Group Dianetics is a theory explaining the observed behavior of people as groups, with corollary deductions on methods of improving that behavior in terms of the dynamics. It is not a method of processing a number of individuals at the same time, but deals with the interrelationship of those individuals as a group.
In postulating Group Dianetics it was found that there are actually seven dynamics. First, self. Second, sex and future. Third, group. Fourth, man and mankind.
Fifth, life. Life, no matter where it is found, in dogs, cats, in giraffes, in a blade of grass. Life has a great deal more affinity for living objects than it has for inanimate objects.
The Sixth Dynamic is MEST, the Physical Universe of Matter-Energy-Space- Time. The wind, snow, rain, blue skies, all of these things are MEST. One of the first things that folds up in the aberree seems to be his attraction for MEST. The real world, as you might call it in a very qualified sense, becomes less pleasant to him.
When one was a child and got up in the morning, there was dew on the rosebushes, the wind was so fresh, and all the world looked so good! Everything was so blue, and so red, and so green! There was a definite reaching out and affinity with the world. Then gradually, as the years passed, this affinity began to be blunted by collisions with MEST, and MEST became less and less one’s friend; one gets to be 25 years old, married, gets up in the morning; there’s dew on the rosebushes but it’s just something that gets one’s shirt wet!
Seventh. Theta. This is the dynamic towards the preservation of the body of energy sometimes called God… call it anything you want to, there is that something which man has always striven toward. He has a certain faith that he becomes imbued with and which makes it possible for him to do things that he never would have dreamed of doing before. To a boy whose life is all wrapped up in electronics and who is sitting on the edge of a cyclotron, God may well be a cyclotron. To an author, God might be a book, and to a mechanic God might seem to be a very fine racing car. But these would be rather short-sighted views for each individual.
With this array of dynamics the problem, rather than becoming more complex because we have entered some new factors into it, simplifies. Since much of the early emphasis in Dianetics has been placed on processing the individual, we may have overlooked the fact that one of the main goals is processing the group.
No amount of rules or directives can create a group. A group consists of perpetuating and perpetuated ideas formulated into a central mores and ethic, in other words, a culture. This culture has an identity of its own. It could be compared in its highest essence to a segment of pure Theta. It becomes modified by the MEST which it has under attack whenever a turbulence area comes into being as a result of an unreasoning attack by a group upon the MEST which it is seeking to control. The group is as effective as the reasonableness of its ideas and the height of its ethic, plus its dynamic in attacking and controlling MEST.
The maintenance of rationale in the body of group ideas is paramount in importance and the group becomes aberrated and needful of clearing each time the rationale of the body of ideas is penetrated or deranged by an irrationality.
The problem here is the problem of the introduction of arbitraries. Each time an arbitrary rule is entered into the group ideas and rationale, the group tone deteriorates. The group tone depends upon the agreement (reality) amongst the members of the group, on the ideas and ideals and rationale of the group, upon the intercommunication of members of the group one with another, and upon an understanding by the members of the group of the rationale and problems of the group. An emergency situation as faced by the group may occasionally make it impossible for some member of the group to communicate all the reasons of his actions to the rest of the group. At such moments the group is called upon to supplant communication and understanding with an instantaneous compliance. The group instinctively does this only when it has faith in and belief in the rationale and ideals of the member who is demanding the instantaneous action. As soon as instantaneous action has ceased, however, all such rules and orders should be clarified and explained and discussed by the entire group for their understanding and their further communication.
Here then is the cycle of a group receiving an engram: the group ideas and rationale in handling or attacking MEST receive a shock from the MEST which it is attacking, making an emergency situation exist. There is a turbulent area created between the ideals and rationale of the group and the MEST. The emergency status of the situation has to do with the compressed time — something obviously is happening so swiftly that a full use of communication is not possible and must be supplanted by arbitrary rules or commands. As soon as the emergency is over, it can be seen that an engram has been implanted in the group.
The clearing of this engram consists of an examination by the whole group of the arbitraries, which is to say the orders and commands which were issued without explanation and which demanded instantaneous action on the part of other individuals in the group. The person issuing these orders, or persons issuing them, should demonstrate how the situation existed and the why and wherefore of these orders. In this way the engram is cleared out of the group. Rational discussion of this situation and communication of the situation restores the ideals and ethics of the group.
It can be seen, then, that there are two types of group action. One is the action on deliberation which is taken upon the advice and with the understanding of the majority of the members of the group. This agreement upon action safeguards the group from precipitous or impulsive action on any one particular target. Furthermore, it fixes the responsibility for the action where it belongs — on the group itself. The other type of action in which the group engages is only engaged upon during moments of emergency. The group normally prepares itself (and this applies to any group) for these moments of emergency by carefully selecting from amongst its membership persons on whose judgment and intelligence and ability to execute it can depend. It is selecting persons into whose hands may be placed the entire rationale, ideals and ethics of the group during such a moment of emergency. The second kind, then, of action a group can take is the action commanded by an individual selected to give such commands during moments of emergency. Both types of action are necessary to the operation of the group as a group.
These tenets which are delineated here actually constitute a discovery about groups comparable to the discovery of the engrams in individuals. Each time instantaneous action is demanded of the group by situations and each time commands are given by the selected individual or individuals for those moments of emergency, an engram can be said to have been implanted in the group. These instantaneous orders and commands are indicators of an engram. The engram actually took place during a moment of shock when the ideals, ethics, rationale and general thought and energy of the group collided forcefully with MEST. As in an engram in an individual, the MEST entering into the ideals and ethics of the group and the ideals and the ethics of the group entering into the MEST is a point of turbulence wherein physical force is mixed with Theta. Groups customarily answer such emergency situations by instantaneous orders and commands which are given without consideration by the whole group but which are accepted by the whole group as necessary for the emergency.
The running of such a moment of turbulence is done simply by exposing all facets of it to the general view of all the individuals who compose the group. Time itself suppresses the turbulent area — that is, lack of time in which events can be explained. There is actual pain here since the ideals and ethics of the group itself have been infiltrated by MEST. Should such moments of emergency remain unexplained, they are not analytically understood by other members of the group and so lie in the ideals and ethics of the group as engrams.
Processing the group should be the special trust and charge of selected members of the group itself. The processing is done by the examination of emergency situations and the complete detail of them by this selection of the group. Such examination and publication and discussion of these moments of emergency should not be colored in any slightest degree by any thought of protecting the public idea concerning the ethics of this particular group. Information cannot be masked, either from individuals of the group or to other groups examining this group, save as that information may apply to the emergency status of the situation which may still be existing, as in the case of disposition of troops by a general during a time of combat.
The people selected by the group to be auditors to the group, or an auditor to the group, discover the existence of engrams by the existence of arbitrary commands. They then proceed to discover the basic-basic on the chain of engrams and, after due examination not only of the arbitrary orders but of the entire status of the turmoil, publish for the discussion and information of all the members of the group everything which can be discovered about the situation with all evidences which can be collected. This is not done with a view to introducing punitive action; it is done with a view to acquainting the group members with the situations as they existed. It takes, you might say, a bunched-up time track — bunched up by a moment of emergency or a moment of fancied emergency — and straightens it out, arranging all the data upon it. This effort at processing will be utterly defeated should the auditor of the group pay any attention whatsoever to the consideration the public or other groups may have for the group, to the reputation of any individual involved in the moment of emergency, or to any idea that members of the group itself may be grossly upset by the discovery of certain facts about its members.
The characteristic point of this turmoil or turbulence, the engram of the group, is that it contains suppressed or out-of-sight information. If at any moment the auditor to the group suppresses information or colors it in any way, some of that engram is going to remain, and actually a situation is entered here where the engram is left in a state of restimulation where it can do more damage than it could have done had it never been run.
The auditors of the group must be individuals fully schooled in the ideals, rationale and ethic of the group, whose integrities are not questioned by the group. The whole keynote of the group auditor is honesty and truth — uncolored, unvarnished and unsuppressed data. In this way a good auditing job can be done. The auditor to the group is discovering what has been done to the group and is running it. There is no need of going over and over one of these engrams beyond exposing the information thoroughly and competently to the view of all and permitting all members of the group to discuss that information as they wish. The group itself may then decide upon certain actions but so long as the group itself is doing the deciding, not an individual or just a few individuals in the group, no engram is created.
Punitive action, with the knowledge and consent of the whole group and dictated by that whole group, cannot be said to create engrams so long as that punitive action does not fall outside the rationale, ideals and ethics of the group itself. In other words, punitive action undertaken by all the individuals of a group and understood by all the individuals of a group does not create an engram. Action of a punitive character taken by one individual in the group without the understanding or consent of other members of the group will create a lock or an engram.
The toughness and resilience of the ideals, ethic and rationale of a group — that is to say, the group itself — is enormous and should not be underestimated in any degree. Any group can embark on the most arduous enterprises which would seem fraught with all possibilities of creating moments of pain; but so long as it is understood that whenever an emergency status occurs and a selected member of the group issues arbitrary orders to take care of emergency situations, and that this issuance of orders must be scouted down in an effort to find the engram and the engram run, the group can then under no circumstances suffer any enduring harm save only whatever harm may have been done in the actual conflict itself, and this harm would not be to ideals and ethics but would be to individuals and MEST in the group.
A group is composed of Theta and MEST. It has an analytical mind and a reactive mind. The Theta in the group consists of the ideals, rationale and ethic of the group. The MEST of the group consists, not of the minds, but of the bodies of the individuals of the group and the property and space and time owned by the group. The analytical mind consists of the adjudicated, fully comprehensive opinion of all the members of the group and their efforts and actions to activate and run this group. The reactive mind of the group could be considered to lie in the actions of those individuals set up for emergency status during emergency status, which is to say, the reactive mind is composed of the composite engrams of the group.
The group will grow and prosper only insofar as it lacks engrams. It should not fear engrams; it should only fear the fact that the engrams may not be processed and run.
The principle of the introduction of an arbitrary should be thoroughly understood by a group. Because of an emergency or because of some past engram, there may exist within or around the group sources of continual arbitrary orders. An arbitrary is an order or command introduced into the group in an effort to lay aside certain harm which may befall the group or in an effort to get through a period of emergency and foreshortened time for a certain action. Subsequent arbitraries issued by any member of a group not during periods of emergency can be considered to be locks or dramatizations of the engrams of the group. Each time an arbitrary is introduced it has the effect of reducing the rationale and tone of the group as a whole and will lead to the necessity of introducing two or three more arbitraries, each one of which in turn will lead to the necessity for several more arbitraries, each one of which in turn will lead to the necessity for several more arbitraries until there is an entire network of arbitraries which have sought to correct some central evil. After a short time a complexity in the situation makes it very difficult to discover the central point of departure. Any arbitrary order not only can be considered to be a lock or a dramatization on a group engram, but IS a lock or a dramatization on a group engram. To make this more clear, any continuing stream of arbitraries are dramatizations of an engram in the group and the lock is that turbulence created by the arbitrary’s issuance. In other words, the engram dramatizes by causing an individual to issue an arbitrary, and the issuance of this arbitrary then creates a lock on top of the original engram. Of course, such issuance’s supercharge this engram.
A true group is one which has ideals, ethics, rationale and a dynamic to carry forth its ideals and rationale on the ethics standard it has selected. Just as the analytical mind safeguards its individual cells in the body, so does a group safeguard the individuals within its membership. The individuals of the group support it just as the cells work to support the body and the analytical mind. The group analytical mind is the composite of analytical thought of the members of the group which it has developed into a culture. Individual aberrations of the members of the group do not composite into the aberrations of the group itself. In other words, it is not necessary to clear all members of the group to have a cleared group. The group, however, can be affected by the individual aberrations of members within it. The optimum group could then be obtained only when all individuals in it are cleared and the group itself is cleared, but a group could act as a very excellent release and could be entirely effective and could be nearly clear even though every individual in it were aberrated.
The first right of any true group is to survive. The goal of the group is to conquer and use MEST and to make MEST work against MEST.
All groups must have goals. Only the deterioration of the goals of the group or the reaching of all the goals of the group can bring about the decline of the group or the individuals within it. It is therefore incumbent upon any group to have a postulated set of goals which are continuing goals; to have a major goal which cannot be reached all in a breath but also to have minor goals which go in progression toward major goals which go in progression towards super-major goals.
The group has the perfect right to demand the help, life or, in a continuing sense, the energy and devotion of any member of the group. Any member of the group has the right to demand the most and highest level of the ideals, rationale and ethics of the group and to demand that these be maintained. A true group owes to its individual members their livelihood and a chance for their future generations. The members must not deny to the group its right to expand and perpetuate itself but must contribute fully and wholly to these.
An individual has the right to contribute to the group and the group has the right to expect every individual to contribute to it to his maximum ability and energy. The individual has the right to expect to be contributed to from the group and for the group to safeguard him insofar as is possible in the maintenance of the group and the reaching by the group of its goals.
A group will deteriorate in exact ratio to the number of engrams and locks it receives and will revive in ratio to the number of engrams and locks which are picked up out of it.
There has never before in the history of the world been an opportunity for groups, since they did not know these things, to rehabilitate themselves and free themselves from the continuing concatenation of arbitraries. Thus, every group, once initiated, could thereafter experience only a dwindling spiral. Following these tenets, there is no reason why the tone of the group cannot continuously rise or, whenever it is depressed, to be brought back up on the tone scale again. It has been stated by past writers that the group’s highest point was the moment when it was formed, since then its ideals, ethic and rationale were intact. One can readily see that this has in the past been the case, but he can see also that the ideals, rationale and ethic of the group may be improved. Thus its tone scale can now go up from this point of formation. Further, emergency status’s can be reached and met, individuals can take command of various functions of the group for these emergency status’s, and the engrams of the group can thereafter be sorted out and resolved — run, in other words.
The ability of the group to conquer MEST is measurable by the amount of analytical thought there is in the group, by the ideals, rationale, ethic and dynamics of the group. These are Theta functions. They are analytical mind functions. A group set up on these principles and with this clearing process of groups in action would present the same aspect in comparison to other groups of men as a clear to a psychotic, since nearly all groups in the world today are severely psychotic.
On the postulate that a primary mission of Theta is the conquest of MEST, we see immediately that the individual must have this in each of his four dynamics. On the first dynamic, the individual has as a primary purpose the conquest of MEST as an individual. He is conquering MEST for himself as an individual. Theta, having this purpose and having aligned itself harmonically with MEST, then conquers more MEST. It is readily seen that with this as a purpose, and the fact of MEST beginning to overcome the individual rather than Theta overcoming MEST, a dwindling spiral is rapidly entered and at length Theta is driven out of the organism and we have death. There is a tremendous resistance, then, on the part of the individual toward being conquered by MEST, or being considered MEST, or used as MEST, since this obviously is death or a small portion of death, which is to say the conquest of the individual tends toward the death of the individual. In order to succeed, then, the individual must feel that he is conquering MEST or that he potentially can conquer MEST. When he is convinced otherwise, he has entered into the dwindling spiral with MEST conquering him. That much Theta has been driven from him.
On the second dynamic, the individual is conquering future MEST wherein Theta is assured a line of conquest into the future. It requires for this both the sex act and children. If one is to assure the future conquest of MEST, then it is necessary to insure that one’s children can conquer MEST.
On the third dynamic, the individual feels that he is assisting in the conquest of MEST. A very quick survey of this will demonstrate adequately that no individual by himself, unassisted by any other life form, could possibly conquer MEST. The arrangement of life is such that a graduated conquest is necessary — first, the lichen and moss, then other cellular life, then cells forming into organisms, and so on, make a chain of conquest into now which permits the individual man to conquer MEST. Here is the evolutionary chain. It is not proceeding along MEST time but is in now and is going forward in now continually. Instead of evolution we have a graduated scale of Theta conquering MEST in now. Up to the point of an analytical level, the arranged scheme is to make an analytical level possible for the greater conquest of MEST. There is a graduated scale of conquest in now by which the individual man is able by being assisted by the lower forms of Theta plus MEST, or life, to conquer a much greater sphere. Here we see a workable plan of action as evolved by Theta interacting with MEST. Thus, one can see that the individual cannot, without considerable assistance on the part of other life forms and without the assistance of other individuals of his own species, conquer MEST. Hence on this level the conquest of MEST is a group action.
On the fourth dynamic, it is seen that so long as mankind itself as a species engages in the conquest of MEST it can be mutually assistive. As one observes the interflow of ideas from group to group amongst mankind he sees readily that every group of mankind is at some time or another assisted by another group of mankind. Hence there is an overall conquest of MEST by mankind.
On the fifth dynamic one sees that Life is engaged in a conquest of MEST and that the individual cannot succeed in a conquest of MEST unless he observes his portion of the conquest as an assist to all Life’s conquest of MEST and the conquest of all Life to his own conquest. This is true of the group and of mankind as a whole, also of the future.
On the sixth dynamic, a conquest of MEST finds as one of its factors the necessity to have MEST. Therefore a conservation of MEST itself is to some degree necessary in the conquest of MEST.
On the seventh dynamic, one finds Theta necessary in the conquest of MEST. Man, without Theta and without an observance of the requirements and necessities of Theta — in other words without an observance of the natural laws of Theta and the preservation of those natural laws — could not much succeed along any of the dynamics. It is not only possible but probable that there is a whole array of perceptics similar to man’s perceptics to MEST back to Theta itself. Thus man could be supposed to have a line of perceptics back to Theta as we already know he has perceptics to MEST. In this wise one could consider that first there is Theta, then there is Life itself, and then there is MEST; man standing in the center between Theta and MEST as Life must of course have an observance of MEST. Man has been observing the natural laws of MEST. Now he is discovering some of the natural laws of Theta. Thus, he is a channel of conquest. It could even be supposed or named that that Theta which is in him is what has been called the human soul and that this on death withdraws, since there is probably a conservation of Theta as well as of MEST.
One can see then that here we have an interaction between Theta and MEST. MEST has a natural kickback against Theta — an involvement and a confusion with Theta-since MEST itself, however its natural laws may be, is chaos. Thus MEST can blindly and grumblingly drive the Theta out of Life; MEST then adding in a physical force to the business of living can gain, as an engram, entirely too much force within the individual and so can disturb the natural laws of MEST by substituting for them the natural laws of Theta which are based primarily upon reasonability.
We can see, through this, that whenever an individual begins to misalign himself with other dynamics, he is influenced by too much MEST which, entangled as in engrams, is mistaken by him to be Theta when it is actually the force of MEST. Hence the individual will seek to rule himself by force or handle himself by force rather than by reason. Additionally, he will seek to own and conquer his children rather than set them up as points of conquest for the future. In the group he will seek, if he is very aberrated, to consider the group itself as MEST and conquer the group, which of course is intensely resisted by the individuals of the group since conquest of them drives them toward the dwindling spiral to death. Likewise, mankind’s efforts can be disrupted whenever an individual amongst mankind is so thoroughly influenced by MEST and so enturmoiled by MEST that he considers mankind as MEST, or any group of mankind as MEST, and so conquers some portion of that group. Additionally, the conquest of MEST, as in the fifth dynamic, is primary purpose but it is also possible that MEST itself can be so entered into the individual or the group or mankind that MEST does not conquer MEST but merely produces more chaos. The conquest of MEST must be in harmony with the laws of MEST itself and can only be done with due observance to the laws of MEST. Thus MEST cannot be thrown into a more chaotic state and man expect to conquer that more chaotic state since he has rendered that more chaotic and less conquerable.
The proof of all these things is relatively simple since a simple observation of man at work, an observation of where he has failed and where he succeeds, serves to give us many examples of the relative truth of these postulates.
The use of these postulates gives man a much greater ethic, rationale and ideal. It postulates the ideal political body and postulates a future conquest of MEST far greater than has ever before been contemplated.
The individual, the child, the group, mankind and life must, each one, consider itself capable of doing what it does in the conquest of MEST. There is a parallel between the consideration and the actuality. It is within this sphere, as noted in this sentence, that we find the deepest meaning of reality. The consideration must agree with the natural laws not only of Theta but of MEST and therein we have the greatest rationale.
Authoritarianism in such a wise can be seen immediately to fail and a cooperative endeavor can be seen immediately to be susceptible to complete triumph. It is believed we have here the tools of greater greatness than man has ever before achieved.