ERASURE is the action of erasing, rubbing out, locks, secondaries or engrams.

A LOCK is a mental image picture of an incident where one was knowingly or unknowingly reminded of a secondary or engram. It does not itself contain a blow or a burn or impact and is not any major cause of misemotion. It does not contain unconsciousness. It may contain a feeling of pain or illness, etc, but is not itself the source of it. Example: One sees a cake, feels sick. This is a lock on an engram of being made sick by eating cake. The picture of seeing a cake and feeling sick is a lock on (is locked to) the incident (unseen at the moment) of getting sick eating cake. When one finds a lock it can be run like any other mental image picture.

A SECONDARY is a mental image picture of a moment of severe and shocking loss or threat of loss which contains misemotion such as anger, fear, grief, apathy or "deathfulness". It is a mental image recording of a time of severe mental stress. It may contain unconsciousness. When it is restimulated by a similar but lighter experience another mental image picture is recorded which becomes a lock on the secondary and serves to keep the secondary alive. A secondary is called a secondary because it itself depends upon an earlier engram with similar data but real pain, etc.

AN ENGRAM is a mental image picture which is a recording of a time of physical pain and unconsciousness. It must by definition have impact or injury as part of its content.

It is of the very greatest importance that a Dianetic auditor really grasp what these things are. Otherwise he won't know what he is doing or to what.

Now because he isn't seeing his preclear's pictures an auditor can become very careless about them and not handle them correctly.

If an auditor doesn't really know what these things are (erasure, locks, secondaries, engrams) he cannot of course hope to handle them for the preclear.

The basic Dianetic errors are just not knowing what these are and that they are there to be handled and that these and these alone cause psychosomatic ills.

Once one has a full grip on these definitions he can then and only then hope to do anything with them for the preclear.

If the auditor is going to handle the aches, pains, unwanted sensations and psychosomatic illnesses of the preclear, it requires that he fully grasp these basic definitions.

Literally millions of complications can stem from the simple fact that a preclear records experiences in mental image pictures and that these thereafter can affect HIS BODY adversely.

Once one really understands that mental image pictures are all there is in the preclear's "mind" one has understood the total of aberration. There is NOT something else there. No "id", no "ego". There are only mental image pictures.

These, if you use the exact procedures of Dianetics, can be found and erased.

When the unwanted locks, secondaries and engrams are erased the preclear will be rid of the physical disabilities of which he complains and will be well physically.

SOMATIC — means essentially body sensation, illness or pain or discomfort. "Soma" means body. Hence PSYCHO SOMATIC or pains stemming from the mind.

MISEMOTION — Anything that is unpleasant emotion such as antagonism, anger, fear, grief, apathy or a death feeling.

This is the entire breadth of Dianetics today.

In Scientology we deal with the thetan, the being who is the individual and who handles and lives in the body. This is beyond the scope of today's Dianetics.

If a preclear is well physically made so by Dianetics and any required physical medication or nutrition, he can then embark on Scientology, the increase of his abilities and spiritual freedom.

If a preclear who is being audited or has been audited on Scientology Grades becomes ill one DOES NOT TRY TO MAKE HIM WELL BY GIVING HIM NEW HIGHER GRADES. That has been an error of great magnitude. Instead ONE REVERTS TO DIANETIC AUDITING until the pc is well and only then continues with Scientology.

This is correct procedure because it works.

People "come into Scientology" to cure their headaches. Somebody starts them off on Grade auditing, several Grades later they still have their headache. It is a continual Present Time Problem to them and the auditor. It sometimes vanishes during Grade Processing. This gives an unfortunate win.

The right thing to have done was give the person DIANETIC AUDITING, until he or she no longer had headaches and then begin to audit the person on Grades so as to put them well above ever again getting headaches.

Continual headaches come from mental image pictures retained by the pc of having a head crushed or shot off or hit. That is an engram. It actually had to happen. It is NOT imaginary or delusion. The proof is that when the auditor finally erases the engram the recording of the injury is gone and the headaches will not again occur.

The preclear often is unable to confront the actual engram at once. He offers one a LOCK, a time when he had a headache. One "runs" this lock (one always runs whatever is offered, you don't force the pc) and finds after putting the preclear through it a couple of times that IT IS GETTING MORE SOLID or it simply isn't erasing. One finds an earlier recording. This possibly turns out to be a secondary. The pc had a moment of loss and cried and also had a headache.

This secondary may or may not erase. If it does one leaves it of course as finished. But if it does not erase and isn't erasing after a couple of times through it, one then asks for an earlier one.

One probably would then get the actual engram, a recording of a time when the head was actually injured.

One runs this and after a couple of times through, finds it isn't erasing and so goes earlier for another engram.

This one erases.

When it erases the whole chain of headaches ALSO erases.

And that is the end of the pc's headaches period.

One then inquires after other somatics or sensations and handles them the same

It is all done by using the technique called R-3-R without variation.

Since these recordings contain mainly other-determinedness (pictures of others doing things) the auditor always has more control over the preclear's mental image pictures than the preclear does. Thus the pictures do what the auditor says. This point too must be grasped by an auditor or he will be waiting on the preclear to act or move in time.

The TIME TRACK is the consecutive record of mental image pictures which accumulates through the preclear's life or lives. It is very exactly dated.

PLEASURE MOMENTS are mental image pictures containing pleasure sensations. They respond to R-3-R. One seldom addresses them unless the preclear is fixated on some type of "pleasure" to a point where it has become highly aberrated.

BLACK FIELD is just some part of a mental image picture where the preclear is looking at blackness. It is part of some lock, secondary or engram. In Scientology it can occur (rarely) when the pc is exterior, looking at something black. It responds to R-3-R.

INVISIBLE FIELD is just a part of some lock, secondary or engram that is "invisible". It like a black field responds to R-3-R.

PRESSURE SOMATIC is, in Dianetics, considered to be a symptom in a lock, secondary or engram, simply part of the content.

Whatever, the symptom pain sensation, whatever, it is from either the body directly (such as a broken bone, a gallstone or immediate physical cause) or is part of the content of a mental image picture — lock, secondary or engram.

The Dianetic auditor does not audit ideas or think. He is handling mental recordings. Ideas are in them. Ideas come out of them. But think is no longer part of Dianetics.

In Dianetics we handle locks, secondaries and engrams.

KEY IN is the action of recording a lock on a secondary or engram.

KEY OUT is an action of the engram or secondary dropping away without being erased.

FLOATING NEEDLES occur when a key-out occurs or when an engram is erased.

When one keys out (rather than erases) an engram, the preclear can always, in life, get a key-in of the engram again and so become ill as before. This does not mean one should overrun a floating needle. It does however point out that you can key out an engram without running it and at once key it back in again and run it.

An example is getting the date. One gets a floating needle. It is better to leave it at that. But also realize the incident that hasn't been run is still there.

MULTIPLE ILLNESS — means the preclear is physically uncomfortable or ill from several engrams of different types all restimulated. One runs one somatic chain at a time, running each new symptom that is assessed or stated by the preclear.

CHAIN means a series of recordings of similar experiences. A chain has engrams, secondaries and locks. Example — Head injury chain in the sequence encountered by an auditor and run by R-3-R — sporting goods display window seeing it (lock), losing a bat (secondary), hit in the head with a bat (engram). The engram is the earliest date, the secondary a later date, the lock the most recent.

By using somatics to trace back (meaning discomforts, complaints, sensations, aches, pains) and by staying on the chain of only one somatic (i.e. headaches) you get back down the single chain without dispersing all over the place into different chains. Thus one runs the chain of one particular somatic or discomfort or complaint down to key-out or erasure before doing the next somatic or discomfort or complaint.

AUTOMATIC BANK — When a pc gets picture after picture after picture all out of control. This occurs when one isn't following an assessed somatic or complaint or has chosen the wrong one or one which the pc is not ready to confront or by overwhelming the pc with rough TRs or going very non-standard. Some pcs turn up in their first session with automatic banks. The thing to do is carefully assess the physical complaint for longest or best read and gently handle that chain well.

BASIC — This is the FIRST experience recorded in mental image pictures of that TYPE of pain, sensation, discomfort, etc. Every chain has its basic. It is a PECULIARITY and a FACT that when one gets down to the basic on a chain (a) it erases and (b) the whole chain vanishes for good. Basic is simply earliest.

UNBURDENING — As a basic is not at once available on any chain one usually unburdens it by running later engrams, secondaries and locks. The act of unburdening would be digging off the top to get at the bottom as in moving sand. As you run off later incidents, the ability of the preclear to confront it also increases and basic is easy to run when finally contacted.

BASIC BASIC — This belongs in Scientology. It is wholly beyond the scope of Dianetics. It means the most basic basic of all basics and results in clearing. It is found on the Clearing Course. If contacted or run before the pc was brought up through the Scientology Grades, he wouldn't be able to handle it anyway as experience has shown. So this is part of Scientology, not Dianetics.

VALENCE is the form and identity of the preclear or another, the beingness. We are not much concerned with this in Dianetics today. It is handled in Scientology.

ALLY — A person from whom one had sympathy and was dependent upon.

ASSESS in Dianetics means choose, from a list or statements, which item or thing has the longest read or the pc's interest. The longest read will also have the pc's interest oddly enough.

If you know these definitions COLD so you don't have to mutter them or memorize them but just KNOW them, you will really get results with Dianetics.

The biggest failure in training auditors was their faulty grasp of what they were addressing and their additive think.

The discoveries of Dianetics were basic and vital and opened a wide new unexplored frontier.

These words were assigned to things arbitrarily. They had to be. Man had not had any notion of these things before so they had no names and had to be assigned names.

The names were chosen because they didn't also mean something else in another field of science.

The terms are therefore IMPORTANT and what they mean and the things they name must be grasped before success can attend any auditing.

Any failures of Dianetic auditors were not the failures of Dianetics. The persons attempting to audit others didn't KNOW what these things were, essentially the lock, the secondary, the engram, erasure and key-out.

So these are essential to any training or use of Dianetics.