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.
Every mind may be considered to have a control center. This could be called the “awareness of awareness unit” of the mind, or it could be called simply “I.”
Control Center = Awareness + The Harmonizing Principle of Oneness
The control center is CAUSE. It directs, through emotional relay systems, the actions of the body and the environment. It is not a physical thing. Here is a diagram of the control center, “I,” in relation to the emotions and the body and environment.
Direction = Genetic programming + facsimiles and memories + mental emotions + muscular motion + environmental motion
The total function of “I” is the estimation of effort. It thinks and plans and resolves the problems or future effort.
Estimation of Effort = The Harmonizing Principle of Oneness
When “I” has estimated a needful effort and puts it into action, its impulses impinge against the glandular system switchboard. The glandular system is a relay unit. It turns the emotional impulse into action.
The motor switchboard is a complex set of physical circuits and these go to various parts of the body and channels of perception in order to coordinate physical action at the direction of the glandular system.
On a return circuit, the environment or the body, through the nerve channels of perception and the channels in the body itself, an impulse from the environment or the body goes into the switchboard and is directly recorded by “I” facsimile. The emotional system, in a mind in good condition, is bypassed on an incoming impulse unless “I” directs it expressly into the glandular system.
The physical body is a carbon-oxygen motor. It has been built out of the eons of experience, the summaries and conclusions of “I.” Its internal motions and actions can be placed by “I” in the category of “automatic response.” Thus the heart beat and circulatory system are automatic in action. Thus many other motions of the body are automatic. But, as can be demonstrated, any of these motions can be altered by “I.”
Total action = Automatic response + Harmonized response
The glandular system is quite complex as such, but its function is simple. It is the translation medium, evidently, for thought. The system is partially physical and partially thought.
Thought is definitely comparable to nothing in the universe of matter, energy, space or time, having no wave length, weight, mass or speed and being, therefore, a zero which is an infinity or, in short, a true static. Thought, thinking and life itself are of the same order of being. Demonstrably they have no wave length, therefore contain neither time nor space. Thought only appears to have time because in it is recorded physical universe time. There is obviously an “action” in thought but, as obviously, it is not action in this universe. (To see the proofs of this character of thought, see the axiomatic text.)
Thought = Substance of the universe, which is more basic than energy and matter
Thought Structures = Postulates + Sensations + Perceptions + Concepts + Knowledge + Wsdom
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