, looking at tomorrow from the point of view of today, at next year from the point of view of the past, at future pleasures, things to do, accidents to avoid - all this belongs to the functions of the imagination.
The Clear has an imagination in which all the full-fledged perceptions are present: color video, sonic with timbre, tactile (relating to touch), olfactory, rhythmic, kinesthetic, thermal and organic sensations. If he is asked to imagine himself riding in a gilded carriage drawn by four horses, he will "see" the carriage in motion, in all its colors, "hear" all the sounds that should be heard there, "perceive" the smells that, as he believes, should be there, and "feel" the upholstery of the seat, the movement of the carriage and his presence in it.
Besides ordinary imagination, there is creative imagination. This is a faculty which has a very wide range, and it varies greatly from person to person, some having it to an incredible degree. It is mentioned here, not because it is one of the aspects of the mind with which Dianetics usually deals, but simply to single it out as a separate entity.
In a Clear endowed with creative imagination, this faculty can be demonstrated even though it was blocked when he was an aberree. It is an innate faculty. It can be aberrated only by inhibiting its use, that is, by aberrating the persistence in using it, or by completely "encapsulating" the mind.
But creative imagination, which is the asset by which works of art are created, nations are formed, and wealth is multiplied, may be considered as a separate and independent function. It is not at all necessary for man to be aberrated for its existence, since a study of this faculty and its use in a Clear who possesses this faculty conclusively proves its innate character. It is rare to find a person who does not have it.
And finally, the last, but nevertheless the most important activity of the mind. Man must be considered as a being possessing consciousness. This quality of man depends on his ability to solve problems by perceiving or creating situations and comprehending them.
This intelligence, rationality, is the main, highest function of that part of the mind by virtue of which man is a man and not just another animal. By virtue of the fact that he remembers, perceives, uses imagination, he has an outstanding ability to draw conclusions and use them to draw new conclusions on their basis. Such is the rational man.
Rationality in its pure form (without admixture of aberrations) can be observed only in the Clear. The aberrated man, because of the aberrations he has, appears irrational. Although this irrationality can be called more kindly - "eccentricity", "human fallacies" or even "personality" - it is irrationality nonetheless.
A person's personality is not determined by how irrationally he behaves. For example, being a drunk driver and running over a child at an intersection (or even just being a threat to his life by driving drunk) is not a personality trait. The inability to come to the right answer based on the available information is irrationality.
The interesting thing is that although it is a "common knowledge" that "to err is human" (and how much misinformation is spread thanks to this "common knowledge"!), nevertheless the conscious part of the mind, which solves problems and makes a person human, is completely incapable of making mistakes.
The establishment of this fact is a startling discovery. But it could have been established earlier, since it is simple and clear enough. The human mind's ability to make calculations in itself never fails, even when the person is seriously aberrated.
Watching the actions of such a person, one might, without thinking, assume that his calculations are wrong. This would be a mistake on the part of the observer. Any person, whether aberrated or clear, makes his calculations without error, based on the information received and accumulated.
Let us take an ordinary calculating machine (and the mind is an incredible, marvelous device, far superior to any machine it will ever invent) and give it a problem. Let us multiply 7 by 1. The machine will answer, as expected, 7. Now let us multiply 6 by 1, leaving the seven. Six times one is six, but you get the answer 42. Still leaving the seven in place, we give the machine other problems. The answers will again be wrong – the answers, not the problems.
Now make it so that the seven is always pressed, no matter which buttons are pressed, and try to give this calculating machine to someone. No one will take it, because it is obvious that the machine has “gone crazy”. It shows that ten times ten is seven hundred. But is the part of the machine that does the calculations really wrong, or is it simply being fed incorrect information?
In the same way, the human mind, called upon to solve gigantic problems with so many variables that any calculating machine would get confused a thousand times in an hour of work, becomes a victim of incorrect information. Erroneous information enters the machine – the machine gives incorrect answers. Erroneous information enters the human memory bank – the human reacts “abnormally”.
The problem of getting rid of aberrations, therefore, essentially boils down to finding the "pressed seven". But we will talk about this much, much later. For now, we have achieved our goal.
Such are the various faculties and functions of the human mind, constantly busy solving a multitude of problems. It perceives, it remembers or returns, it fantasizes, it makes plans, and then seeks solutions. Served by its "apparatus" - the senses, memory banks and imagination - the mind gives answers that are invariably accurate; the solutions found by the mind are only somewhat influenced by the person's observations, education and views.
As can be found in the study of the state of the clear, the main goals of the mind and the very essence of man are directed towards creation and good.
Man is good.
Rid him of the main aberrations - and with them will go the evil that moralists and inveterate pedants adore so much.
Below is a description of the experiments and evidence in favor of what is said here.