Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard Read Free Book Online

rose, can merely visualize one. Some can smell one but not see it. Some see it without color or in very pale color. When told to think of a ship some aberrees only see a flat, colorless, still picture such as a painting of a ship or the photograph of one. Some perceive a vessel in motion without color but with sound. Some hear the sound of a ship but fail to see any picture whatever. Some merely think of a ship as a concept that ships exist and that they know about them and fail to see, feel, hear, smell or otherwise sense anything on a recall basis.
    Some past observers have called this “imagery” but the term is so inapplicable to sound and touch, organic sensation and pain that recall is used uniformly as the technical dianetic term. The value of recall in this business of living has occupied such scant attention that the entire concept has never been formulated previously. It is therefore detailed at some length here, as above.
    It is quite simple to test recalls. If one will ask his fellows what their abilities are, he will gain a remarkable idea of how widely varied this ability is from individual to individual.
    Some have this recall, some have that, some have none, but operate on concepts of recall only.
    And remember, if you make a test on those around you, that any perception is filed in the memory and therefore has a recall which is to include pain, temperature, rhythm, taste and weight with the above mentioned sight, sound, tactile, and smell.
    The dianetic names for these recalls are visio (sight), sonic (sound), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), rhythmic, kinesthetic (weight and motion), somatic (pain), thermal (temperature) and organic (internal sensations and, by new definition, emotion).
    Then there is another set of mental activities which can be summated under the headings of imagination and creative imagination. Here again is abundant material for testing.
    Imagination is the recombination of things one has sensed, thought or intellectually computed into existence, which do not necessarily have existence. This is the mind’s method of envisioning desirable goals or forecasting futures. Imagination is extremely valuable as a part of essential solutions in any mental problem and in everyday existence. That it is recombination in no sense deprives it of its vast and wonderful complexity.
    A clear uses imagination in its entirety. There is an imagination impression for sight, smell, taste, sound -- in short, for each one of the possible perceptions. These are manufacturered impressions on the basis of models in the memory banks combined by conceptual ideas and construction. New physical structures, tomorrow in terms of today, next 19

    year in terms of last year, pleasure to be gained, deeds to be done, accidents to avoid, all these are imaginational functions.
    The clear has full color-visio, tone-sonic, tactile, olfactory, rhythmic, kinesthetic, thermal and organic imagination in kind. Asked to envision himself riding in a gilded coach and four, he “sees” the equipage, moving, in full color, he “hears” all the noises which should be present, he “smells” the smells he thinks should be there, and he “feels” the upholstery, the motion, and the presence in the coach of himself.
    In addition to standard imagination there is creative imagination. This is a very wide undimensional ability, quite variable from individual to individual, possessed in enormous quantity by some. It is included here, not as a portion of the operation of the mind treated as a usual part of dianetics, but to isolate it as an existing entity. In a clear who possessed creative imagination, even if inhibited, as an aberree, it is present and demonstrable. It is inherent. It can be aberrated only by prohibition of its general practice, which is to say, by aberrating the persistence in its application or encysting the whole mind. But creative imagination, that possession by which works of art are done, states builded and