Book: Dianetics Modern Science Of Mental Health (Excerpt) (1950)

Any disease whatever can be precipitated by engrams. The disease may be of germ origin; the individual possesses an engram to the effect that he may become sick and on this  generalization, becomes sick with whatever is to hand. Further, and even more general, the engram reduces the physical resistance of the body to disease. And when an engram goes into restimulation (perhaps because of a domestic quarrel, an accident or some such thing), the ability of the individual to resist sickness is automatically decreased.

Children, as will be explained, have many more engrams than has been supposed. Almost all childhood illnesses are preceded by psychic disturbance and if psychic disturbance is present—keeping an engram restimulated— such illnesses can be far more violent than they should be. Measles, for instance, can be just measles or it can be measles in company with engramic restimulation, in which case it can be nearly or entirely fatal. A check of many subjects on this matter of childhood illness being predisposed by, precipitated by and perpetuated by engrams causes one to wonder just how violent the diseases themselves really are. They have never been observed in a Cleared child and there is reason to investigate the possibility that childhood illnesses are in themselves extremely mild and are complicated only by psychic disturbance, which is to say, the restimulation of engrams.

In fact, one could ask this question of the entire field of pathology: What is the actual effect of disease minus the mental equation? How serious are bacteria?

The field of bacteriology has been without dynamic principles until now; the dynamic, survival, is applicable to all life forms and “life forms” include germs. The purpose of the germ is to survive. Its problems are those of food, protection (offense and defense) and procreation. To accomplish these things, the germ survives at its optimum efficiency. It mutates, alters with natural selection and changes dynamically from survival necessity (the missing step of the evolution theory, that last) in order to accomplish the maximum survival possible. It makes errors by killing the hosts, but to have a purpose to survive does not mean that a form necessarily survives.

In pathology, the germ, bent on its purpose, acts as a suppressor to the survival dynamic of the human species. How serious this suppressor is in the absence of engram suppression in the human has not been determined. Enough data exists to indicate that a human individual with his potential in the fourth zone is not, apparently, very subject to disease: the common cold, for instance, if it is a virus or not, passes him by; chronic infections are absent. What antibodies have to do with this or what this factor is, is yet another question. But it remains that a Clear is not easily made ill. In the aberree, illness closely pursues mental depression (depression of the dynamic level).

The aberration of mind and body by engrams leads, then, not only to psychosomatic ills, but also to actual pathology—which has hitherto been considered more or less independent of the mental state. As has been proven by clinical research, clearing of engrams does more than remove psychosomatic illness—potential, acute or chronic. The clearing also tends to proof the individual against the receipt of pathology: to what extent it is not yet known, for such a wide and long-term view is required to establish the actual statistics that the project will require thousands of cases and the observations of medical doctors over a long term. ¹

Notes