Comments on NOTs 22: Anaten "Anaten" is a Scientology term meaning "analytical attenuation", i.e., a reduction in consciousness -- a kind of drowsiness or stupor. In this two-page document, Hubbard postulates a cause for anaten: >> A BT sitting around or on a nerve channel, who is awakened and >> suddenly mocks up mass or a ridge, will shut down the nerve and knock >> the [body] anaten.... In the head especially, when a cluster suddenly >> mocks up mass, it shuts off nerve channels. Here we have a very interesting claim: BTs, which are purely spiritual entities, are causing neurophysiological effects. The means by which these effects are realized is not explained. Does the "mass" created by the BT cause some sort of tonic depolarization of the nerve membrane or disturb the extracellular ionic concentration? Or does it merely intrude physically, compressing the nerve the way a tumor might? >> Some people who are deaf or blind might simply have a cluster >> sitting on a nerve, and it's gone on so many years the nerve >> atrophies. Apparently, the juxtaposition of a cluster of body thetans next to a nerve causes sufficient interference as to result in permament nerve damage. What is unusual about the above passage, besides the concreteness of the physiological claim (Hubbard was usually much more vague), is the tentativeness of the conclusion. It is rare to see the word "might" in Hubbard's writings. >> Catatonics may be suffering from this sort of knockout. >> This explains why a tactile process works - you run tactile on the >> bed, etc, after an accident and the guy comes out of it. Again, the tentativeness ("may be suffering") is surprising. But perhaps this merely means there can also be purely organic causes for blindness and catatonia, rather than that Hubbard had any uncertainty about the truth of his body thetan hypothesis. In a later section, Hubbard describes how the departure of body thetans can result in a "somatic" -- an illusory physical ailment: >> Sometimes they blow and a somatic turns on - two beings crunched >> together and at the point of "crunch", they get a somatic. There are two ambiguities in the above sentence. (Hubbard's awful prose is often this unclear, but that can be an asset when one is trying to sell a mystery.) 1. What does "the point of the crunch" refer to? Some point in space? Probably a specific place on the pc's body. 2. What does "they get a somatic" mean? The body thetans themselves suffer the somatic? Or the pc experiences a somatic? In other documents, Hubbard says that BTs can "be" illnesses, and the pc who is in telepathic contact with them can treat their pictures as his own and suffer psychosomatic ills. But in this document it appears that somatics are not attributed to the delusions of the BTs, but rather to the mass associated with the BTs existence: >> It takes a multiple mass to create a somatic. Whether it's a >> number of BTs or clusters, the somatic mechanism is mass versus mass, >> not cluster versus body, but cluster vs. cluster... In this interpretation, which is consistent with the nerve damage hypothesis above, the cause of a somatic is mass, and the nature of the somatic is determined by the spot on the body where the clusters collided. This makes somatics seem like gallstones: pain caused by bits of mass intruduing in the wrong place. It would appear to constrain the types of illness that could be experienced as somatics to problems with highly localized causes. A systemic problem, such as arthritis or allergies, would not be explainable as one or two extra bits of mass in an inconvenient spot. It appears, then, that there are two or three separate mechanisms by which BTs cause medical problems. The first, discussed here, is a concrete physical process based on introducing mass into the body. The second, discussed in NOTs 27, is psychosomatic imagery: BTs "being" illnesses, from broken legs to cancer. The third, discussed in NOTs 30, is perhaps also psychosomatic but not literal picture copying: allergies are said to be caused by unhappy BTs. They are unhappy because they have low "havingness". -- Dave Touretzky