Reference: The Book of Scientology
Affinity, Communication and Reality
Please see the original section at the link above.
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Summary
Hubbard relates beingness to space, but beingness starts as the awareness of basic postulates. When the awareness identifies itself with those postulates, we have a beingness that is subject to the laws of MEST. This beingness is actually what Hubbard refers to as “thetan”. Because of this identification, a thetan is not aware of the postulates that have brought him into being.
Hubbard describes the tone scale as a gradient scale from space to matter. But the tone scale appears to be a scale of thought identification (beingness). It parallels a scale of energy identification (doingness), and a scale of matter identification (havingness).
The thought identification increases as the tone scale is descended. This results in the condensation of the beingness of the thetan. At the top of this tone scale, the identification with thought is minimal. At the bottom of the tone scale, this identification is total, and the thetan dramatizes his thoughts in a stimulus-response manner without knowing.
Hubbard describes the ARC triangle of Scientology. ARC stands for Affinity, Reality and Communication. Affinity is the range of human emotions that manifest themselves as flows, dispersals and ridges. The emotion expresses itself as energetic action, which, as the scale is descended, condenses into enthusiasm, conservatism, boredom, antagonism, anger, covert hostility, fear, grief, apathy and death. This affinity is displayed in human relationships.
The level of affinity of a person shows up in his communication. Communication is an interchange of thought from one beingness to another. The communication could be joyous and uplifting, or it could be just doom and gloom and quite depressing. If a person’s level of affinity is low, it shows in his communication that tends to put others down.
Reality is established by the person’s ability to perceive. The perception of a person is poor if his level of affinity is low. An angry person has a very poor reality. Hubbard says, “Reality is established by agreement or disagreement or no opinion.” But agreement or disagreement arises because of similarity or difference in realities. No opinion comes from not engaging in comparison.
Hubbard blames the MEST universe for the condition of thetan. The simple fact is that the aberrations of a person are caused by thought identifications. Such identification fixates the person’s attention, much like what happens under hypnotism. To Hubbard, the thetan’s reality on his own universe has become poor, because he is hypnotized by the MEST universe. Hubbard’s approach in processing is, therefore, to disagree with the reality of the MEST universe, instead of understanding the laws of nature better. Hubbard’s approach thus differs from the scientific method of observing and resolving anomalies.
You can understand a person by looking at his chronic emotion, the words coming out of his mouth, and how he deals with others. This is because on the same level, the affinity, communication and reality correspond to each other. A person’s range of tone’s is limited when his attention is fixed on his body. However, that range expands when his attention is no longer fixed on the body.
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Comments
The above summary presents a new interpretation of the concept of thetan. Thetan is the beingness that comes about when awareness is identified with certain postulates. With this identification the beingness becomes subject to the laws of MEST that apply to thought.
Hubbard expresses these laws as the correspondence of affinity, reality and communication, which control the “cause” attribute of the thetan. But if this identification as thetan is not there, then the law that applies is the principle of Oneness. This is the law of continuity, consistency and harmony that applies to all thought, energy and matter, and determines how they behave. Oneness points to the arbitrariness of the idea of the permanence of thetan.
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