Has anybody run an Engram?

[Dotey OT]

In 2011, I was asked to read "History of Man" while I was auditing NED. I purposefully did not read it until AFTER I had attested to clear. The reason was that I had doubts, about whether or not I was unknowingly creating some of the things that I was running out of whole cloth. I had developed this after the L's. After attesting and later doing FPRD on preps, I read "HOM". There were several incidents that I thought that I might have run, the one specifically that I recalled was something like "The Iron Maiden". This set me back in my doubts a little, since I had the thought that I had run that incident. Looking back later, I think that there a similar effects that people experience regardless of their authenticity.

As far as engrams, I developed an opinion that my "case" wasn't like others because auditing for me was such a pain in the ass. And I have quite a few folders somewhere on this planet. My "engrams" never quite ran the way that I had read in the refs, without going into it. I always had doubts about whether or not I would ever go clear because of it! As a matter of fact, once I did attest, I decided that I was going to give the bridge a break. I was going to hike the Appalachian Trail or something. For real. Never did, though. I spent all my extra money trying to save the world from the evil psyches, and gave a bunch to Col. Prado in Colombia, etc., etc., etc. Had to go back to work!

I never ran anything that the tek describes as an engram. Got lost in a lot of weeds trying to sort it out.

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

I ran one particular engram that contained pain, unconciousness and exteriorzation during my power setups. I ran surgery after having wrecked my mom's Triumph Spitfire. I was in shock, I had slid sideways into a tree, smashing the drivers side of the car - I had put my arm up and it was full of glass shards from the side window. The Dr. didn't bother with anesthetics, he had picked glass out of my arm, and was sewing up my arm, I came out of shock and was conscious. I was exterior watching and wondered why it didn't hurt. Then it hurt like crazy.

My cognition was that I realized I was mocking up the pain - and I had a spectacular change in perception. Because the session occurred in 1969, it was prior to the Dianetic clear business. No one recognized it for what it was.

Was that basic basic? Nope. But is there any such thing?

I was running an engram chain in an OTIII review at AOLA a few years later, and was running this chain, and I popped out of it. I could see the chain was exceedingly long. I jumped over, I dunno, many hundreds of incidents, and ran one then skipped further down the chain. I came to realize this thing ran pretty much forever. I didn't think I could ever find basic basic as such.

If you truly are an immortal being, and you have lived trillions of lives, it would be a monumental task to run all of the incidents, let alone find the first of a kind.

Hubbard was aware of that impossibility, because he devised the goals listing stuff. His theory was that these things ( masses of similar engrams) balled up into RIs ( reliable items) that fell together in a pattern of oppositions called GPMs (Goals Problem Masses) - it was a workaround of sorts of the shortcomings of Dianetics. Get rid of the RI's / GPMs and you have erased the bank that motivates all misbehavior by the thetan was Hubbard's operating principal. It was an undercut, or so he thought.

If I recall correctly, he next considered the clearing course materials basic basic. Yet that fell by the way side as he issued OTII and later OT III. It was relegated to being a step along the way to a higher goal being OT.

On solo NOTS there is a procedure that you can run on BTs that clears them. I no longer recall the steps, and did run it a time or two. The procedure has no resemblance whatsoever to Dianetic procedure. I think you can best look at clearing as a word that has many definitions, and you can achieve the "state of clear" if such exists , through different routes. David Mayo felt that as well, with his levels of clear, which Hubbard disagreed with.

It is illustrative - it being the concept of clear, the clear cog, the Dianetic clear, the clearing course materials, the clearing procedure on solo NOTS, that there's a panoply of means to achieve this chimera.

The engram, a moment of pain and unconsciousness obviously is real, people get hurt and knocked out all the time, but does it contain engramic content - the A=A=A of the over heard statements - that the person dramatizes at various times in his life? In the above engram, that was not a part of it, so I have no personal experience concerning it's validity.

I tend to think that revisiting past experiences may have some therapeutic benefit, as I had above, but I can't honestly say I have achieved the promises laid out in DMSMH.



Mimsey

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

Could engrams exist with the held down command content? Perhaps. I say that because our understanding of the mind, dreams, the functions of the brain, etc. is so very primitive, so lacking in true understanding of the exact nature of how it all works, interrelates.

It is yet to be figured out.

As an afterthought, Hubbard may have stumbled over some mental phenomena and not understood it, described it as an engram, and built his fanciful bridge based on it. Or it could have been something Sara dreamed up, and he plagiarized. It all could have been a con that he espoused and eventually bought into whole cloth. Who knows?

Mimsey

 

[Clay Pigeon]

Yes...

My model session auditing is in the distant past but in 2012 driving "the loneliest highway in America", Route 50 from Carson City to Ely I rolled my Honda Oddesey completely over totalling the damn thing. I wasn't wearing a seat belt but I fucked up ANOTHER perfectly good opportunity to die and walked away with only a very sharp pain in the middle of my back just to the right of the spine. As it happens that spot had been naggingly sore for several years and I figured it had something to do with driving as I am a cabdriver. I wound up on the street in Reno for a while after being flown to Renown Hospital and the pain was debilitating so I ran the engram solo.

Fourth time through I nailed it. I got about a 50% decrease in PT pain and then it healed in a couple weeks...

and...

oddly enough...

it took the long term chronic pain in my back with it



Well...

I hope no one is feeling invalidated by my statement; Hubbard's stuff can be or anyone. It will never be for everyone

 

[lotus]

Nobody Will Feel "invalidated" if your injury has been healed Birdie!

Is it that so important if people believe or not it has been healed by auditing????

 

[Emma]

Hubbard didn't understand trauma very well, but to be fair neither did anyone else in the 50s. Dianetics is an early form of Exposure Therapy which was very hit and miss. Researchers are learning that the resolution of trauma heavily depends on the skill of the therapist in judging the patient's response and keeping them in their Window of Tolerance.

Hubbard thought that trauma lived in the reactive mind. That is kinda true (except for the fact that there is no reactive mind, and no, you can't "get rid of it"). Trauma lives in the limbic system in the brain. Trauma is imprinted in the amygdala. I spose Hubbard thought that the amygdala was the reactive mind. Here is an excerpt from a very good article on it:

https://www.phoenix-society.org/resources/entry/calming-trauma-how-understanding-the-brain-can-help

UNDERSTANDING THE BRAIN AND BODY IN TRAUMA

Several parts of the brain are important in understanding how the brain and body function during trauma. They include the forebrain (the prefrontal cortex); the limbic system, which is located in the center of the brain; and the brain stem.

When a person experiences a traumatic event, adrenaline rushes through the body and the memory is imprinted into the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system. The amygdala holds the emotional significance of the event (the intensity and impulse of emotion). For example, if you’re on a roller coaster, your sensory information is “fear, speed, stress, excitement, not life threatening.” The amygdala can read the emotional significance of the event: “it’s a ride, it’s fun, you are done in 3 minutes.” The amygdala stores the visual images of trauma as sensory fragments, which means the trauma memory is not stored like a story, but by how our five senses were experiencing the trauma at the time it was occurring. The memories are stored through fragments of visual images, smells, sounds, tastes, or touch.

Consequently, after trauma, the brain can easily be triggered by sensory input, reading normal circumstances as dangerous. For example, a red light is no longer a red light, now it’s a possible spark. A barbecue had been just a barbecue, but now it sounds like an explosion. The sensory fragments are misinterpreted and the brain loses its ability to discriminate between what is threatening and what is normal.

The rational part of our brain is the prefrontal cortex. This is the front part of our brain, where consciousness lives, processing and reasoning occur, and we make meaning of language. When a trauma occurs, people enter into a fight, flight, or freeze state, which can result in the prefrontal cortex shutting down. The brain becomes somewhat disorganized and overwhelmed because of the trauma, while the body goes into a survival mode and shuts down the higher reasoning and language structures of the brain. The result of the metabolic shutdown is a profound imprinted stress response.

If you really want to understand trauma, google "Bessel van der Kolk" - a dutch psychiatrist who is the world's leading expert on trauma. His book "The Body Keeps The Score" nails what trauma is and how it gets "stuck" and what the truly effective treatments for trauma are. Peter Levine is also a trauma expert. He and Van der Kolk have co-authored another great book - Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past.

EMDR is considered a good treatment for trauma, but is most effective in handling single trauma events such as a rape or accident. It's not so great in handling complex trauma (CPTSD). I know because I tried it.

Oh, and there is no basic-basic. No Clear (but you already knew that).

 

[Gib]

I ran one particular engram that contained pain, unconciousness and exteriorzation during my power setups. I ran surgery after having wrecked my mom's Triumph Spitfire. I was in shock, I had slid sideways into a tree, smashing the drivers side of the car - I had put my arm up and it was full of glass shards from the side window. The Dr. didn't bother with anesthetics, he had picked glass out of my arm, and was sewing up my arm, I came out of shock and was conscious. I was exterior watching and wondered why it didn't hurt. Then it hurt like crazy.

My cognition was that I realized I was mocking up the pain - and I had a spectacular change in perception. Because the session occurred in 1969, it was prior to the Dianetic clear business. No one recognized it for what it was.

Was that basic basic? Nope. But is there any such thing?

I was running an engram chain in an OTIII review at AOLA a few years later, and was running this chain, and I popped out of it. I could see the chain was exceedingly long. I jumped over, I dunno, many hundreds of incidents, and ran one then skipped further down the chain. I came to realize this thing ran pretty much forever. I didn't think I could ever find basic basic as such.

If you truly are an immortal being, and you have lived trillions of lives, it would be a monumental task to run all of the incidents, let alone find the first of a kind.

Hubbard was aware of that impossibility, because he devised the goals listing stuff. His theory was that these things ( masses of similar engrams) balled up into RIs ( reliable items) that fell together in a pattern of oppositions called GPMs (Goals Problem Masses) - it was a workaround of sorts of the shortcomings of Dianetics. Get rid of the RI's / GPMs and you have erased the bank that motivates all misbehavior by the thetan was Hubbard's operating principal. It was an undercut, or so he thought.

If I recall correctly, he next considered the clearing course materials basic basic. Yet that fell by the way side as he issued OTII and later OT III. It was relegated to being a step along the way to a higher goal being OT.

On solo NOTS there is a procedure that you can run on BTs that clears them. I no longer recall the steps, and did run it a time or two. The procedure has no resemblance whatsoever to Dianetic procedure. I think you can best look at clearing as a word that has many definitions, and you can achieve the "state of clear" if such exists , through different routes. David Mayo felt that as well, with his levels of clear, which Hubbard disagreed with.

It is illustrative - it being the concept of clear, the clear cog, the Dianetic clear, the clearing course materials, the clearing procedure on solo NOTS, that there's a panoply of means to achieve this chimera.

The engram, a moment of pain and unconsciousness obviously is real, people get hurt and knocked out all the time, but does it contain engramic content - the A=A=A of the over heard statements - that the person dramatizes at various times in his life? In the above engram, that was not a part of it, so I have no personal experience concerning it's validity.

I tend to think that revisiting past experiences may have some therapeutic benefit, as I had above, but I can't honestly say I have achieved the promises laid out in DMSMH.



Mimsey

there is a problem I have with your story Mims, there is no way you got shards of glass in you from the Triumph accident. All cars have tempered glass which are a safety glass used in cars for a long time. The safety glass busts in small chunks so as not to produce shards, the glass just crumbles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempered_glass

https://www.google.com/search?q=whe...ome..69i57.12082j0j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[Gib]

In 2011, I was asked to read "History of Man" while I was auditing NED. I purposefully did not read it until AFTER I had attested to clear. The reason was that I had doubts, about whether or not I was unknowingly creating some of the things that I was running out of whole cloth. I had developed this after the L's. After attesting and later doing FPRD on preps, I read "HOM". There were several incidents that I thought that I might have run, the one specifically that I recalled was something like "The Iron Maiden". This set me back in my doubts a little, since I had the thought that I had run that incident. Looking back later, I think that there a similar effects that people experience regardless of their authenticity.

As far as engrams, I developed an opinion that my "case" wasn't like others because auditing for me was such a pain in the ass. And I have quite a few folders somewhere on this planet. My "engrams" never quite ran the way that I had read in the refs, without going into it. I always had doubts about whether or not I would ever go clear because of it! As a matter of fact, once I did attest, I decided that I was going to give the bridge a break. I was going to hike the Appalachian Trail or something. For real. Never did, though. I spent all my extra money trying to save the world from the evil psyches, and gave a bunch to Col. Prado in Colombia, etc., etc., etc. Had to go back to work!

I never ran anything that the tek describes as an engram. Got lost in a lot of weeds trying to sort it out.

good for you that you never read that book while on NED, you did your own little experiment to see if true or not. You did your own placebo experiment you might say, where the placebo is actually Hubbard's rhetoric of what to think, or be persuaded, versus not reading Hubbard's words of persuasion.

 

[Dotey OT]

good for you that you never read that book while on NED, you did your own little experiment to see if true or not. You did your own placebo experiment you might say, where the placebo is actually Hubbard's rhetoric of what to think, or be persuaded, versus not reading Hubbard's words of persuasion.

During and after the L's, I had this idea that I had created the incidents in the auditing session while auditing. It felt almost automatic, with me not having to do anything except recall the incident and of course, try to get the as-isness of the thing. It seemed to be the result of being asked the auditing question, like a part of me knew I had to have an answer, so here it is. I became increasingly uncomfortable that I was somehow cheating, and wasn't really doing the process. It was different than the grades, where it was my life experience, which were mostly available by memory. Well, even later I recalled incidents that I had mis-remembered in session.

 

[RogerB]

During and after the L's, I had this idea that I had created the incidents in the auditing session while auditing. It felt almost automatic, with me not having to do anything except recall the incident and of course, try to get the as-isness of the thing. It seemed to be the result of being asked the auditing question, like a part of me knew I had to have an answer, so here it is. I became increasingly uncomfortable that I was somehow cheating, and wasn't really doing the process. It was different than the grades, where it was my life experience, which were mostly available by memory. Well, even later I recalled incidents that I had mis-remembered in session.

Actually, Dotey, don't puzzle on it too much.

One of our beloved and prolific posters, Alan, (now deceased) did some on-the-ball posts on all this.

What Hubbard missed, in particular apart from overall, is the phenomena related to the "Involuntary Replication."

Of course, Hubbard never correctly articulated what "the mind" is . . .

Basically, when you are in the present with your awareness (spiritual presence and Life-Force) under your control impressions of the PT environment and activity are simply recorded as aware knowledge. When there is trauma and/or upset, the event tends to be impressed in you as a spiritual presence as encysted Life-Force.

And it is upset, impressed and encysted Life-Force that when later accessed or triggered that is revivified as the involuntary replication of the "spontaneous creation" you speak of.

Alan very neatly defined "charge," the shit on the case we worked to get rid of as being: "Spiritual life force
that had become out of your control and unknown to you." Trip on it and it'll revivify in involuntary replication.

And, of course, this stuff is not always vivid "pictures" or holograms. It is all too often those dreary, heavy, occlusive moods of such things as despair, fear, et al.

 

[Clay Pigeon]

Nobody Will Feel "invalidated" if your injury has been healed Birdie!

Is it that so important if people believe or not it has been healed by auditing????

Not important in the least

There was a question and I gave honest response whomever shall find meaning in it shall...

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

there is a problem I have with your story Mims, there is no way you got shards of glass in you from the Triumph accident. All cars have tempered glass which are a safety glass used in cars for a long time. The safety glass busts in small chunks so as not to produce shards, the glass just crumbles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempered_glass

https://www.google.com/search?q=whe...ome..69i57.12082j0j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Yes - they were the crumbles of tempered glass and I still have one in my right arm just below the wrist. The windshield is laminated glass, but the glass in the doors are tempered.

"Let’s say the glass breaks for whatever reason (and tempered glass does have the ability to break spontaneously, even when nobody is around). If the glass is tempered, hundreds of small glass cubes will spray out onto the street with the first gust of wind. How safe is the pedestrian who is showered by a rain of glass cubes? Will they get in her eyes?
But wait, those cubes don’t always fully disengage from one another. Sometimes the cubes of the “safety glass” cling to one another in clumps like tiny puzzle pieces. How safe is the pedestrian who is hit by one of these clumps? [bcolor=#ffff00]The edges of the clumps are jagged and abrasive as a hack saw blade.[/bcolor]"

https://chicagowindowexpert.com/2013/11/06/safety-glass-safety-glazing/

But wait! There's more!

"When tempered glass is broken in a crash, most of the pieces have internal cracks, and these “clusters” of fragments [Severy, 1962] can lacerate, weighing much more than 4.25 grams, and with edge angles less than 90 degrees, and some with sharp points. Our work [Yudenfriend, 1996; Yudenfriend and Clark, 1997] has shown that when tempered glass is strained before it fractures, the fracture planes are less rectilinear. Clusters weighing 62 grams, some with fracture planes within the thickness but not penetrating to the surface, and flat spike-like pieces called splines over 150 mm long, can be produced. Green (1999), and Gulati (1997) report similar characteristics of fracture with strain. Since glazing is broken in vehicle crashes typically with some strain by frame deformation or body or object contact, not by a prick punch, our interest is to modify the fracture tests to better represent the fracture dynamics of road crashes. Road crashes do produce lacerations from glazing, with NHTSA reporting for 1996, in response to a letter request, that there were a (rounded off) estimated 215,000 lacerations from windshield contact, [bcolor=#ffff00]18,700 lacerations from side and rear window contact,[/bcolor] and 250,000 lacerations from flying glass."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3217380/

 

[Dotey OT]

Actually, Dotey, don't puzzle on it too much.

One of our beloved and prolific posters, Alan, (now deceased) did some on-the-ball posts on all this.

What Hubbard missed, in particular apart from overall, is the phenomena related to the "Involuntary Replication."

Of course, Hubbard never correctly articulated what "the mind" is . . .

Basically, when you are in the present with your awareness (spiritual presence and Life-Force) under your control impressions of the PT environment and activity are simply recorded as aware knowledge. When there is trauma and/or upset, the event tends to be impressed in you as a spiritual presence as encysted Life-Force.

And it is upset, impressed and encysted Life-Force that when later accessed or triggered that is revivified as the involuntary replication of the "spontaneous creation" you speak of.

Alan very neatly defined "charge," the shit on the case we worked to get rid of as being: "Spiritual life force
that had become out of your control and unknown to you." Trip on it and it'll revivify in involuntary replication.

And, of course, this stuff is not always vivid "pictures" or holograms. It is all too often those dreary, heavy, occlusive moods of such things as despair, fear, et al.

Hey RogerB, thanks for this. I want to ruminate over this,and I guess I need to really get myself up to speed on searching the vaults of ESMB. Since it's really not been a long time that I've been out, I haven't covered this ground. I knew that this has been coming, and here I go!

 

[Boojuum]

Great thread. Thanks all for sharing.

FYI.

I have never run a textbook engram (this LT) on myself and a few times (this LT) on others. The track engrams yes, lots on me and others. Some charge released. I would add that nothing major.

I find it surprising that I put so much stock in this theory with so little evidence.

 

[programmer_guy]

Great thread. Thanks all for sharing.

FYI.

I have never run a textbook engram (this LT) on myself and a few times (this LT) on others. The track engrams yes, lots on me and others. Some charge released. I would add that nothing major.

I find it surprising that I put so much stock in this theory with so little evidence.

You might also consider that there was no "charge" erased BUT that brain endorphins were created that caused the feel-good feeling in an auditing session.

Other items to consider:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view

 

[Helena Handbasket]

Helena, what you're describing sounds like a traumatic incident, for sure, but is that really an engram as defined by scn? Did it contain pain and unconsciousness? I think scn would describe that as a secondary, and secondaries supposedly derive their force from earlier engrams, right?

So you're still not over him then HH? Well, either you never got to the basic on the chain or Dianetics doesn't work as advertised. What's it to be then?

In DMSMH it describes "emotional engrams" or "secondary engrams". It was only later these were considered not engrams in their own right. I disagree with this change, and believe a physical pain engram does not have to underlie an emotional engram. (Pain, after all, is just another emotion.)

I believe there are earlier incidents with him from the whole track. (Although the trauma is much reduced.)

I won't be over him until we're back together. Which isn't going to happen, at least not in this lifetime.

Helena

 

[PirateAndBum]

I've run engrams on people. Tonsilectomy on one person and an ectopic pregnancy bursting fallopian tube on another.

 

[strativarius]

In DMSMH it describes "emotional engrams" or "secondary engrams". It was only later these were considered not engrams in their own right. I disagree with this change, and believe a physical pain engram does not have to underlie an emotional engram. (Pain, after all, is just another emotion.)

I believe there are earlier incidents with him from the whole track. (Although the trauma is much reduced.)

I won't be over him until we're back together. Which isn't going to happen, at least not in this lifetime.

Helena

Well, speaking as somebody who doesn't believe in engrams (or the 'whole track' for that matter) I would encourage you to seek some other ways of assuaging your pain (which I do believe is real). Finding someone new used to do the trick for me, have you tried that Helena?

 

[Helena Handbasket]

Well, speaking as somebody who doesn't believe in engrams (or the 'whole track' for that matter) I would encourage you to seek some other ways of assuaging your pain (which I do believe is real). Finding someone new used to do the trick for me, have you tried that Helena?

Yes, many times. It just isn't the same.

Helena

 

[strativarius]

Yes, many times. It just isn't the same.

Helena

Well, it's very sad, you've been this way ever since I've known you. I'm sure there's someone out there who can replace him, it's just a matter of the two of you coming together (no pun intended).