The following is a chapter from Handbook for Preclears by L. Ron Hubbard (1951). It is annotated by explanatory notes and comments in color. These notes and comments are based on Postulate Mechanics.
As the operating mechanism between thought and action, EMOTION should be well understood.
Emotion = Interface between thought and motion
Emotion exists to monitor motion. Thought itself seems to have an emotional impulse which is free of physical universe waves. This is studied in various ways, but it is only important to us in the resolution of the problems of the human mind.
Thought = Impulse to bring harmony of Oneness
Various emotions produce various actions. Anger, for instance, is the catalyst for attack. Fear is the signal to withdraw. Grief is the signal to be quiet and initiate nothing. Apathy is the signal to be dead or to feign death so that a marauder will go away. Various glandular compounds are injected into the system to produce these results. Fear and grief, for instance, have an added compound to make the flesh taste bad—for Man is but recently a food animal.
Emotion = Predisposition for motion
There is an entire scale of emotions to produce certain motions And there is a herd reaction, as witnessed in mass hysteria, whereby emotion acts upon others mechanism developed in the control of hunting packs whereby the entire pack could feel afraid and run or feel angry and attack without any other command. This shows up additionally in any modern leadership. The leader is that one who emotionally affects others most strongly toward positive action.
Emotion works both at individual and mass levels.
In interpersonal relations, emotion plays an enormous role. In this new science we have what is called COUNTER EMOTION. Incidents quite often will not reduce until the pre-clear is made to feel the emotion of others toward him. But quite aside from this manifestation as an ethereal something, there is the real mechanism of sympathy. One person shows grief in order to get support from the other. The other shows sympathy and gives the support. Man is so interdependent and the physical universe so occasionally rigorous that all interpersonal relations are built upon this dependency or its denial.
Emotion communicates at a more basic level than logic.
The broad field of the dynamics indicates the generalized character of emotion.
The test of these conclusions is their workability. You will discover in processing the enormous importance of emotion. The emotion of an individual can be frozen by some facsimile he once wanted but now does not want, and he thereafter handles motion according to that emotion. Thus a person can be chronically angry or chronically in apathy and his behavior on all dynamics is the behavior of that emotion. By knowing this and the activities of any level on a tone scale of emotion, one can predict completely the actions of any given individual or handle him with ease.
The ideal state is fully self-determined emotion. Only then can one be happy and successful.
Ideal emotion supports the impulse toward harmony.
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