Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Book title: Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
Publication date: 1950
Edition: 1992
Location: Los Angeles
Publisher: Bridge Publications, Inc.
Description: Hubbard writes about his heart research using hypnosis; claims heart, by positive suggestion alone, can be speeded up, slowed down or otherwise excited; claims that excreta, urine and endocrine system can be cured with positive suggestion; claims blood flow can be inhibited in some area of the body by suggestion alone; talks about a "swami" who used these techniques.
Let us now address the heart. By deep hypnosis or drugs we take a patient into amnesia trance, a state of being wherein the “I” is not in control but the operator is the “I” (and that’s all there is, really, to the function of hypnosis: the transfer of analytical power through the law of affinity from subject to operator, a thing which had a racial development and survival value in animals which ran in packs).
A caution should be observed that a patient who has a very sound heart and no heart trouble history be chosen for this experiment, which, even above any other hypnotic experiment, can make a patient very ill if he has a heart history. And none of these hypnotic tests should be performed until one has finished this book and knows how to get rid of the suggestions; for hypnosis, as practiced, is strictly live fuse stuff and the hypnotist who is unacquainted with dianetics has no more idea how to get rid of a suggestion he has made than he has of how to peel an atom. He has thought he had the answer, but dianetics has treated many, many former hypnotic subjects who were thoroughly, as the engineers interested in dianetics say, “loused-up.” 1 This is no criticism of hypnosis or hypnotists, who are often very able people, but it is a comment that there is more to be known about it.
The heart, by positive suggestion alone, can be speeded up, slowed down or otherwise excited. Here are words spoken into the deep strata of the mind which cause physical action. Further, blood flow can be inhibited in some area of the body by suggestion alone. (This experiment, it is warned, particularly overloads the heart.) Blood can be denied to a hand, for instance, so that if you were to cut a vein in that hand it would bleed slightly if at all. A fine swami trick; which most amazed the author in India, was the inhibition of blood flow by the awake individual in himself.2 On command a cut would bleed or not bleed. It looked fantastic and made very good press agentry that here was a swami who had so associated himself with Nirvana that he was in control of all material matters. Awe faded when the author learned that, via hypnosis, he could make his own body do the same thing and no Nirvana involved. The mechanism fades out rapidly and in a few days would have to be renewed: the body has its own optimum operation, and although such a function can be “analytically” handled, it is not an upper echelon analytical job to keep the blood going in the hand. The point here is that blood flow can be interrupted by verbal suggestion. Words connect up with the physical being.
How this can come about can be shown by an analogic explanation such as a schematic diagram, but we are not so much interested in structure as in function at this stage of the science of mind–because by knowing function alone we can cure aberrations and psycho-somatic ills every time, predict new ills and conditions, and generally “work miracles,” as such actions were once called before Man knew anything about the mind.
Excreta are among the easiest things to regulate by suggestion. Constipation can be caused or cured by positive suggestion with remarkable speed and facility. The urine can also be so controlled. And so can the endocrine system.
It is harder to make tests on some of the more poorly understood functions of the endocrines. Glandular research has not progressed very far at this time. But, by removing engrams and watching the endocrine system re-balance, it has been made obvious that the endocrine system is a part of the control mechanism with which the mind handles the body. The glands are easily influenced. These fluids and secretions–testosterone, estrogen, adrenalin, thyroid, parathyroid, pituitrin, etc.–are the substances the mind uses as one means of controlling the body. They form relay circuits, so to speak. Each one has its own action within the body. 3
This experiment tends to prove the fallacy of an ancient assumption that the mind was controlled by the glands. An aberree is given a shot of 25 mg. of testosterone in oil twice a week. There may be some improvement in his physical status for a short time–his voice may deepen and he may grow more hair on his chest. Now, without suggestion, we simply delete the engrams from his reactive bank so that they can re-form as experience in the standard bank.
Before we have completed this task his body begins to use more of the testosterone. The dose can be markedly reduced and still give more benefit than formerly. Finally the dose can be eliminated. This experiment has also been performed on people who had not been able to receive benefit from glandular substances such as testosterone and estrogen. And upon people who were made ill by the administration of these hormones. The deletion of the engrams from the reactive bank uniformly brought about a condition where they could receive benefit from the hormones but where such artificial administration was not necessary save in cases of extreme age. What this means to gerontology, the study of longevity in life, cannot at this time be estimated, but it can be predicted with confidence that the deletion of engrams from the reactive bank has a marked effect upon the extension of life. A hundred years or so from now this data will be available, but no clears have lived that long as yet.
Just now, to our purpose, it is easy to demonstrate the effect of positive suggestion upon the endocrine system and the lack of effect of artificial hormones upon aberrees.
This sort of an engram has a terribly reductive effect upon testosterone manufacture: “Sex is horrible; it is nasty; I hate it.”
Hubbard, L. R., (1950) Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1992 ed., ) Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, Inc.
Notes
- Hubbard’s “loused-up” hypnotic subjects undoubtedly included the victims of his own botched psychological “Dianetics research” experiments done in hospitals and clinics around the U.S. ↩
- Hubbard claimed, in Scientology scripture, that in 1947 he hired a nurse, rented an office in Hollywood and went into practice as a swami. He made a turban from a towel and dressed it up with a Woolworth diamond or “some old dowager’s brooch.” There is no evidence that he was ever in India.
Refs. :
Hubbard, L. R. (1958, 18 October). Story of Dianetics and Scientology. London Clearing Congress, (LCC-01). Lecture conducted from London.
Hubbard, L. R. (1964, 3 November). Programs. Saint Hill Special Briefing Course, (SHSBC-408). Lecture conducted from East Grinstead, Sussex. ↩ - Hubbard was hospitalized at Oak Knoll Naval hospital in 1945 for a duodenal ulcer. He later claimed that he conducted endocrine research studies at Oak Knoll, the result of which was his “discovery” that “function monitors structure.” Oak Knoll was then apparently conducting its own endocrine studies on Americans who had been POWs in Japanese prison camps. Hubbard claimed that to facilitate his personal research and to gain access to patient files, he impersonated a medical doctor and hypnotized unwitting test patients. Hubbard bragged about his medical humbuggery in several Scientology lectures, even boasting of destroying the hospital’s research project.
Hubbard himself took testosterone, and was apparently taking it in August 1945 when during a convalescent leave from Oak Knoll he met Sara Northrup at the Agape Lodge of the O.T.O. in Pasadena. His self-affirmations ( The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard) indicate parallels with the alleged “official” endocrinology studies. There is considerable evidence that Hubbard continued to inject testosterone at least into the 1970’s. ↩