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This is the story of Sally Jean Henry and her life up to age nineteen. She was born in 1980 and she grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States of America. Before we tell the story about how her mind was built and how it used her, let's talk generally about what a mind is.

I am stealing from some of the best thinkers here. I acknowledge primary recent contributions by L. Ron Hubbard, Werner Erhard, and Tor

Norretranders. I acknowledge the source of this conversation in

Buddhism, Taoism, Yoga, Vedantic philosophy, and in Western philosophy in the work of Leibnitz, the existentialists, phenomenologists, and

perceptual and cognitive theorists in psychology. I am discussing the following questions: What is a mind? What is a mind for? How does a mind get built? How does it work? How can you tame one and keep it from running away with you?

What is a Mind?

The model of the mind provided by L. Ron Hubbard, with a bow to Liebnitz, (who spoke of "monads," which were little Lego™-like units of stored information) includes this definition: The mind is a linear arrangement of total multi-sensory recordings of successive moments of now. This is a good definition of the fundamental reactive mind: stored records of events that occurred as we got born and grew up.

The records that make up the mind are multi-sensory recordings, not just videotapes but recordings that include taste, touch, smell, balance, feeling states, and thoughts.

These recordings are not all the same with regard to how long they last. A

beginning of a recorded moment is demarcated by noting some

significant-to-you event that stands out at the beginning of a moment, and lasts until you consider it played out. These moments are recorded and stored as records in our brains. They are collected and stored in a linear fashion from early in our life to recently in our life, and they vary in length from a few seconds to several hours. "Moments of now" vary in length according to clock time, they are all in a linear arrangement, and they are total multi-sensory recordings in succession. The sum total of these stored recordings is the fundamental reactive mind.

What is a Mind For?

A mind is for survival. We have minds in order to survive. Human beings, biologically, are a-tube-within-a-tube construction. We have a tube of skin covering up many more tubes inside us, including our veins and arteries and capillaries, and our digestive system. Millennia ago in our evolution, we became independent of the ocean by creating our own ocean inside called the bloodstream. We survive now by putting water and food in one end of the tube and running it through our other tubes. Eventually,

everything we put in comes out again through tubes at the other end, when we defecate and urinate, and through little tubes that come to the surface of the skin where we sweat.

A mind is useful for our survival if it helps us be successful at assimilating food and water and running it through the tubes so that we are sustained in being. If we continue to do it long enough and survive to pubescence, we then put a male tube inside a female tube and make another tube.

When we do this we have fulfilled our mission to survive and the mission of our species to survive. The mind serves the survival of the being if it is of some use in assimilating things to put in the front end of the tube, and finding other tubes to play with long enough to create more tubes. It's a tube maintenance program.

All in all, this sounds easy. But there is one small problem. We haven't quite answered the question "What is a mind for?" A more complete answer is: "A mind is for the survival of the being, or of anything the being considers itself to be." This addition to the definition of the purpose of the mind engenders a problem. Suddenly we are talking about more than tubes here. The problem is that the tool called the mind is what the being does its considering with! The mind, in considering the survival of the being, comes up with the idea that it also has to survive so the being can survive.

The mind knows it has to be maintained and it is in charge of its own maintenance. The mind is its own mechanic. The mind gets to thinking that its own survival is what it is for! "Because my survival as a being depends on me," the mind thinks, "I must preserve myself at all costs."

And the mind can come to think that its own survival is more important than the survival of the being.

For example, Jack Benny, a comedian noted for his tightness with money, created on his radio show a skit that took place in Central Park in New York City. A mugger stuck a gun in Jack's ribs and said, "Your money or your life!" With his thumb under his chin and forefinger on his cheek, Jack

paused and drawled, "Wel-l-l-l…" The mugger repeated himself and Jack responded peevishly, "I'm thinking! I'm thinking!!" He was having a difficult time choosing which was more important, his money or his life.

"What is worth more," his mind wondered, "My money or my life?"

For another example, let's say you are sixteen years old and you were born in Baghdad and you want to be a good Moslem and a good citizen and a good follower of Saddam Hussein. You put on a uniform to preserve that identity and go with 80,000 of your brothers to Kuwait, and the

Americans kill you and 60,000 others sharing the same identity. Your identification with your ideal has cost you your life.

When I was eighteen years old, many of my contemporaries went to Vietnam, trying to be "good Americans," and many died trying to maintain that identity. Just like all the pitiful, well-meaning young soldiers

throughout history who have died for ill-conceived ideals by the dozens, we can let whom we consider ourselves to be, what our minds say we are, cost us our life. What is more important: our image or our life?

Two phenomenological psychologists named Schneideman and Farberow wrote a book about suicide after seventeen years of research in which they studied 350 cases of suicide. After studying suicide notes left behind and examining all the stories and interviews with friends and families, they found a theme that seemed to apply in all cases. They concluded that every suicide can be explained as "an attempt to maintain or enhance the self." The mind is maintained at the expense of the life of the being.

The mind survives by being right. The mind would rather be right and die than be wrong and live.

Teenagers identify with their self-image rather than their being. The internal judge who makes the assessments about life—"It's too hard," "I can't take it anymore," It's not worth it," "Now, this will show them!"—

survives at the cost of life itself. Suicide rates are highest among teens.

The mind is for the survival of the being or of anything the being considers itself to be. Sometimes it doesn't preserve the survival of the being while it thinks it is serving its function having to do with its own survival. The mind is not a perfect instrument of survival. The mind misfires.

The mind makes mistakes and cannot always be trusted to maintain survival. The mind's survival depends on being right, whereas the body's survival depends on being fed and kept well and free from harm. There sometimes appears to be a conflict between these two goals, and the mind decides its survival is the most important. In Eastern philosophy this is called the problem of ego.

Once the mind has decided that Itself is what must survive, it believes its survival depends on being right whatever the cost. A mind survives by being right and not wrong and by getting agreement, not disagreement, from other minds. This narcissistic preoccupation with itself and its own survival necessitates the defense of all its assessments, judgments, decisions, stories, products, creations, and so forth. The mind's primary job switches from survival to defending itself.

How Does a Mind Get Built?

The records of the mind are formed and stored continually as each

individual grows older. All the records of total multi-sensory recordings of successive moments of now can be divided into three types. That is, we can sort all the records of the mind into three groups. They can be

thought of as records stored on three spindles. Imagine three spindles for three different kinds of records of the mind: Spindles A, B, and C. The criteria of selection for storage on one spindle as opposed to another are as follows.

Class A Events

Spindle A stores records of events involving a threat to the person's survival, pain, and a partial loss of consciousness. These stored records are called Class A events. For an example of a Class A event, let me reintroduce you to Sally Jean Henry and pursue her story starting when she was a young child.

Sally Jean Henry: Scene One. Sally is four years old and is playing with her brother, Tom, who is five and a half. They are sailing a toy sailboat in a small pond at the playground in a park near her house. Her mother is there, talking to a neighbor lady. It's a sunny day and the wind is blowing through the trees and Sally is busily engaged pushing her toy sailboat back and forth across the little pond with her brother. Her dog, Rags, is there playing with some other dogs and children.

Suddenly, her brother snatches up the boat, says "My boat!" and starts running away with it. Sally knows that the boat is hers and she starts running after Tom yelling, "My boat! My boat!" Rags chases both of them.

As they approach the other side of the park, her brother runs down three concrete steps, but just as Sally gets there, Rags gets tangled up in her feet and she falls headfirst from the top of the first step. She misses the steps but lands hard on her shoulder, arm, and head on the concrete sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. She scrapes her left arm and shoulder and bumps her head as she falls and the wind is knocked completely out of her.

The next thing she knows, she is coming out of a fog, rolling over, trying to catch her breath. Her mother comes running up and kneels in front of her. The sunlight reflects off her mother's glasses into her eyes, making her squint. Her dog Rags is licking her face. Tom is saying, a little

anxiously, "She's not hurt; she's not hurt!" in the background. Her arm and shoulder hurt and she feels nauseated. Her mother picks Sally up and carries her home, cleans her cuts, puts on battle ribbon Band-Aids™ and gives her some M&Ms™. That's the end of the event.

The moment of record started when her brother grabbed Sally's boat and ended when her mother gave her the M&Ms™. It is a Class A event, in which she experienced pain, a partial loss of consciousness, and a threat to her survival. Sally makes a total multi-sensory record of it at four years of age. The record may or may not remain conscious, it may become buried, it may be partially forgotten, it may be modified in conscious memory, but in some complete form it remains as a total multi-sensory recording of a Class A event. We all have many of these events in our lives and therefore we have many records of them. One of the first of these recorded Class A events is our own birth. The trauma of childbirth

for the baby meets all the criteria of a Class A event. Getting born, for most of us, involves pain, shock, a partial loss of consciousness, and a threat to our survival.

Class B Events

Class B events stored on Spindle B involve a sudden shocking loss, with strong emotion, usually negative, and something in the event related to a previous Class A event.

Sally Jean Henry: Scene 2. Sally is seven years old now. She's running on a sidewalk behind her brother Tom, next to the stadium. Rags is running behind her. Suddenly, her brother cuts to the right and runs across the street. She follows him. Rags follows her. There is a screech of brakes and a thud. She looks back. Rags has been hit by a dump truck. She runs back. She bends down to look at Rags and touches him. Her hand feels sticky and she smells blood.

She realizes he is dead and begins to cry.

This is a Class B event—a sudden shocking loss, with strong emotion, usually negative, associated with a previous Class A event. Rags was running in the park, got tangled up in her feet, and licked her face in the previously stored Class A event. His sudden, shocking loss becomes a permanent Class B record in her mind. We can't grow up without

experiencing these kinds of events and storing them. We all have a bunch of Class B records of loss.

Class C Events

Class C records are anything at all that occurs in the experience of a person which can be associated with Class A or Class B events. Anything in the world that is associated with spindle A and B events can be

separately recorded and is called a Class C event. For Sally, any earlier or later records of trees, sunshine, breezes, ponds, toy boats, parks, grass, sidewalks, steps, eyeglasses, falling, being near the ground, brothers, dump trucks, dogs, fur, wet sticky things, M&Ms™, and so on are all events that can be stored separately but with their association with A and B remaining intact. So by the time we are seven or eight years old, and have stored a number of Class A and B events, EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD is associated as a threat to our survival!

The mind is essentially a paranoid instrument. We have records in our memory of threats to our survival, and of loss, which we are to avoid in the future in order to survive, and they are associated with every other recording of everything we have experienced. Every new stimulus from outside ourselves after about seven or eight years of age just triggers a whole chain of associations. We are on guard, looking out for trauma and trouble at all times—and that's what a mind is. It's like an accountant or a lawyer or some other kind of deal killer who is hell-bent on anticipating the possible recurrence of some tragedy that has happened before, or one very much like it, and trying to avoid that happening.

How Does the Reactive Mind Work?

Here's how the associative/reactive mind works when we are adults. Let's say it's twelve years later and that same little girl, Sally, has grown to be nineteen years old. She is a pretty young woman and she is a freshman at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Sally Jean Henry: Scene 3, Option 1. Sally goes to a park on a picnic with her boyfriend of several weeks, Gary. It's a sunny day and the wind is gently blowing through the trees. They've had some wine and cheese and a few bites of food;

Sally leans back against a tree and Gary comes over to sit beside her. As he leans over to sit down beside her, he squeezes her knee. "Ouch," she says. He replies, "You're not hurt; you're not hurt," and some vague discomfort comes over her. Then, just as he bends over to kiss her, the sunlight glints off his glasses right in her eyes and she squints. He kisses her and she kisses him back, but she feels nauseated and mildly anxious and slightly uncomfortable.

After the picnic they go home separately. When he phones, she doesn't return the call. She never goes out with him again.

If you ask her why she quit dating Gary, Sally has all kinds of rational explanations: he's not her type, he doesn't have a good sense of humor, she is just a freshman and wants to "play the field" and doesn't want to be tied down right now, and so on. These rational explanations, however, have nothing to do with why she dropped Gary. She dropped him because her associative mind identified him with her partially forgotten Class A event from when she was four years old. His saying "You're not hurt;

you're not hurt," and the tone of voice in which he said it, combined with the glare of the sun off his glasses making her squint just when he kissed her brought back the pain and nausea and the threat to her survival she experienced when she fell and hurt herself. Her Class A record was reactivated in association with Gary, and she avoided him thereafter.

Sally Jean Henry: Scene 3, Option 2. Let's say the same events occur on the picnic with a slightly different outcome from the same associative chain. Sally leans back against the tree; Gary comes to sit next to her and squeezes her knee. She says, "Ouch!" He says, "You're not hurt; you're not hurt," and as he leans down to kiss her the sunlight glints off his glasses, but this time when he kisses her, instead of nausea, she feels an insane urge for him to lick her face!

As he pulls back, he does, at the end of a French kiss, accidentally, just barely, lick the very edge of her lip. She marries him!

If you ask Sally why she married Gary, she will have all kinds of valid reasons for marrying him: his family is wealthy, he's going to go to

medical school, they are the same religion, and so on. But her associative mind chose him prior to all those reasonable rationalizations. She married Gary to bring her dog Rags back to life. (A lot of us married our dogs, at least the first time around.)

The Illusion of Control

The rational, thinking, reflective mind thinks it is in control, but it isn't. As writer Annie Dillard says, "We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all." Our rational decisions really aren't decisions at all, but rationalizations to justify the choices already made by associations of the reactive mind. The reactive mind works

The rational, thinking, reflective mind thinks it is in control, but it isn't. As writer Annie Dillard says, "We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all." Our rational decisions really aren't decisions at all, but rationalizations to justify the choices already made by associations of the reactive mind. The reactive mind works