Blog: Emotions III: The Tone Scale - 2013-08-06
Emotions III: The Tone Scale August 6, 2013,
Someone posted here once a lecture reference where L. Ron Hubbard pronounced that 'action' and 'games', were the places to aim for in terms of chronic emotion or state of consciousness (see Real Emotions for how Scientology tends to collapse the two ideas). The idea was that the top of the scale 'serenity of beingness' was far too boring for a being to stay with for very long. For those who made those 'emotions' their chronic targets, or their aspired to states of consciousness, here is something to think about. Games and Action are not emotions. They are activities. One could and does engage in 'games' and 'action' at every level of emotion. The next higher 'emotion' on the Scientology emotional tone scale, Postulates, too is not an emotion – and like 'games' and 'action' is engaged in during all manner of actual emotion. While 'Serenity' may well be an emotion, 'serenity of beingness' is probably something else entirely (more on that at another time). Perhaps the placement of activities on the emotional tone scale contributed to some of the confusion that occurs in Scientology with respect to the role and purpose and worth of emotion.
This begs the question, are there emotions higher than exhilaration (perhaps the highest Scientology tone scale position that is fairly sure to be an emotion)? I think it is a worthwhile exercise for people to work out for themselves how the emotional tone scale should or could or can be logically and intuitively seen to be. That is particularly so for those who have set their life goals around the achievement of the non-emotions placed at the top of the Scientology tone scale. It can be a liberating exercise. I have done a lot of work on it myself – by self-observation and observation of others. I share some of my notes on it below. This sharing is not for the purposes of indoctrinating or selling an idea. Instead it is provided in order to stimulate thought and conversation and input. The plain type items accompanied by numbers are from the original Hubbard Tone Scale In Full. The italicized typed items are tones on the existing scale that I question as being emotions in the first place (as noted above). The bold-faced, italicized entries are emotions I added by observation in their relative positions to the existing Tone Scale In Full.
Bliss, Pan-equilibrium (Non-Duality)